Book signing will begin at 6pm and the lecture will start at 7pm.

Free parking is reserved for attendees in the FinTech parking lot. See MAP HERE.  

With their deadly plants, razor-sharp shears, shady corners, and ready-made burial sites, gardens make an ideal scene for a murder mystery. Flora and horticulture have had an outsized influence on the genre: motive, means, opportunity, victims, villains, and detectives. Join Marta McDowell, a writer, gardener, and avid mystery reader, in exploring the many ways in which writers—from Edgar Allen Poe and Wilkie Collins to Agatha Christie and some of today’s top crime fiction authors—have found inspiration in the sinister side of gardening.

 Members: $15, Nonmembers: $20

Marta McDowell teaches landscape history and horticulture at the New York Botanical Garden and is a popular lecturer and writer.  Her latest book is Gardening Can Be Murder, about the horticultural connections to crime fiction. Timber Press also published Unearthing The Secret Garden, Emily Dickinson's Gardening Life, The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder, New York Times-bestselling All the Presidents' Gardens, and Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life, now in its ninth printing. She was the 2019 recipient of the Garden Club of America's Sarah Chapman Francis Medal for outstanding literary achievement.

Registration and prepayment required. To register and pay via credit card using our online form, click here. Please email botanicgardens@udel.edu with any questions and call 302-831-4188 if you would like to register by phone. For checks please send payment to: UDBG, 152 Townsend Hall, University of DE, Newark DE 19716.