Planting bodies, digging up corpses, and sowing the seeds of death.

ıy Brooke Happinstall

The Dirt Divas

Planting bodies, digging Gardeners are great readers and I love to spend time with my nursery patrons chatting about our favorite mystery writers.

I’m particularly fond of gardening mysteries, but finding them on the bookstore shelves is like hunting down exotic species of plants in China. So I was thrilled when Alaska’s own chapter of Sisters in Crime hosted “Bouchercon 2007: The World Mystery Convention” last month in Anchorage. It was time to jump-start my reading season by rubbing shoulders with some of my favorite mystery writers.

I might even find a few new gardening mysteries along the way.

Alas, gardening, as well as humor, in mysteries is not on the A-list of editors and publishers. Mention the word “humor” and they wilt like petunias after the first frost.

Gardeners can be a peculiar lot with plenty of extreme personality quirks that could inspire characters both creepy and honorable. We’re always snooping in each others’ gardens; hunting for new plants, passing on seeds and plenty of gossip about, well, I’d better not give away too much about our little organization.

Actually, there are lots of bodies planted in my garden beds. All wonderful family friends whose wagging tails and purring tones are sorely missed.

Since there were no gardening mysteries to be found, I decided to ask our Alaska writers if they did any gardening when not tied to a chair hammering out their next novel.

I stumbled upon Alaska’s newly minted Artist of the Year, Dana Stabenow, in a tête-à-tête with award-winning Sitka writer John Staley, author of “The Woman Who Married a Bear,” who was mumbling something about a particular variety of hawthorn tree he wanted to try.

I told you mystery people are gardeners. Well, almost.

I whipped out a business card and told him to drop me a line and I’d get him in touch with Dirt Diva Sally, who’d be the one person in the state likely to be able to solve his dilemma. I’ll have to try that again sometime to see if I can reproduce that deer-in-the-headlights look. I really have to learn not to be so impulsive, but gardeners are like that — we’re nosy and helpful to a fault.

Dana Stabenow, whose hard work helped produce a great Bouchercon 2007 on the heels of publishing her latest thriller, “Blindfold Game,” can be excused from any gardening chores until she gets her next thriller, “Prepared for Rage,” on the market.

Hiring a landscaper is Stabenow’s brilliant move to keep true to the ethic that real Alaskans garden.

“I might get to garden next year,” she said.

I give her deer-in-the-headlights look a nine out of 10.

Sue Henry, of the Jessie Arnold mysteries fame, keeps gardening between bouts of writing. To make her gardening easier, she likes lots of perennials and the more exuberant, the better. Hmm. I might have to ferret out her garden address and sneak my exuberant plant overload onto her doorstep.

A true zone-three gardener, Henry is using cast iron rhubarb to fill in a corner of her garden. If you toss enough manure on them they’ll grow big enough to hide a body under the leaves. Fancy finding that after the first frost when the leaves die down.

Perhaps Henry would consider a gardener as her next killer.

Homer news reporter and novelist Michael Armstrong, whose first book “After the Zap,” a science fiction novel about Alaska that has nothing to do with the blast of frost hitting our gardens, lets his garden run wild. Armstrong likes to wander down a path lined with raspberries to the dog run to see his Irish wolfhound mix, Frasier. Frasier is an alias. Dig deep enough and this dog’s real identity is Friseur, French for strawberry.

Armstrong and his wife, Jenny Stroyeck, prefer to let their five acres stay as natural as possible with little formal gardening. But yellow raspberries are his favorites and while they came in late, they really took off this year.

Well, I guess that leaves me to pick up the slack in gardening mysteries. I’ve got the first dozen chapters written. Now I just have to finish putting the nursery to bed, store the pots, empty the hoses, clean out the greenhouse and bury a few bodies in my laptop.

Brooke Heppinstall, artist and gardener, is owner of Wool Wood Studio & Gardens, an art studio and nursery specializing in Alaska-grown perennials and shrubs. Visit online at Woolwood.blogspot.com.