The Garden Plot

by Marty Wingate

  Primrose House

  Bells Yew Green

  Royal Tunbridge Wells

  East Sussex TN3 9BJ

  20 October

  72 Grovehill Square

  Chelsea

  London SW3

  Dear Pru,

  We thoroughly enjoyed meeting you Thursday last week! Your enthusiasm for and knowledge of English gardening far surpasses anyone else we have met, and it’s with a great deal of pleasure that we offer you the post of head gardener at Primrose House.

  Please, please phone us the moment you receive this letter (0871 951 9177), as we are eager to discuss details—including accommodations. (Don’t worry, we feel sure that the cottage conversion will be finished quite soon!) We hope you can assume your post as head gardener just as soon as possible, so that you can begin rebuilding what we know will be a lovely and historic landscape.

  Our very best,

  Davina and Bryan (Templeton)

  To Leighton

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to Mary for suggesting the Potting Shed books and for the great support of my writing group: Kara Pomeroy, Louise Creighton, Deb Slivinsky, and Joan Shott. Dear friend and editor Mary-Kate Mackey, with her keen understanding of character and plot, greatly improved that first meager draft.

  Thanks to the folks at Random House and Alibi for this opportunity, editor Kate Miciak for first spotting The Garden Plot, and editor Dana Edwin Isaacson, whose enthusiasm and guidance are beyond worth. Production editor Kelly Chian’s and copy editor Madeline Hopkins’ sharp eyes kept me from slip-ups. My first agent, the late Kit Ward, started me on this journey, and now Colleen Mohyde has graciously carried on—many thanks.

  Thanks to those from the University of Washington who provided facts that I mixed with fiction: Dr. Alain Gowing and Joshua Hartman, who translated Hadrian’s letter from English into the Latin of Hadrian’s time.

  Read more about Roman Britain in Roman England by John Burke (W.W. Norton & Company, 1984) and Ancient Roman Gardens by Linda Farrar (Stroud-Sutton, 1998).

  Vindolanda, the British Museum, and the Museum of London tell the story of the wooden tablets found in the 1970s and of Hadrian.

  Thanks to family, friends, and colleagues for their unfailing support.

  About the Author

  Marty Wingate writes about gardens and travel and, for the first time, has combined those two loves with her love of mysteries in The Garden Plot, the first book in the Potting Shed mysteries. Marty’s how-to garden information is available in books, online, and on the radio. She lives in Seattle with her husband, who shares her love of travel and is always ready for on-the-ground research into pubs and English beer. The next Potting Shed mystery is The Red Book of Primrose House. Learn more about her at martywingate.com.

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