industrious wife would put in a patch of vegetables and flowers, but with the decline in the family fortune, the gardens were mostly left on their own.
By the time Eden arrived, the gardens were a shadow of what they once were. After Melissa was born and Eden found the original eighteenth-century plan, it was Mrs. Farrington who suggested that she restore the gardens. Eden was young and restless, and Melissa was a good baby, so Eden had put her unused brain to studying the principles behind eighteenth-century gardening. After she’d nearly memorized the contents of the three books Mrs. Farrington owned, the woman had called the owner of the little bookstore in Arundel and told her to order “whatever Williamsburg had.” When eleven brand-new books had arrived and Mrs. Farrington had told Eden they were a gift for her, Eden had sat down and cried—which had embarrassed Mrs. Farrington so much that she’d left the room.
The books had been the start of what became a passion with Eden. She read, sketched, ate, and drank eighteenth-century gardening until the day she and Melissa left Arundel.
Mrs. Farrington hired Toddy. He had worked for her family during the war when he was a boy, to help put the garden in, and when Eden saw him, ancient beyond belief, skin the color of a black walnut husk, she asked Mrs. Farrington if it had been the Civil War when he’d worked for them. But Toddy surprised her. He may have been old, but his brain was sharp, and he approved of what she was doing. Together, the two of them laid out the first of Josiah Alester Farrington’s gardens.
It was fifty feet square, divided into four quarters by wide brick sidewalks. In the center was a circle containing a tall carriage lamp surrounded by a barrel full of jasmine that ran up the lamppost. Rosemary was planted at the base of the barrel, with dianthus around the edges. The four quarters of the garden were encased internally by a low boxwood hedge and externally by a three-rail cedar fence. Eden well remembered how the garden had once looked, but now it was mostly empty. A few shrubs were beginning to sprout in the early spring air, but for the most part it was a huge expanse of mulch.
“It took me over a month to clean it up,” Brad said. “It had been allowed to grow into such a tangle that I had to chainsaw my way in.”
She looked at him sharply and found that she rather liked the idea of him with a chain saw and sweat dripping off his forehead. The image aroused feelings in her that she hadn’t felt in a long time.
Brad was watching her. “Fill it,” he said succinctly, and when she said nothing, he continued. “You asked what I’d do, and I’d fill this garden with tall plants in the center and work outward. For those two sunny squares, I’d put buddleia there in the middle to draw butterflies, then I’d flank it with caryopteris, sedum, monarda, and coreopsis.”
Eden’s smile grew broader as he spoke. She hadn’t heard those words in years, not since she’d gone to New York and lived amid concrete and steel. “You do like butterflies, don’t you? What about fennel?”
He smiled broader, and it was a smile shared by gardeners. “Ah, yes, the swallowtails. I can’t forget them. But we’d have to put the fennel in pots. Too invasive.”
“Or a bottomless pot buried deep.”
“Perfect. Now, that corner is under the pecan tree, so it’s fairly shady.”
“Astilbe and pulmonaria,” she said. “Not hostas, too big.”
“Exactly. Of course you could go wild with some native orchids.”
“Orchids,” Eden said, her breath drawn in. “But no monkshood. Grandchild coming.”
“Yes,” he said. “Nothing in the deadly nightshade family. Maybe my grandson could visit.”
“You have a grandchild too?”
“Oh, yes, my daughter Camden’s son. His name is—”
Eden put up her hand. “Let me guess. Granville Braddon Something.”
“Nope,” he said, smiling. “It’s Farrington Granville Robicheaux. Robicheaux being the name of the man my daughter married.”
“Farrington,” Eden said, smiling. “Only in Arundel could that be a child’s first name. I’m glad he was a boy.” She stopped teasing. “Mrs. Farrington would be pleased. Maybe her name can be kept alive after all.” They smiled at each other and she pointed to the fourth quarter. “Not that you know anything about gardening, but what would you put there? And I warn you that if you don’t like dicentra, it’s all over between us.”
“Bleeding heart,” Brad said. “My absolute favorite. Speaking of which, Friday is the annual Shrimp Festival. Would you go with me?”
“On a date?”
“Yes. I’ll pick you up in my ’57 Chevy, take you to the festival, then later we can go to the local make-out hill.” He wiggled his eyebrows at her.
“It sounds wonderful. I’ll be ready. If only I had a poodle skirt to wear.”
“I think poodle skirts were well before your time.”
“One can only dream.” Her head came up. “Where do you live?”
“Guess,” he said, then they both laughed. The Granville house, of course. It was a big old monster of a house on the corner of Granville and Prince streets. Built in the eighteenth century, it had once been a small, elegant house, but it had burned down in the 1850s. The Granville who owned the land at that time had bought the four lots surrounding him, torn down the houses, and built a huge Queen Anne–style Victorian, complete with porches and a gazebo. There was a wisteria vine on a pergola in the front that was said to be the oldest wisteria in the state. Oldest or not, the trunk was as big as a tree.
“I want a tour,” Eden said. “From basement to attic, I want to see every inch of that house.”
His eyes were twinkling as he lifted her hand and kissed it. “A woman who owns an eighteenth-century house would never settle for a Victorian, would she?”