How Does Your Garden Grow? Murder Among The Flowers
Garden-Themed Crime Fiction Stories For The Murder Mystery Horticulturist
Welcome to a brand new edition of Only Murders In The Inbox. Thanks for joining us! Every week, OMITI covers murder mysteries in literature and entertainment. We delve into the ways the Mystery genre is significant in pop culture. You’ll also find curated suggestions and lists here so if you’re looking for a certain type of murder mystery with a particular theme or setting, I’ve got you! If you’d like to support my writing, please sign up for a paid monthly subscription, become a patron sleuth or gift a subscription to a friend. A monthly or annual membership gives you access to over one hundred archived editions of Only Murders In The Inbox, which makes each edition sixty cents each! Click below to upgrade:
If you don’t want the commitment of a monthly or annual membership, you can Buy Me A Coffee. I appreciate your support!
Grosse Pointe Garden Society, Image Courtesy Of Peacock
So, Where Are The Bodies Buried?
In this sinister edition of Only Murders In The Inbox, we’re exploring the connection between murder mysteries and horticulture! What? Murder in the garden, you say? There’s a mile-long list of how these two things go hand in hand, so let’s discuss. Once you go down this shady, moss-covered rabbit hole with me, I promise you’ll never think of gardening the same way again!
AS A WEAPON Deadly plants, poisonous potions and concoctions — not to mention toxic fertilizer in the greenhouse — the garden provides the perfect tool for killers. White oleander is beautiful but poisonous. Different herbs and plants, innocent and innocuous alone, combined with a devious counterpart, can kill a person instantly. Some provide a slow and painful death. Then there are the tools! Backhoes, garden shears, even a sharp trowel, make a spontaneous murder especially easy, and those garden gloves nearby are awfully handy!
AS THE KILLER Gardening as a hobby can sometimes lead to murder (Check out Grosse Pointe Garden Society for a recent example). A gardening enthusiast’s knowledge of plants — dangerous for digestion, poisonous to the touch — gives them an unusual advantage for plotting and scheming a painful demise for their victims.
AS A LOCATION Gardens often work as the perfect place for murder, too. Shrubs, trees, tall hedges and garden mazes work as perfect cloaks for killers covering up their crimes. Digging a grave? It’s much less suspicious in a garden!
Irish writer Sheila Pim was one of the first crime fiction writers to create a gardening mystery series. She wrote four Irish Village Gardening Mystery novels, beginning in 1945: Common Or Garden Crime, Creeping Venom, A Brush With Death, and A Hive Of Suspects. If you’re a fan of starting at the beginning of a mystery theme and working your way through, start with her series.
Image Courtesy Of Timber Press
The New York Times bestselling author Marta McDowell is a girl after my own heart. Seriously, I love writers who are as obsessed with the genre as I am! In her nonfiction examination of garden murder mysteries, McDowell explores plots as graves in the springtime, plant-obsessed sleuths and killers, and legendary gardens in crime fiction settings. She also examines ways that gardens have crept into multiple subgenres of Mystery over the years, which makes for an exciting curated collection! I highly recommend both the print and audiobook version, which is an especially fun listen while pruning in the garden.
I love that McDowell points out something mystery afficandos know and appreciate: “Plant lovers can be split into two families. Generalists have rarely met a green growing thing they didn't like and, more often than not, want to bring home to their own gardens. I count myself among their number. Then there are the specialists. A particular plant captures the specialist's heart. It might be the Rose, Dahlia, or African Violet, though sometimes it is a broader grouping like alpines or native plants. Out of this fervor, plant societies and exhibitions are born.”
This dedication and fervor over a particular plant can be the focus of a single novel or a quality of a character that acts as a tell; Rex Stout’s reclusive detective Nero Wolfe, obsessively tending to his many valuable and rare orchids, uses this hobby for contemplation when solving cases. It also speaks to his personality, his desire to connect more with nature than people, and his obsessive, meticulous nature that allows him to solve mysteries based on facts and descriptions alone via his gumshoe, Archie Goodwin.
If this theme in murder mysteries is up your alley, I have a short list of popular favorites, as well as ones you might not have discovered yet! Below you’ll find everything from relaxing cozies to classic hardboiled detective fiction and garden-themed TV episodes.
Image Courtesy Of Minotaur Books
The Potted Gardener, An Agatha Raisin Mystery By M.C. Beaton, also from the TV series, Season One, Episode 4, starring Ashley Jensen on Acorn TV This Agatha Raisin novel from U.K.’s M.C. Beaton wins the award for most clever murder in a garden (no spoilers here). In this cozy mystery, amateur detective Agatha Raisin enters the local backyard garden contest in hopes of making friends and impressing handsome James Lacey, who’s entranced by newcomer Mary Fortune, a gorgeous gardener with a green thumb. This love triangle brings out Agatha’s competitive streak until a vicious murder interrupts the festivities.
If you like this cozy mystery, check out the Agatha Raisin mystery Hiss and Hers, a case about a handsome gardener, a charity ball and a poisonous snake. There’s also Pushing Up Daisies, when Agatha goes toe to toe with Lord Bellington, a cranky land developer who wants to rip up the community garden to build a lavish estate against the villager’s wishes, until a murder interrupts his plans.
I’m a big fan of Agatha Raisin (played by Ashley Jensen) over on Acorn TV, and if you’ve never seen the show, the episode of The Potted Gardener (Season One, Episode Four) is a good place to start.
Image Courtesy of Acorn TV
Image Courtesy of Penguin RandomHouse
The White House Gardener Mystery Series By Dorothy St. James Casey Calhoun is a passionate horticulturist who happens to be the Assistant White House Gardener. Her dedication to the White House flowerbeds but tenacity in a troublesome situation lead to investigations involving death threats, a 200 year-old treasure, a dead body in a trash can and dark secrets buried among the dahlias! This is a three-book cozy mystery gardening series you can enjoy in a weekend: Flowerbed Of State, The Scarlet Pepper, and Oak And Dagger.
Image Courtesy of the BBC
Agatha Christie’s Poirot short story, How Does Your Garden Grow? Also an episode of Poirot, Season Three, Episode 2 on the BBC starring David Suchet, currently available on Acorn TV This Hercule Poirot short story by Agatha Christie was featured in The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories, and, if I’m being truthful, was a bit forgettable until David Suchet brought the story to life on the small screen. The 1991 episode of Poirot begins with at The Chelsea Flower Show when a mysterious older lady handing Poirot a gardening seed packet. Who was the mysterious woman and why did she give Poirot such a cryptic message before she died?
Image Courtesy of Paula Sutton
The Potting Shed Murder By Paula Sutton
Earlier this spring, Paula Sutton, the woman behind the much-loved Instagram Hill House Vintage cottagecore account, released her debut mystery novel The Potting Shed Murder, set in the unassuming village of Pudding Corner. Daphne Brewster has left London behind for rural Norfolk (much like Agatha Raisin), expecting to lead a quiet life. But when the local headmaster is found dead in his potting shed, she’s soon embroiled in the mystery of who killed Mr. Papplewick.
Be sure to visit The Hill House Vintage official website. By the way, you can tour Paula’s lavish gardens here! Kind of in love!
Image Courtesy of Avon Books
Black Orchids, A Nero Wolfe Mystery By Rex Stout
This is one of my favorite Nero Wolfe mysteries, and is a great intro to the detective. The recluse has left his comfortable brownstone for the promise of a remarkably rare black orchid at a flower show, but then a murder interrupts the event. He enlists his assistant Archie’s help in finding the killer so he can get back to his greenhouse before things get wilty.
Even More Garden Murders
The Dirty Business Mystery Series By Rosemary Harris; The Gardener Mystery Series by Rosie Sandler; A Botanist’s Guide To Poison And Potions by Kate Khavari and the entire Saffron Everleigh mystery series; Murder In The Secret Garden by Ellery Adams; the Greenhouse Mystery series by Wendy Tyson; The China Bayles Herbal Mystery Series by Susan Wittig Albert; the Rosemary & Thyme Mystery TV Series; the Garden Society Mystery Series by Alyse Carlson; Masao Masuto Mystery Series by E.V. Cunningham; the Lady Susanna Appleton Mystery Series by Kathy Lynn Emerson; the Gardening Mystery series by Mary Freeman; the Markby and Mitchell Mystery Series by Ann Granger; the Potting Shed Mystery Series by Marty Wingate; the Bretta Solomon Gardening Series by Janis Harrison; the Three Dirty Women Landscaping, Inc. Mystery Series by Julie Wray Herman; the Elizabeth Goodweather Mystery Series by Vicky Lane; the Peggy Lee Garden Mystery Series by Joyce & Jim Laverne; the Gardening Mystery series by Ann Ripley; the Liz Sullivan Mystery Series by Lora Roberts; the Celia Grant Mystery Series by John Sherwood; the Garden Gate Mystery Series by Susan Sleeman; the Edna Davies Mystery Series by Suzanne Young; the Nina Quinn Mystery Series by Heather Webber; the Dreamwalker Mystery Series by Maggie Toussiant; Bailey Cattrell’s Enchanted Garden; The Flower Shop Mystery Series By Kate Collins; The Jillian Bradley Mystery Series; Murder In A Country Garden By Betty Rowlands; the Peter & Helen Shandy Mystery Series By Alisa Craig
Song of the Day: “The Last Rose of Summer” By Nina Simone
Great theme and list! I also recommend the Garden Squad Mystery Series by Julia Henry.
this is a treasure!