Mulch ado about nothing

looking downright mournfully at a plum tree that had been torturously trained to complete perfection. Miss Winstead was examining an enormous Bressingham Blue hosta with leaves that overlapped like a drawing of the ideal hosta. Her thin arms were crossed as if she were in some sort of pain. Arnold Waring was bending over to read a tag in an area where the plant was gone. Apparently executed and removed because it hadn’t lived up to Jones’s standard. “It was a peony,“ Arnie said to no one in particular.
    “Probably one of those big gorgeous ones that flop around no matter what you try to do,“ Shelley replied.
    Even Dr. Eastman, whose own garden was rigidly controlled to some extent, looked alarmed and disappointed.
    Only Charles Jones was smiling. “Aren’t they lovely?“ he said to Stefan Eckert of a stand of hollyhocks in a vibrant red. Eckert merely nodded and moved on to the next little prison cell of flowers. A large yellow rosebush was held in place by a green metal cage and had given up fighting its confinement.
    “I can’t stand this,“ Jane said, heading back to the house to escape.
    “We must find a way to thank the poor man for showing it to us,“ Shelley said, holding out an arm to steady Jane as she lurched along.
    “I guess we must. He obviously loves what he’s done,“ Jane said with sorrow. “Isn’t that unbelievable?”

Seventeen

    Jane was so depressed by Charles Jones’s garden that all she wanted to do was go home and eat a whole lot of fudge and try to take a very long nap. She begged Shelley to run away with her, but Shelley said, “You’d be sorry if you missed Miss Winstead’s garden.“
    “You mean she’d make sure I was sorry?”
    Shelley laughed. “No, although she might. She and Charles both admitted that their gardens couldn’t be more different. “ She kept her voice low as Miss Winstead was standing only a few feet away and urging everyone along next door.
    Jane struggled a bit going up the sidewalk to Miss Winstead’s home. There was quite a rise to the south. Instead of going around the house, they were invited to come through the front. Her house wasn’t exactly what Jane had expected of the tough librarian. It was feminine but strong. Floral wallpaper, but in bold colors. A lot of good furniture, two small leather sofas, a modernistic dining room table and chairs with bargello needlepoint seats in mauve and federal blue. A pair of chairs that looked as if they might have been Frank Lloyd Wright or a good imitation. There were a lot of pictures on the walls, some very old-fashioned with classical themes, a few more modern ones that were Picasso-ish. A mix that, surprisingly, worked perfectly together.
    Passing through a huge kitchen that was equipped for a chef, they entered the backyard.
    And Jane, who was still recovering from such a large, professional kitchen, gasped.
    It was a quintessential English cottage garden. There were lots of old brick paths with lush moss, stone terraces, well-clipped hedges. There was very little lawn, but a vast profusion of flowers. Tall, perfect cream hollyhocks formed a backup to a riot of bachelor buttons in a mix of colors that in turn were framed in front by a delicious group of huge chartreuse hostas, which were kept from overrunning the slate path by a formal box hedge, no more than six inches high and perfectly clipped.
    No area was quite on a level with any other area. The yard sloped down to the right, and was terraced expertly with fieldstone in one spot, with a waterfall of lobelia in front of a stand of coral gladiolas and maiden grass. Another terrace was of dark granite blocks with pink verbena cascading over the front, and behind it a hedge of wild white roses climbing rough wood trellises that looked as if they had to be at least a hundred years old.
    “You’re surprised?“ Miss Winstead asked. “Surprised? Stunned to the core,“ Jane said. “This could be in Kent, England, instead of Chicago.“
    “There are secret gardens,“ Miss Winstead said smugly. “See if you can find them.”
    Jane nearly forgot about her foot. There were paths leading through these gardens to “rooms“ not seen from the house. She laboriously worked at climbing some shallow stone steps to the hollyhock garden, which led unexpectedly into a formal sitting area with a verdigris table and four chairs underneath a loggia covered with wisteria with a trunk the size of a large man’s thigh.
    Almost invisible behind