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Gardening Can Be Murder

October 24, 2024

10:30–11:30 a.m. | Mertz Library

Book Talk with Marta McDowell

With their deadly plants, razor-sharp shears, shady corners, and ready-made burial sites, gardens make an ideal scene for a murder mystery. Flora and horticulture have had an outsize influence on the genre: motive, means, opportunity, victims, villains, and detectives.

Join writer, gardener, educator, and avid mystery reader Marta McDowell as she presents her latest publication, Gardening Can Be Murder. Together, you’ll explore the many ways in which writers—from Edgar Allan Poe and Wilkie Collins to Agatha Christie and some of today’s top crime fiction authors—have found inspiration in the sinister side of gardening.

a person with short gray hair wears an orange sweater in a garden with fall plants

About the Author

Marta McDowell teaches landscape design history and horticulture at NYBG and is a popular lecturer and writer. Her garden writing has appeared in popular publications such as Woman’s Day, Country Gardening, and The New York Times. Marta’s work typically follows the relationship between the pen and the trowel, that is, authors and their gardens. In addition to her latest publication,she has also published Unearthing The Secret Garden, Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life, The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder, New York Times-bestselling All the Presidents’ Gardens, and Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life, now in its ninth printing.

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