This fun, engrossing book takes a look at the surprising influence that gardens and gardening have had on mystery novels and their authors. With their deadly plants, razor-sharp shears, shady corners, and ready-made burial sites, gardens make an ideal scene for the perfect murder. But the outsize influence that gardens and gardening have had on the mystery genre has been underappreciated. Now, Marta McDowell, a writer and gardener with a near-encyclopedic knowledge of the genre, illuminates the many ways in which our greatest mystery writers, from Edgar Allen Poe to authors on today’s bestseller lists, have found inspiration in the sinister side of gardens. From the cozy to the hardboiled, the literary to the pulp, and the classic to the contemporary, Gardening Can Be Murder is the first book to explore the mystery genre’s many surprising horticultural connections. Meet plant-obsessed detectives and spooky groundskeeper suspects, witness toxic teas served in foul play, and tour the gardens—both real and imagined—that have been the settings for fiction’s ghastliest misdeeds. A New York Times bestselling author herself, McDowell also introduces us to some of today’s top writers who consider gardening integral to their craft, assuring that horticultural themes will remain a staple of the genre for countless twisting plots to come. “This book is dangerous. A veritable cornucopia of crime fiction and gardening lore, it faces the reader with multiple temptations—books to seek out, plants to obtain, garden tours to book.” —Vicki Lane, author of the Elizabeth Goodweather Appalachian Mysteries

This full-color guide from the experts at Burpee shows you how to plan, plant, and maintain a beautiful flower garden using an environmentally responsible, organic approach. It offers authoritative guidance on creating borders and beds, combining flower colors and shapes, selecting gardening tools, and much more, and features encyclopedic Plant Portraits section with profiles of more than 175 flowers—annuals, perennials, and bulbs.

Death and Garden Narratives in Literature, Art and Film: Song of Death in Paradise explores the combination of two motifs, death and gardens, to show how the two subjects are intertwined and used in various media and cultural contexts. Using cultural, literary, film, and art history theories, the contributors analyze various death and garden sceneries in literary works by Arthur Machen, Agatha Christie, J.K. Rowling, as well as in superhero comics, films, and cultural and art contexts such as Ian Hamilton Finley's “Little Sparta,” the poetic verses from the Karoo Desert National Botanical Garden in South Africa, and the Australian wilderness.