There’s no better introduction to the “Gardens of Three Pines” than Miss Jane Neal’s. Jane, a retired schoolteacher, is famously the first murder victim in Louise’s beloved and bestselling series. Her garden provides a window into the type of person she was – and the community of Three Pines where she lived.
“‘One more question,’ said Gamache at the door, the bag of muffins in one hand and the door handle in the other. ‘You mentioned the Charles de Mills rose.’
‘Jane’s favorite. He’s not just any rose, Chief Inspector. He’s considered by rosarians to be one of the finest in the world. An old garden rose. Only blooms once a season but with a show that’s spectacular. And then it’s gone.’” – Still Life
Jane was known for her particular fondness for “old garden roses,” which she tended with expert care, and her favorite, the Charles de Mills rose. Beyond the roses, her garden was a riot of color and variety, featuring:
- Hollyhocks: Of the Alcea genus, hollyhock is generally found in Asia and Europe. The Streambank Wild Hollyhock is native to North America.
- Sweet Bergamot (Monarda): A mint that is indigenous to North America. The Native Americans used its medicinal qualities to cure stomach ailments, among other ailments.
- Charles de Mills Rose: An Old Garden Rose, first introduced in 1786, the Charles de Mills rose is known for its vibrant purple and crimson hues. The Charles de Mills was inducted into the Old Rose Hall of Fame in 2015.
Tell us about your garden?
65 replies on “The Gardens of Three Pines: Miss Jane Neal’s Garden”
All the years living in Pennsylvania, Ohio, California and Nevada I had my hybrid roses and rose trees. I now live in HOT Arizona and I’m having trouble keeping my Jasmine alive in the triple digit weather. I do have an incredible bush bougainvillea that is very healthy but, since I’m not in cactus or succulents my choices are limited. Even my Lavender isn’t a happy camper and that is usually a staple. I’m in envy of those with those beautiful gardens, I miss them……
Now that I’m not pregnant or nursing a baby (we have three children under six years old), I’ve been able to give energy to cultivating a small garden behind our house. We live on a mountain in Arkansas, and we have fenced off our yard from deer. I love to see the tomatoes, sunflowers, zinnias, beans, and butternut squash flourishing.
I hope you’re not having to deal with those horrible groundhogs which curse us and our garden here in the middle of a New England town. I think they are of the devil.
My friend Karin’s magic recipe, which works against deer, rodents, you name it!
9 eggs
1 Tbsp. hot chili sauce (e.g., Tabasco)
1 gallon water
Whirl the eggs & hot sauce in a blender
Mix with water in a sprayer.
Spray plants every inch of growth.
This is not meant for edibles.
Hi all. I garden in the Boston area of Massachusetts. My garden plot is at our local community garden( which I am so tempted to start calling my allottment). After a couple of years of bad knees, now replaced and family issues the garden is in bad shape. I am reclaiming it slowly a little at a time. This year I have added new native perrrenials and also squash, tomatoes and will be planting beans and kohlrabi tomorrow. I like my garden to be a mixture of native plants, favorite non-native perrenials and vegetables. I also have some raspberry bushes. Nothing like taking a break from the work and scarfing down some fresh berries.
Just a note to say that the streambank wild hollyhock is in the genus Iliamna rather than Alcea.
So sad I can’t paste a photo of the centrepiece of my garden. It is a container with a Campfire Rose, surrounded by white pansies and Creeping Jenny spill. I named it the Dixie Mae rose after my mom (a wonderful name my grandmother chose even though she lived her whole life in Calgary😂), because the large container has a small amount of her ashes in it which feed the rose and encourage its beauty. The buds start out orange, open yellow, then as the blooms age the petals become pink on the edges and finally the whole mature bloom becomes pink. It is astounding. I’ve included a commercial description of the rose as well.
The Campfire rose is a highly popular, cold-hardy shrub rose developed in Morden, Manitoba, by Agriculture Canada. Named after the iconic 1916 painting by Canadian artist Tom Thomson, it features vibrant tri-coloured blooms of yellow, pink, and ruby-red that shift as they age.
Lovely. Wish I could see it!
An original, an old classic. Being of the older generation, (70) I think this is why I adore history and holding on to traditions. Before the abundance of choice, what bloomed in our lives, left a lasting imprint. We were struck by their unique qualities and fearless innocence. The Charles de Mille Rose had no idea of its early demise, only knowing deep inside, it had to bloom bright and make a lasting impression. Its impact left a permanent imprint, on all the hearts whose breath it took away. If people only knew this important lesson. Go all in and shine brightly. Not knowing how long you will be able to shine for, but knowing you will leave a lasting impact. Over the last 70 years, I find my vision at times has felt smothered, with so many choices, mixtures, inbreeding and photoshopping of creations. We can easily get lost in the simplicity of what is true, honest and genuine. I am grateful for my age, which provides me with the memories of those old traditions, those old classics and to honour their memory. I love how gardens have a memory! They insist on coming back, growing in any direction they have space to stretch their stems and blossoms. They require only the basics of sunlight and water to grow. Through the smallest of cracks, even in a rock, somehow what is determined to grow, will find its way to shine. No different than with people. Live, always leaving a lasting imprint. I came upon a song verse written by Emory Hall which is called Come Sit By My Garden. I think it sums up a garden perfectly. It touches my heart deeply, as I lost my 30 year old daughter Danielle, 14years ago to cancer. I have included it here below. I hope you enjoy it.
Come sit by my garden. Let my gardens speak for me when I’m gone. Let them speak in coloured whispers of all the beauty I have seen and felt and lived. Let them speak of how much death has defined me. How many hard seasons it took to make me a living breathing thing. Let them speak of my seasons of growth and abundance. But let them also tell of my seasons of loss and decay. Let the soft wet earth be a reminder of the hardness that didn’t win, of sadness that didn’t calcify, the surrender that triumphed over resistance. and let the glorious fragrant blooms speak of my life and its greatest lesson, that the beauty we make never dies. Come sit by my garden. (Emory Hall)
That’s a lovely verse. Condolences on the loss of your daughter. Our family has also been touched by cancer.
Gardening is a joy and the chance to reset. I am forever dividing plantings and harvesting seeds to share (and expand the existing garden!). Love your books. Have read every one of them.
I started gardening as a young child…and sold hollyhock seeds around the neighborhood. Now I live in temperate Northern CA on a large parcel, so grow lots of things. My front garden is a combination of flowers like iris, a few beautiful roses, morning glories of many colors, marigolds, geraniums, pot marigolds, Shasta daisies and a huge lipstick sage plant. Shrubs include a Meyer lemon, a lilac that I grew from a small rooted stick a friend gave me, gooseberries and blackberries and olallieberries, quince and a hydrangea. Trees include apples, persimmon, two kinds of plums, walnuts, and pears. Veggies are mixed in the front garden and include Black Krim tomatoes, cherry tomatoes in three colors, zucchini and beans. Just planted some cucumber seeds…a little late, but sometimes there is no time to plant.
I love the descriptions of gardens in Louise Penny’s books, especially Jane Neal’s.
A friend gave my first Louise Penny book. I have read everyone now. I love when something special is added. My Alaskan greenhouses have all my veggies growing and my flower beds have native perennials. Thanks for this addition!
Lovely
This is a nice feature – a reminder of pleasant passages. It would be nicer though, with pictures of the plants described. Thanks 🙂
My garden started with some peonies and irises from my grandmother’s garden. I have expanded with lots of lilies (Asian, Oriental and Day lilies). Also have bleeding hearts. a peony tree, two Rose of Sharon (one white and one lavender) , 2 azalea bushes and a red rhododendron. Plus some lupines (purple, pink and white that have been slowing spreading among the daisies, Black-eyed Susans, yarrow, Queen Anne’s lace and penstemon. Probably more I tend to forgot the names of some that pop.
Love to see pix of your garden! 😃
My grandmother in Ohio was an amazing gardener, but what made the biggest impression on me was the hollyhocks. She would make little dolls for me, when I was very young, out of two blossoms, one was the body, with the petals being a big skirt and the other a bonnet, somehow attached to the stem like a head wearing a hat. Wish I could include a picture!
My friends and I did this too in Southwest Pennsylvania. So much fun. You made a small hole in the top of the flower skirt and stuck in the short .stem of the bud for the head. We would have a row of dolls. Waltz of the flowers? I just saw that I may be able to grow hollyhocks here in central Florida. Now where to find seeds.
My Mom taught me this, too, and my friends and I would have wedding parties with all the differently colored Dollie’s. I still show this to any little girl who comes to my house when hollyhocks are blooming. We also made jewelry by weaving clover stems together. Life was (still is) good!
I’m continually moving the plants as the tress here on our Oak Hill are stealing my sun! Ssill have great success with bleeding heart, Lenten rose , iris and peonies that the deer with let me grow. I especially love the herb garden our front that encourages new recipes.
What a lovely idea. I live in Cumbria UK and so have no hummingbirds( which I love). My garden is new as we recently moved house and are creating from scratch. I’m hoping Louise will sign my special Still Life edition when I listen to her at Chatsworth in September
Love to see pix of your garden! 😃
You had me with the hollyhock. My garden contains many plants about which I am sentimental, hollyhock among my favorites.
I enjoy my garden more than almost anything. I started gardening at age 10 with a single-row flower bed; my paternal grandmother was a gardener, so it must be in my genes. Zinnias are still my favorite. My current garden includes gingers – butterfly, shell, pine-cone, and crepe; roses – old fragrant ones and a Peggy Martin & a Lady Banks, hydrangeas, red banana plants, curcumas, and Turk’s cap (red). I also have oaks, crepe myrtles, a Japanese magnolia and a Sweet Bay magnolia. Honeysuckle and Mexican Flame vine have found their way in, too. I’m going with fewer annuals in favor of heat-and-drought-tolerant perennials; we have either too much or too little rain here in south Louisiana.
I am a former Chicago girl living in Wyoming, in the Black Hills. My husband is actually the main gardener in our family, but I love my deck pots and whiskey barrels full of flowers. Every year I do a different color scheme, this year it’s purple, but I always have a barrel full of geraniums. The challenge here wasn’t so much what would or wouldn’t grow, it was what the deer would not eat and how high a fence to put around the big garden!
I just love reading all the comments made about their gardens. I have a garden north of Toronto in Canada. This year to my great surprise my yucca plant that I bought about 20 plus years ago,is blooming. I never knew they also can bloom. It is beautiful to see the white flowers coming out.
your yucca blossoms are edible.
I live in S. Calif. and hispanics tell me their nannas would dip the flowers in egg then bread crumbs and deep fry them.
have never been brave enough to make them but enjoy the flowers.
let me know if you try it!
We live in Tecumseh, the far south west of Ontario, the banana belt of Canada. There are yuccas all around here in flower every year.
My Italian neighbor does the same thing with zucchini flowers– delicious!
I am in coastal North Carolina: too hot for peonies and roses are too prone to black spot in heat and high humidity, so I turned to a bee garden of coneflowers, bee balm, mexican sunflowers, day lilies, black-eyed susans, asters and dahlias. They all seem to handle the heat and humidity. Lots of bees, butterflies and hummingbirds seem to enjoy it. I wish I could grow peonies here, however, pansies bloom from fall through winter and well into spring and I love having the yellow, blue and purple pansies blooming throughout the winter.