'Gardening Is Murder' Comes to Saugus... and YouTube

Fourteen years ago, my first mystery (Murder Imperfect) was published and I had a plan for publicizing it. A library’s meeting room was booked, press releases went out, refreshments were purchased. The appointed day came.

The attendance: me, my wife, and an assistant librarian.

I have spoken to audiences in highly unusual
settings. One garden club met in a party room.

Undeterred, I refined my press materials and changed the timing and location… all to no avail. My conclusion: no one wanted to come hear an unknown author. Maybe, I thought, they might want to read a blog. I had already started one called ‘The Principal Undergardener’, in which I crafted taut, 900-word essays intended as a writer’s equivalent of a musician’s etudes and an athlete’s stretching: warm-ups and limbering exercises. Readership, though, was sparse.

Then, two years later, I received an invitation from a suburban Boston garden club. The club had chosen my third book (The Garden Club Gang) as their summer read, and now they wanted me to speak about it and answer questions at their September pot-luck dinner-with-spouses meeting. But, two weeks before the meeting, the club president called. “We’re a garden club,” she said, “not just a social group. You’re welcome to talk about the book, but could you also include some gardening information?”

Betty already had a reputation as a superb horticultural speaker. I asked if I could ‘borrow’ one of her programs. I was met with an icy stare.

Those essays might be useful...

So, I began re-reading my Principal Undergardener essays. Their problem, I immediately saw, was that they were horticultural only in the most tangential sense. What I was writing were observations on gardening; I had no original advice to offer. But, maybe I could cobble together a few of those essays…

On the appointed evening, I gave the primordial version of the program that would become ‘Gardening Is Murder’.  When it was over, the club president offered her concise appraisal and criticism: “We couldn’t hear you because we were laughing so hard.” 

In the intervening years, more than 600 groups ranging from small clubs to state and regional meetings with hundreds of attendees have had pretty much the same reaction. Gardening and humor can go together quite well.

Signing books, with Betty

On May 22, I presented ‘Gardening Is Murder’ for the Saugus (MA) Garden Club’s annual fund raiser. They had booked the auditorium at Town Hall with a plan to use me to lure in a crowd beyond the club’s membership. Following my talk, they would raffle and auction off floral designs and other horticulture.

While I was not aware of it, my talk also was videoed by the town’s cable system. Last week, it went up on YouTube. The production values are quite good.

If you’ve never seen ‘Gardening Is Murder’, please take a look at the video, which can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1a7YDxugoo4. I begin speaking just before the two-minute mark.