Speaker: Marta McDowell lives, writes and gardens in Chatham, New Jersey. She shares her garden with her husband Kirke Bent and assorted wildlife. Her garden writing has appeared in popular publications such as Woman’s Day, Country Gardening, and The New York Times.  She is a regular contributor to the British journal Hortus.

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Marta's work typically follows the relationship between the pen and the trowel, that is authors and their gardens.  Her latest book, Gardening Can Be Murder explores the garden as the inspiration for writers of crime fiction. Timber Press also published Unearthing The Secret Garden, Emily Dickinson's Gardening Life, The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder, All the Presidents' Gardens--released in a revised edition in 2024--and Beatrix Potter's Gardening Life. All the Presidents' Gardens made The New York Times bestseller list and won an American Horticultural Society book award in 2017. Beatrix Potter's Gardening Life won the Gold Award from the Garden Writers Association and is now in its ninth printing.

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Topic: Gardening Can Be Murder How Poisonous Poppies, Sinister Shovels, and Grim Gardens Have Inspired Mystery Writers. 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.

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