Horticulture & Homicide

If you enjoy watching murder mysteries and are a gardening enthusiast, then Rosemary and Thyme is definitely your cup of tea. Garden restoration coupled with sleuthing makes for a delightful whodunit series that is great fun to watch. And, of course, you can find the DVDs for all three seasons of this show at the Mercer County Library.

After eighteen years as a professor of horticulture, Rosemary Boxer is unceremoniously fired from her job. Laura Thyme, a former police officer, is abandoned by her husband for a younger woman. Encountering each other during this distressing period in their lives, the two women are drawn together by their mutual love of gardening. They form a garden restoration partnership and go wherever there is a garden in need of their care and expertise. But, whether it is to cure disease-ridden lawns, or design memorial gardens, somehow, the two gardeners always encounter murder and mayhem. No matter the location of their assignment, dead bodies appear at random. Of course, the gardeners’ natural curiosity turns them into amateur sleuths and, even while in the midst of tackling various horticultural problems, they end up solving murders that have the local police force baffled.

Not adapted from a book but written for television, there are twenty-two episodes in this series, which combines gorgeous garden tours with cozy mysteries. As the friendship between the two women blossoms (pun intended), we see a little bit of Lucy and Ethel zaniness (reminiscent of the I Love Lucy shows) as the pair of gardeners caper around the countryside - in Rosemary’s battered 1980’s Land Rover- creating beautiful gardens and solving murders. Of course, the locale of the show is not always the English countryside. We also get to see stunning estate gardens in France, Spain and Italy as the gardening sleuths are summoned by old friends andor acquaintances whose gardens have fallen into disrepair.

Cozy mystery buffs will enjoy this series which contain very little gore, or any actual fear-factor, and gardening aficionados will enjoy the backdrop of spectacular gardens and obscure horticultural facts.

- Rina B.