“Shouldn’t a wetland at least look wet?” she objected.
“Depends on the season. I did a little extra sloping so she’d get to see some good puddles after a storm. Mrs. Ballantine
is still grateful to us for saving her grandchildren from this possible disaster she’d have never known to think of. Every
year she checks what to do for the tree so it’ll have an even longer and happier life.”
“The moral of the story being ‘Beware of the experts.’”
“Not at all,” Willem protested. “It’s ‘Experts know best, even when they find it politic to give you the wrong reason.’”
“They also guess best,” I added. “I’ve never been on a landscaping project where there weren’t surprises. There was the time
out at Hudson Heights I just couldn’t get this one section of path to level out right. I’d think I had it, but a day or two
later some of the paving slabs—we were using flagstone there—would buckle again. Thurman estimated minor rock instability,
fairly deep down. Didn’t make sense to me, that this could affect just the one small area, but he stayed late one night digging
it out, showed me a big pile of rocks the next morning. They must’ve been the culprits. We put fill in, packed it down, and
no more problem.”
“Thurman’s a damn good guesser, I’d say,” Mariah concurred. “He’s never been far off predicting the soil compositions around
this property. And then the way he located all three of those dumpsites, with only those crude maps to work from.”
Willem chuckled. “Thurman wasn’t guessing about that. He spent lord knows how many hours out there beforehand, when nobody
was around, taking probes. When he stood in front of that crowd and said, ‘I believe the outer perimeter of Site Three runs
pretty much along this line,’ he already knew exactly where it ran.”
I laughed, too. “I never realized Thurman had a touch of showbiz in him.”
“Clete injected it, for the occasion. He figured an impressive display of expertise might help the cause. Thurman mostly didn’t
want to look bad.”
“The old sneak!” Mariah exclaimed. “I’ll bet that’s what all those discreet little red flags were marking: areas where Thurman
knew there was no reason to dig. Several of us went out a couple of days after the great non-discovery parties and took soil
samples from around them. No wonder the results were so boring.”
“Now you know.”
“I should have suspected. Thurman always has to know the answer. This man sulks when he flubs a Trivial Pursuit question.”
“On the job he’s downright compulsive. When something’s off, it makes him crazy till he figures out why.” I smiled sweetly
at Willem. “He’s thrown even more fits than I have about those damn Cornell Pink azaleas you insisted on.”
“I really don’t see what you’ve got against that poor shrub. The ones in front of the Garden Center have been gorgeous for
years. Mariah’s got several beauties over by her east wall.”
“Both of those are sheltered sites, which the plateau at Hudson Heights certainly is not. Anyhow, you never know with them—you
can put a Cornell in an ideal site and it still craps out. Or it’ll just sit there and pout. Or god forbid you get a hard
frost when it’s about to bloom.”
“You worry too much. Didn’t you say the second planting on the plateau was taking?”
“Well, they’re doing better. I still think you should have gone with a more reliable species.”
“And I still think something special is always worth a little extra effort.”
“Particularly when you don’t personally have to make it.”
“Now, now, children—no fighting. Poor Thurman can’t be all that thrilled about having to deal with the vagaries of plant behavior
as well as Mother Nature’s underground booby traps.”
“I think he kind of likes the challenge. Naturally the first thing he suspects is the soil. Every time some plant wasn’t looking
healthy, there he’d be with his sampling kit. And he insisted on running his own tests—Cooperative Extension’s procedures
were too sloppy. I don’t know if having him on staff is cost-effective for Clete, but it sure has come in handy for us. Oops—for
you.”
“See how hard it’s going to be?” Abruptly serious, Willem set down his wineglass and waded over to drape an arm across my
back. “It truly was fun, Val, wasn’t it?”
“There’s not all that much we need to past-tense, you know. We’ll both still be around.”
“We’ll all three be around,” Mariah amended, nudging her way under his other arm.
T
uesday morning I picked Jake up a little after nine and we drove on south toward Platteville. In recent years a number of
people from New York City had bought places in that area and become semi-commuters, splitting their weeks between city and
country. Affluent careerists, they were used to making a mark on their environments, and with so much outdoor space at their
disposal, some turned to gardening. Accustomed to getting seriously into things they quickly absorbed great gobs of knowledge,
not necessarily in complete modules or sensible order, but they could talk a lot of garden and they had antennae out for what
was trendy.
This was working to Jake’s and my advantage because there is a lot of interest today in the so-called natural garden. Now
natural, as applied to garden design, is a little misleading—it doesn’t mean you have to make do with whatever Mother Nature
chose to give you. You can reshape the terrain pretty much as you wish as long as you understand the principle of gravity
as applied to soil movement and don’t expect water to flow uphill without help. It’s also useful to realize that in nature
straight lines and sharp angles are rare and bodies of water never come lined with patterned tiles or colored cement.
In terms of what is allowed to grow in your garden, it’s perfectly okay, and usually necessary, to help Mother Nature out
a little, to supplement with vegetation that very well might have thrived in your yard if its seeds had landed there. You
also don’t need to be stuck for life with everything that did find its own way on to your property. Your choice of plant materials
is, in fact, quite broad. Not as broad as Willem’s, to be sure—he works from the premise that anything Mother Nature might
go for if a genie popped out of a magic lamp and granted her three wishes is valid. There’s plenty of selection for me, though.
Not surprisingly, many of the plant materials that adapt best to the natural garden are those native to the area in which
you’re working. These are what Jake specializes in growing, not only the common plants of today but also a number of species
that used to be more prevalent but have fallen out of favor. In the Northeast these types of plants are usually not very showy
and tend to be slow-growing, making them unsuitable for use when you’re going for quick, strong statements. You won’t find
a lot of them on the Hudson Heights plateau. My own preference runs toward a high proportion of greenery to flowers and a
landscape with built-in, gradual development patterns, so I often incorporate them into my designs.
Jake has been in business nearly three decades, not fashionable for most of that time but a valued specialized source for
a number of New York–New England landscapers. Among the south-county commuter set, word started spreading year before last.
He grew exactly the sort of plants and shrubs they’d learned they should be putting into their gardens, but they didn’t always
understand how to incorporate them. They started asking Jake, who can reel off cultural requirements when he chooses but doesn’t
pretend to be a designer; he started passing their questions on to me. That was the background to last year’s commission,
a half-acre-plus garden on a woodsy slope. I designed, both of us planted, it came out well. On the strength of it we’d gotten
the commission for the garden we’d be installing in October, plus several other feelers. We were on our way to check out the
only project that had developed enough for realization in our time frame.
Glancing over at Jake, I wondered if the occasion warranted giving a bit more thought to our image. Tall, gaunt, and mostly
bald, Jake has strong blue eyes and a thin mouth that rarely smiles. It doesn’t form words all that much, either, though sometimes
they spew out in bundles. It’s unlikely there’ll be a question mark at the end. I have never seen him in a shirt that wasn’t
plaid or looked less than three hard years old. His pants are even more disreputable. That morning I was about as dressed
up as I get in my favorite long cotton print skirt and almost-matching top. Altogether, we did not look like people who knew
their way around even a small local business.
But hell, these people were already comfortable with Jake. They knew better than to patronize and weren’t about to be thrown
by him either. They must be used to temperament as a way of life and possibly his intensity of focus and unpredictable volatility
fit their profile for rustic treasure. If that last supposition was right, they ought to find the two of us in tandem really
special.
Unless, of course, they’d feel more comfortable having their gardens designed by somebody who hadn’t just found a coworker’s
corpse in her front yard. Normally I’m calm and confident on my way to make a presentation. They’re not going to throw me
anything I can’t deal with. That morning I was battling a case of nerves. I’d gotten back late from Mariah’s the night before
and was up and at the computer before five
A.M.
to fine-tune the pictures one more time.
Sam and Janet Cutler, financial planner and book editor, respectively, were popular members of the south county newcomers
contingent and had started to make their mark in local affairs; their names kept popping up in the paper for this or that
involvement. We’d gotten together with them in June so I could look around and take my pictures of the area we would concentrate
on. They’d been eager to get started, and not at all happy that we couldn’t schedule them until next spring. The best Jake
could give me was that they’d sounded “kind of interested” in the prospect of moving things up when he called to give them
the news that we were now available earlier.
In their living room I stumbled with my pitch, compulsively overexplaining things, and these heretofore effortless conversationalists
kept letting my unscheduled pauses hover too long. Jake stared at the floor a lot. Things picked up some when we moved outdoors.
Once they got the hang of correlating the pictures to the plan-view diagram, the Cutlers plunged in, pointing out what they
liked, making suggestions. They did want a garden; they did, I judged, want the one I was proposing.
It never got to feeling entirely right, but in terms of the design, at least, we were definitely on the same page. So when
they ran out of questions I didn’t see what else to do but go for a closing. “If you want a September planting,” I said briskly,
“we’ll have to move on this. We can have final concept sketches, specs and a ten percent plus/minus cost estimate for you
Thursday morning. There’d still be some flexibility later, but this would be the basic package.”
Back in June I believe I’d have heard a quick yes. What I heard this time, after overlong exchanged glances was Sam’s “It’s
a big commitment to make this fast. We did have a chance to check out your references over the summer. That’s quite a place
Mrs. Hansen’s got.”
“Isn’t it? Nothing like what you have in mind, of course. The Stanfords’ isn’t either—much too formal. Did you go see them
while you were in the area?”
“We drove by. It looked … very nice, for that type of garden.”
“I try to design what my clients want. On that list I gave you of gardens this area, the one closest to your sensibilities
should be the Bergmans’.”
“You’re absolutely right. Look, we’ve no doubt you do wonderful work. What we’re a little concerned about, at this point,
is your association with Etlingers’ Garden Center.”
I thought he should work harder for it. “In what way?”
After another set of pregnant glances Janet offered: “Some friends of ours—I don’t know if you know them, Ted and Terry Parish—hired
the Garden Center to install a rock garden. There was one hassle after another: things weren’t done on schedule, or according
to specs, the price kept going up—”
“I can’t comment specifically, not having been involved with that one. Their work at Hudson Heights has strained their resources
some. Basically, my relationship with the Garden Center was they assigned me clients to design gardens for and I took things
from there. If you ask around you’ll find my clients did not have those sorts of problems.”
Sam took up the charge. “Oh, I’m sure. I suppose what we’re a little uneasy about is this sudden split and—”
“The murder.”
“Right. I didn’t quite understand how the timing factor worked, but the sheriff has stated you’re not a suspect.”
Which is why you’re even letting me stand here, I thought. “No, I’m not. In a way I was damn lucky—most nights at that time
there wouldn’t have been anybody who could vouch for my whereabouts. As you can imagine, it’s all been very upsetting.”
“Of course,” Janet said. “It doesn’t sound like they’re anywhere close to finding out who did it.”
“I can’t tell you much there. The whole thing’s caused a lot of tension around the Garden Center, that’s for sure. It certainly
didn’t help that the murdered man and I got along so poorly at work.”
Jake, who’d been slouching against a fencepost, came abruptly to life. “Hell, folks, it’s pretty obvious someone set Val up
for this murder. She hasn’t said a word to me about it, but knowing some of the Garden Center personnel I figure they’ve been
giving her a hard time, to the point where she’d just as soon not hang around there anymore. Now I, for one, assume our sheriff
recognizes a solid alibi when he hears one. Not that I’ve bothered to ask what it is. No way in the world Val would waste
a perfectly good Dickerson pruner like that.”
These being his first words on the subject in my hearing, I managed a muffled “Thanks, I guess,” before I burst out laughing.
As, after a refreshingly brief eye check, did the Cutlers. When things quieted down they gave us a go-ahead.