May in the spring-green Greenhouse
Killer aphids, Edinburgh author event, and poison gardens, oh my!
In this issue…
What’s growing this month: a lesson in the lupins?
From the garden office: my first in-person author event since… a long time ago!
Greenhouse guest: What do they plant at FBI Headquarters? New York Times bestselling crime author Ellie Marney takes us behind the scenes…
A lesson in the lupins
Ah, May in Scotland. Lengthening days. That unmistakable new-foliage green. While spring may have sprung in other places, here it is a tentative unfurling. The last of the tulips have faded. The summer blooms, especially from the herbaceous plants (those that die down each winter to sprout anew when the light and warmth return) are weeks away.
Except my beloved lupins. These were one of the first things I planted in my garden, as they remind me of a dear friend.
Alas, with the first lupin leaves, an unwelcome guest emerged.
Aphids. Not the UK’s native species, happily kept in check by hungry ladybird larvae. No, my poor lupins have been beset by Macrosiphum albifrons - lupin aphids. Larger than their British counterparts, these swashbuckling connoisseurs arrived from North America as late as the 1980s.
The ecosystem in my garden (and generally across these islands) doesn’t know how to deal with them. Even if the ladybirds wanted to try an American snack, they’d probably end up feeling poorly - the lupin aphid ingests chemical compounds from the plant, making themselves unpalatable at best, toxic at worst. This means large populations swiftly develop, sucking the life out of the plant until, if left unchecked, it collapses. Completely. The end. Goodnight.
Put bluntly: I has a sad.
The old man down the street marches toward his lupins brandishing a pesticide spray gun. I’d almost envy the simplicity of his approach, but I’m trying to restore balance in this little garden. Research reveals I’m left with few options. I’ve resorted to picking the voracious little creatures off by hand (ngl, they make a satisfying squish between thumb and forefinger). I’m struggling to keep up, and I’ve already lost a couple of plants. Next year, I might admit defeat and uproot them. After all, the lupins themselves don’t hail from here either (I nip off their spent flowers as they fade to ensure the seeds don’t spread). And, le sigh, at least their nitrogen-fixing root nodules will do some good on the compost heap.
As I often do in the garden, I reflect on the connections with writing. Growing words is as often as not about showing up, doing the thing (at times as unglamourous as picking off aphids) and then showing up and doing the thing the next day. And the next. Squish, squish.
You keep going, willing the story not to wilt and collapse. Facing the page again and again as you nurture an idea, protecting it from a potentially life-sapping inner critic.
So, if you’re currently tending to a story as lovingly as I’m tending to my lupins, my thoughts are with you. I hope you find your future full of stunning blooms.
And if you’ve decided (or are about to) that the natural course of things is to let a plant or an idea go, I hope you remember there are many other seeds you can yet grow…
Author event: in conversation with Maggie Stiefvater and Anna Bright
On July 9th, you can catch me in Edinburgh, chatting with two amazing YA fantasy authors at Waterstones West End - Maggie Stiefvater (#1 NYT Bestseller of The Raven Boys, The Scorpio Races and more) and Anna Bright (The Beholder, The Boundless, and The Song That Moves the Sun). Tickets are going fast, I’m told, so if it sounds like your jam, best reserve your place early.
Shadowscent fans - I’ll be bringing along a limited number of vials of The Darkest Bloom perfume. If you want to know what me and artisan perfumer Sarah McCartney think the magical dahkai flower smells like, I’ll happily be signing books and giving these limited edition vials away on the day.
Greenhouse guest: Ellie Marney
I’m super excited about today’s interview! Last month, I promised poison gardens and the tropics. Now I get to welcome to The Greenhouse bestselling author Ellie Marney, who I’m sure will not leave us hanging… except maybe she will, given the genres she writes… we’ll see!
Hi Ellie, it’s a bit chilly today, won’t you step inside and tell us a bit about yourself?
Hi, Pete 😊 Okay, well – I’m Ellie Marney, and I’m a New York Times bestselling author of crime fiction. I write mysteries and thrillers for teenagers, and some of my recent books include The Killing Code and None Shall Sleep. I do a load of research for all my books, mainly in the area of forensics and law enforcement and homicide investigation – I’ve toured the Westminster Mortuary in London, and interviewed forensic pathologists about autopsy, and talked to former spies about how to make explosives from home supplies…basically I try to go the extra mile for research.
I’ve lived in Indonesia and India and Singapore, but right now I’m settled with my family in south-eastern Australia. If people want to look me up, they can find me at my website, and also on Twitter and Instagram or on TikTok.
You are the coolest. Seriously. With all that travel, you must have seen so many different ecosystems. But if you had to choose just one, what would be your favourite plant?
Honestly, I’m not that cool! But I have seen a lot of ecosystems, so this is quite a tricky question. I could go broad, and say I love any kind of medicinal or edible herb, as well as succulents and roses. But if I had to narrow it down – ‘what plant would you take to a desert island’ or similar – then I suppose I’d take rosemary, Salvia rosmarinus. It’s a plain plant in many ways, but it’s staunch. It’s useful both medicinally and in cooking, and it has a lovely strong scent, with a touch of bitterness that I like. Years ago, I read an herbal that said rosemary is a plant that ‘grows well when a woman is strong in her own house’ and I’ve always liked that.
I’ll admit I’m a sparing user of rosemary in food—it’s so potent! But it has an important place in my garden, as it’s deer proof where I live (too stinky for them!), bees love its flowers, and the prostrate (creeping) kind is excellent evergreen groundcover. Every morning when I head out to my garden office, I pop some rosemary and peppermint oil in a diffuser. That combination says to my brain: clarity, calm, concentration. I think the association between the scent and the ‘focus zone’ is in-built now.
What about you? Can you tell us about any favourite associations or memories that feature plants?
My first memory of plants and danger was when I was a kid, collecting flowers for my mum in the garden – I was straddling some of the plants when a large snake slithered right underneath me, between my feet. I grew up in Queensland, Australia, so large snakes were quite common, but I do remember staying very still when that happened…
I also spent time in forested areas of Indonesia, and I have a strong memory of walking up to a friend’s ‘kebun’ area (like a forest land plot) to harvest cinnamon and nutmeg. The smell of fresh cinnamon is amazing – it’s the bark of the tree that is harvested, and the plants are tended carefully, as cinnamon is a long-term investment. The smells and sounds of the jungle in West Sumatra are quite incredible: very lush and loamy, with a ripe scent of rotting leaves, all wafting up as the tropical heat warms the soil. It’s beautiful.
A lot of my plant memories are from overseas countries, but of course there’s the distinctive smell of the Australian bush – the scent of eucalyptus and ti-tree, and the acrid smell of ants and leaf litter… That’s the smell that surrounds me every day when I leave my house, as I live in a country area.
Oh, that Aussie bush aroma. That’s what takes me back to my childhood. Especially after a summer storm when there’s petrichor in the air, too.
So, given your background, it seems like plants may have played lots of different roles in your life?
Well, I love to garden. Writing is a very mental discipline, very much a ‘worlds in your head’ experience – but it’s important to switch off your brain sometimes and get your hands dirty, and remind yourself that the real world exists. Gardening is very grounding (which is a bit pun-nish, I know! Sorry!) and it’s methodical, almost meditative. I find plant tending a great antidote to the tendency to just live in my head all the time.
I’ve spent some time looking into medicinal herbs, and know some of the basics – so I drink tea with fresh ginger for nausea and a head cold, or chamomile for anxiety and sleeplessness, and mint for digestion. I drink chai every day, and the process of brewing the tea with the fresh spices – ginger, cinnamon stick, cardamom pods, cloves – is something that instantly relaxes me. I’m one of those people who will open different herb and spice jars while I’m cooking, to find the right blend with the culinary smells.
But being in the garden, weeding around the lavender and the asparagus and so on, is also great for dreaming up stories. In the country, the garden is right outside my door. The smells and textures are lovely, and it’s easy to just weed or dig away, and let your mind wander – that experience of doing a task that’s instinctive and repetitive and enjoyable is great for daydreaming, which is when a lot of my writing occurs.
I’m so glad you mentioned the connection between gardening and writing! I too am a ‘plotter when working the plot’ (hey, you started with the puns!). Have plants ever ended up featuring in your creative work?
Yes! I once wrote a novella (unpublished) that required a lot of research into the medicinal and spiritual uses of herbs, which was wonderful and right up my alley! So now I can tell you that you should put lilac under your pillow to see ghosts, and that chamomile can remove hexes and curses when sprinkled in the house… But even when the focus of a story isn’t entirely on the plants, in most of my books I find it really important to know about the flora of the locations where the story is set. Wherever my stories find themselves – in Australia, the United States, England, or anywhere – I think it’s crucial, on a subconscious level, that readers recognize plants that are local to them, to give a sense of place and the seasons.
Oooh, can you give us any examples? Spoiler-free of course!
I’ve spent hours researching the vegetation in mountain areas, or the plants that are farmed in a rural part of the country, or even the trees and shrubs that are typically used by town councils as roadside plantings. I did a lot of that research for None Shall Sleep, for instance, to track the roadside trees in certain neighbourhoods in Washington DC. Most recently, I researched the kinds of trees, like loblolly pines, that would be likely to grow on the grounds of Arlington Hall in The Killing Code – not a detail I could just check photos to find out, as that entire property is now owned and guarded by the US Army and the NSA.
I can also give you a full list of the vegetation and trees that are growing in and around the FBI training facility at Quantico in Virginia. I did all that research for None Shall Sleep. Quantico is actually a United States Marines base, and it’s a really extensive property – there’s a whole department dedicated to maintaining and caring for the forested parts of the land there. They have publications (which I had to track down) listing the vegetation and fauna, and discussing land management practises – they take it very seriously.
It’s funny, because that facility is typically not open to the general public, so unless some of my readers are US Marines (I mean, they could be?) or FBI personnel, nobody will be able to confirm that I got the flora descriptions right! But I wanted to get it right anyway.
I’ve also done some extensive research on poison gardens – that’s what you get for being a crime writer – and I can tell you a lot about Digitalis (foxglove) and wolfsbane (Aconitum napellus – also known as monkshood) and all the ways you can kill someone with plants…I’m hoping I get to use that knowledge for a story someday…
Remind me never to get on your bad side! 😅 Seriously though, I’m in complete agreement. Whether it’s the scents from plants you talked about earlier, or the sight and sounds (rustle of reeds; crunch of maple leaves in autumn), plants are crucial to that sense of verisimilitude that allows a reader to be transported. I’m actually doing some plant research myself for that very reason on a Secret Project™. Speaking of which… what are you working on next?
My next story is set in rural Arkansas, in the Ozarks, so I’ve been researching the local flora and vegetation there – and soon I’ll get to see it in person, when I visit the US. The character in that story is very into hunting and living off the land, so they have a good practical knowledge of things like using comfrey for stings, or which types of moss work best for poulticing wounds, and which types of trees have the best branches for climbing or making a shelter.
I’m really looking forward to diving further into the research for that one! I’d love to do a workshop on foraging and hunting…that might be something I could try, to get some idea of how the character’s mind works.
Ok, now I’m never getting on your bad side *and* I’m running to your place in the next global crisis. Presuming we’ve still got time for reading, do you have any favourite stories featuring plants?
One of my favourite books is a Women’s Press SF novel called The Wanderground by Sally M Gearhart – that book is set in a dystopian future in which women have separated from male society and live in the woods, absolutely tuned in to nature and flora and fauna… There are many descriptions of how women work with plants in that book, which I adore.
And then there are stories like Outlander, or The Clan of the Cave Bear – does anyone remember that book?
…I remember my dad awkwardly taking it off me when he realised I’d been reading Jean M Auel at age 11, ahem (for those who don’t know, you won’t find it in the kids or YA section of the bookstore!)…
Ha! I mention it because the main female character is an herbalist. I love any stories that show women mastering herbs for medicine or for spiritual uses so that they can help their family or community, especially in a way that allows women to take control of their own medical care or reproductive health, or to benefit their own spiritual practise. Women have a history of falling back on the old ways, the natural remedies, when modern medical care is denied to them or when they’re denied agency in reproductive health, and I think it’s really important that those skills aren’t devalued or neglected.
I think TV shows like Alone have demonstrated that having that knowledge – of medical herbs and nutritional forage and bush tucker – are still really important in daily life, especially in tumultuous times, or periods of hardship.
And of course, there are many options for herbal poison – Agatha Christie simply loved poisons from plants like belladonna (deadly nightshade) and hemlock and ricin (from the beans of the castor oil plant) and even aspirin (from willow). There are so many ideas in the garden for a crime writer!
Indeed! Thank you so much for chatting to me today, Ellie. I think we’re in agreement that the garden can be inspiration for any writer, no matter the genre. For the writers reading this (and for the readers!) I hope you’re able to spend time working with greenery—whether it’s a houseplant or an entire hectare. I know it makes so much of a difference in my life.
Until next month, dear readers!