The Garden Tour Affair: A Gardening Mystery

by Ann Ripley

  Garden tours can be as informal as visiting the neighbor’s backyard, or as formal as doing the English garden circuit—the Chelsea Flower Show, Kew, Wisley, Gertrude Jekyll’s Hidcote Manor, Sissinghurst, Tintinhull, Kiftsgate Court, and Jane Austen’s and John Brookes’s places. It is not a cut-and-dried thing: There are protocols, and primitive urges that we gardeners must curb.

  While Americans’ lack of established, systematic garden tours has been likened to the lack of a “developed muscle,” Britons are just the opposite. Garden tours there are as well organized as the peerage, and they are listed in the famous Yellow Book published by the Benevolent Society for Gardeners. A Britisher is especially honored to be in the book, with the potent words, “GARDEN OPEN” alongside the name. The listing is about as important to a gardener as being knighted.

  When an American horticulturalist commended a Britisher on the beauty of his lawn, the Britisher drolly replied, “Thank you. We’ve been at it for four hundred years, so we’ve had a chance to work out the kinks.” In terms of gardening, the United States is young, and sometimes a bit gauche about the results. Nevertheless, there are plenty of U.S. garden tours, in every state.

  Your best American garden visit might be to one of the 500 public gardens. Here, in contrast to the crowds that jam places like Disney World or action movies, you will find beauty, tranquillity, and relative quiet amidst acres of trees and flowers.

  Some people have trouble with garden tours, according to an expert tour guide. They become self-conscious and very arch, as the spirit of competition rears its ugly head. The tour guide is thinking, “I have something very good here in this rose bed,” while the visitor is thinking: “His roses are good, but mine are better.”

  There are unspoken rules for garden visits:

  No stealing of plants.

  Praise a plant: This means you covet it. And in the private garden, the smart proprietor will dig you a division, knowing that constant movement and division will only make plants prosper. This won’t work in public gardens, of course.

  Don’t comment loudly on the garden’s failure to fulfill your expectations.

  Don’t point out weeds, or, heaven forbid, reach down and pluck a weed, as a nosy guest might pick up a dust curl in someone’s house.

  Leave unruly children and pets home.

  Never leave the path and damage plants, or pick flowers.

  The tour guide wants to make an impact, whether it is a backyard gardener or the director of a public garden. He or she wants a hushed reaction to the utter beauty of the flowers and trees. It is a combination of hubris and an altruistic desire to inspire others. For their part, garden tour visitors are on a hunt for the Holy Grail—looking for the perfect plants to put in an idealized garden. Garden tours can be likened to a show, and like most shows, the audience doesn’t care how you do it, only that the effect is magic.

  For the latest on touring in America you should consult garden magazines or get a special book on the subject from your public or botanic gardens library. Such a book will give you a comprehensive look at garden events, from orchid shows to month-long house-garden tours. Certain subgroups of gardeners who are interested in one species or specialty, such as rock or water gardens, are very active: They talk back and forth over the Internet and make field trips together. Members of the International Water Lily Society, for instance, recently went to Brazil to do research on the DNA of the gigantic water lily, the Victoria. With these people, garden tours are not aesthetic idylls, but a higher calling, namely, the preservation of plant species.

  Chapter 3

  LOUISE HADN’T BEEN ENTHUSIASTIC about dragging the whole world with her on this location shoot—despite her determination not to leave Janie and Chris home alone. Now there were Bill, Janie, Chris, and Chris’s mother, Nora—voluptuous, dark-haired Nora, who was not the happiest of women these days. But then that was probably why she had invited herself on the trip. Nora’s problems were so numerous and diverse that Louise almost thought of her as a female Job: menopause, failure to publish lately in those little poetry magazines, severe marital problems—and on top of that the recent discovery that her widowed mother suffered from Alzheimer’s. All this made Nora’s behavior erratic: Louise didn’t know what to expect of her friend and neighbor on this trip. Having Chris and Janie along made it even more awkward.

  Once they had picked up their rental car and left behind the hustle and bustle of the city, she began to feel better. Everyone, even Nora, was cheery and full of little jokes. The countryside rolled by, covered with thick woods and dotted with quaint, neat villages. With only the cars on the road updating it to the present, it was perfect, like a Currier and Ives print. So different from Washington, D.C., with its shaggy overgrowth and jungly vines. By the time they neared their destination, Louise was in love with the Litchfield hills.

  “Bill, wouldn’t it be great to buy a little place and come here during the summers?”

  Her husband looked at her and shook his head in disbelief. “Seventy miles into the state and you’re ready to become a Connecticut Yankee.”

  He was a picture of comfort behind the wheel of the car, a little smile on his face, seat tipped comfortably back, blond head resting lightly on the headrest. Both his posture and his casual traveling clothes bespoke a man who looked forward to a vacation. He had just returned from Vienna, where his once-secret undercover work with the CIA continued. Now he handled the problems of strayed and stolen nuclear and biological materials from the former Soviet Union countries. Nothing too serious, she reflected wryly. Just the future safety of the world. Louise was glad to see he had put his work behind him for the moment.

  “A little summer place,” she mused, “like that little farm we just passed.”

  “Louise, I hate to disillusion you, but that place probably wasn’t a farm. This countryside has an element of a Potemkin village about it. There are few farmers left, and those fields are kept mowed simply to preserve the feeling of old New England countryside. I doubt we could afford a property around here—I know for a fact Steve Forbes just moved into the neighborhood.”

  Her enthusiasm retracted like a camera lens. “Bummer.”

  Bill’s blue eyes glittered with mischief. “Unless, by chance, you want to acquire another big mortgage.” He knew she hated the mortgage they already had.

  “No way. But we could rent a place for a couple of weeks.” She looked with a different eye at the visible parts of the unassuming farmhouses peeking from behind the enticing hills.

  “I read that book you gave me on Connecticut on the plane ride home. I know you must have picked up a lot of history while you were researching your show—did you run across the fact that Litchfield was the home of the first law school in the United States, before even Yale and Harvard …” Still a history major at heart, Bill loved to act as the family’s Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

  His little chronicle was interrupted, however, when they saw a colonial-era sign announcing Litchfield Falls Inn. He swerved into the wooded driveway, and from the moment they saw the mansion, Louise was smitten. It was immense, gleaming white, its Georgian architecture marked by graceful, round-topped windows. A wraparound porch on the first floor with steps pouring off it in all directions gave the impression of a user-friendly building with easy access to the grounds. When they walked inside, they were surrounded by the smells of fresh flowers, old wax, and fine food. This somehow made her feel quite at home—though her home, she had to admit, didn’t smell anywhere near as good as this well-tended place.

  They were greeted by a trim, middle-aged woman named Elizabeth, who introduced herself as proprietor Barbara Seymour’s assistant. Elizabeth did a good job of masking her surprise. “Of course it’s no bother that you’re early,” she assured them with a little too much vigor. Of course it was a bother: The rooms weren’t ready, but they could wait on the veranda with tea. Instructing them to leave their luggage in the imposing two-story foyer, Elizabeth guided them through the first
floor, pointing out objects of interest. Louise thought the mansion looked unchanged since its construction two centuries before, but Elizabeth informed her that it had been remodeled at some point from a huge home to a country inn.

  “We’ll just peek in the library,” Elizabeth said, as they reached the first room off the foyer, “and then you can return at your leisure.” They came in and stood at the edge of the Oriental carpet. The collection of books covered the walls from floor to ceiling. Scattered among the furniture were pedestals holding vases and humorless marble busts. A fire, unusual for July, blazed in the huge fireplace, apparently to fight the rising New England damp.

  Then they saw the cat. Louise, Nora, and Janie all emitted joyful noises, as if they had discovered a baby on the premises. “Ooh,” cried Janie, “what a cool cat!” It was an enormous gray and black-striped tabby, sitting in its old wicker basket near the fire. As they watched, it majestically rose, stretched its back into an unbelievable arch, then drifted behind a leather couch.

  “Don’t mind Hargrave,” said Elizabeth, laughing. “He has sort of an attitude—thinks he owns the library. Not too social, and quite old, in fact. But he seems to have lost most of his sense of curiosity, so he won’t bother you.” Then she led them into the living room.

  Dull gold wallpaper with simple designs of pineapples and flowers covered the walls there. It made a fine background for the eighteenth-century pianoforte and other antique furniture, which included a magnificent mahogany highboy. The woodwork, with double-mitred corners, was the labor of a master carpenter, and the walls were hung with dark oil paintings depicting drama and drownings on the Atlantic seas. Scattered artfully about were several lovely old vases and bowls, some filled with bouquets of verbena, petunia, and scabiosa in quiet pastels. Despite this beauty, Louise felt a chill.

  “It’s almost spooky, isn’t it?” she said to Nora.

  Nora gave her one of her Mona Lisa smiles. “Yes. There could be ghosts here.”

  Overhearing them, Bill said, his eyes twinkling, “They can’t be that scary: They’re probably Congregational ghosts, since they made up a good part of the population back in the old days,” Louise rolled her eyes.

  Beyond the living room was a sunroom. It was filled with overstuffed furniture covered with gently faded chintz and strewn with plump matching pillows, in what Louise knew was the most venerable East Coast decorating style. Beyond that was the huge veranda. Scattered with an array of antique wicker chairs and tables, it obviously served as the outdoor dining room in good weather. Now it served as a waiting room.

  Elizabeth had tea brought to them and refused to accept any more apologies for their early arrival. Barbara Seymour was still nowhere to be seen, but there was a hum of activity within the enormous mansion. Louise could smell, even from the veranda, delightful food aromas that whetted her appetite for the evening’s dinner.

  The five of them sat on the wicker chairs in their rumpled traveling clothes, clutching their cups of tea. “Don’t we make an interesting picture,” said Louise. “The other guests will never figure us out. Janie, you and Chris are so tall and blond that you look like brother and sister.” She grinned. “Wait ’til somebody sees you with your arms around each other!”

  Janie frowned her disapproval, and Chris looked embarrassed. On a roll now, Louise said, “And Nora and I, with our dark hair, might pass for sisters. Since Ron’s not here, we’ll share the attentions of Bill and raise more eyebrows. And Bill, you’re so blond they’ll think both Janie and Chris are your kids, of course.”

  “Sounds incestuous to me,” he said, and then lowered his voice. “The real question is, what kind of people are we going to meet here—or do we care?”

  Louise shrugged her shoulders: “I don’t think it will matter. My guess is we’ll be so busy we won’t get a chance to get well acquainted. And we can always go out on the town tonight.”

  Nora looked skeptical. “I wonder about that. Small towns like this roll up the sidewalks at the fall of darkness.”

  As fifteen minutes stretched into a half hour, they consumed a steady supply of cucumber, watercress, and pimento-cheese sandwiches off a frequently replenished tray. The restless Janie and Chris explored some of the thirty acres of grounds attached to the inn and returned. By then, two other guests were drifting toward them, looking as if they had stepped out of the pages of a fashion magazine.

  “Dressed to kill,” murmured Nora.

  “From the way she’s hanging on him, they have to be the newlyweds,” replied Louise.

  Mark and Sandy Post introduced themselves smoothly, then made the rounds of the table, schmoozing individually with each member of the group. Sandy was small, with a perfect figure and a feathered blond hairdo, and wearing a honey-beige, wide-legged St. John knit pantsuit. Her smart, blocky shoes clacked gently as she crossed the wide floorboards. On her shoulder was an enormous, flawlessly coordinated leather bag big enough for anything—a small arsenal, perhaps, or enough clothes for the entire weekend.

  The tall, self-assured Mark had a thin face and aquiline nose, and his brown hair had been styled by an expert. His body was muscular but slim, as if he were a runner. Louise was surprised to find out that Sandy was the jock. “I hardly had time to plan my wedding,” she complained, “because I was training for the Olympics with the U.S. women’s biathlon team.” In that outfit, it was hard to imagine her cross-country skiing while shooting a gun. Particularly eye-catching was the little bee pinned to Sandy’s jacket; its body was made of one enormous pearl, its wings of many tiny diamonds—probably a throwaway item from Tiffany. Mark held up his end of the image, decked out in sports clothes with expensive logos.

  “We, like, just returned from Italy,” Sandy told them, shedding most of her mystique with the one sentence. “We wanted to keep the romance of Tuscany alive by spending a few days in charming Litchfield hills.” Her blue eyes widened. “You know, they say there’s a similarity between the two places.”

  Mark turned his birdlike gaze on them. “But not between the profits they make. In Tuscany, it’s fifteen-dollar lattes in the piazzas, and thousand-dollar Ferragamos.” By accident, probably, his glance rested on Louise and stayed there. He gave her a slow grin, as if he were saying, “I’m cute, and so are you.” Ah, thought Louise, is this the kind of guy who must prove his manhood at every turn?

  “Like, you wouldn’t believe the crowds near Florence,” Sandy continued, her voice grating on Louise’s ears. Although Sandy was grown up and married, she had not left behind her Valley Girl vocabulary that, thanks to television, had come into universal use even among the allegedly educated. Louise was suddenly thankful her daughters hadn’t picked it up.

  “Everybody’s doing Tuscany this summer,” Sandy continued, “in addition to wherever else they might be going—it’s kind of, you know, an obligatory stop. Of course, Mark had to get back to Stamford to his computer company …” She gave her new spouse a look that would have dissolved most men, but which did not seem to penetrate Mark. When the new bride went on to tell them she worked in marketing with Calvin Klein in New York, Louise and Nora discreetly shared a look that said, “Tell us something we couldn’t already guess.” It was the kind of job that would fit Sandy like a glove.

  The pair good-naturedly sat down at an adjoining table with Janie and Chris, and the four soon found something in common, despite a decade’s difference in their ages: cars. With this proximity, it was easy for Nora and Louise to overhear the details of Mark Post’s problems garaging his Bentley in the horse barn on the inn’s property—the only option available. And the car needed garaging because—after all—it was brand-new. Mark and Sandy fervently hoped bird droppings wouldn’t land on the car’s pristine roof.

  “Young love takes many forms,” Nora told Louise, sotto voce. “One is working together to ward off bird guano.”

  Louise giggled. “This may be Janie and Chris’s chance to absorb Yuppie life and learn to love it.”

  “Or better sti
ll, learn to hate it.”

  When another—older—couple arrived, getting acquainted with them was more difficult. They were shy, Louise guessed. They sat at a table by themselves and sipped iced tea, determined to appear too busy refreshing themselves to speak. But Louise was more determined to include them. She sauntered over and asked them straight out if they were interested in the garden tour. And they finally opened up: The Gasparras were growers from southern Pennsylvania, their specialty, the iris.

  “We didn’t come here for the tour, you can bet your life on that,” said Rod Gasparra, a short, stocky man with dark heavy eyebrows sheltering his brown eyes. Louise guessed his ancestry included some Middle European—Romanian, perhaps—blood, plus an assortment of other nationalities. He wore a sober business suit. If this was to be a vacation weekend, the man hadn’t gotten into the mood yet. “We might do the tour, we might do something else, like hike. Viewing flowers is not our top priority,” he added, his tone rising. “I have some serious talking to do with that fellow who owns Wild Flower Farm.” During this little burst of emotion his fists balled up and his face turned a dull red; Louise would hate to see the man really blow his top.

  Dorothy Gasparra put a restraining hand on his arm, her face wary. Her rosy cheeks were framed by wavy, attractive brown hair caught back in a no-nonsense bun, and she had spectacular brown eyes that reminded Louise of gypsy nights. “Dear, Mrs. Eldridge doesn’t—”

  “Just call me Louise.”

  “Louise doesn’t want to hear about our problems.”

  Churlishly, he replied, “Okay, then, that’s enough: I won’t tell her.”

  Bursting to know what was bothering the man, Louise nevertheless was loath to get in the middle of a husband-wife struggle. After a few tactful words, she returned to the table where Bill and Nora waited.