Elementary, My Dear Gardeners: Conan Doyle’s Horticultural Life

May 22, 1859

On this day, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle entered our world with the same mysterious flair that would later characterize his most famous creation.

Dear readers, one cannot help but note the delicious irony that the creator of literature's most rational mind was himself captivated by the supernatural realm.

In 2009, a most curious tribute unfolded—a violin crafted from a dying sycamore tree in Conan Doyle's garden sang to commemorate the 150th anniversary of his birth.

How fitting that the instrument favored by Holmes should emerge from Doyle's own sanctuary!

Should you find yourself browsing that modern repository of fleeting thoughts known as Twitter, search for "Conan Doyle Garden" and be rewarded with a magnificent photographic portrait of the author seated at a garden table, his faithful Irish terrier Paddy perched beside him like a loyal companion from one of his tales.

The Doyles' residence—a quaint, thatched affair christened Bignell House—boasted gardens that would make any horticulturist swoon. A trout stream marked the boundary, while a wicket gate led directly to forest adventures. The grounds featured both miniature golf and croquet—genteel pursuits for a man whose imagination ran wild. Jean, his wife, adorned the space with garden gnomes and statuary, perhaps unconsciously inviting the very magical beings her husband believed inhabited such spaces.

For you see, dear gardeners, the Doyles were ardent spiritualists. They embraced the existence of garden fairies, pixies, and elves with conviction that would make a skeptic blush. During the Great War, when two young girls manufactured counterfeit photographs of fairies, Doyle accepted them as genuine evidence, subsequently penning The Coming of the Fairies, earnestly arguing for their existence.

The garden's influence seeped into Doyle's literary works like persistent groundwater. His writings featured monkshood and various poisonous plants with alarming frequency.

When Dr. Watson cataloged Sherlock Holmes' limitations, he noted the detective "knew nothing of practical gardening." However, Watson hastened to add that Holmes was "well up in belladonna, opium, and poisons generally"—knowledge every gardener possesses, though hopefully for purely academic purposes!

In The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet, Holmes solves the mystery through careful examination of footprints in the garden—a technique familiar to any gardener who has tracked an elusive pest across their beds.

Doyle waxed poetic about botanical knowledge in Through the Magic Door, writing:

"A very little botany will enable you to recognize every flower you are likely to meet in your walks abroad and to give you a tiny thrill of interest when you chance upon one which is beyond your ken."

In a most revealing interview published in The Strand Magazine in March 1919, Doyle interpreted a curious séance message: "Food comes before etymology."

The explanation reveals both the man and father:

"On the day before that on which I attended this seance, I had told my two little boys, aged nine and seven (these are children of Sir Arthur's second marriage) that they must go to work and kill all the caterpillars and other predatory insects in our garden. They were not inclined to do it, for they are very tender-hearted little fellows, but I explained to them that these insects were just as much a menace to our food supply as the German submarines then were. They understood the necessity then and started at once.

So now you can see the significance of the message that I received: 'Food comes before entomology,' "

Despite his supernatural inclinations, Doyle found genuine pleasure in his garden's earthly delights. He conducted most of his writing outdoors, once remarking with uncharacteristic simplicity, "What a lovely thing a rose is!"

The author even advocated for the Early Rising Bill or Daylight Saving Bill, published in the Daily Mail on April 21, 1909, declaring:

"Of every 100 people in the country, ninety-nine would benefit by its passing. The only real objection is that it would set all the sundials wrong. (Laughter.)

The need of this age is that people should get more in touch with nature; that they should have a little more fun in their lives; and I think that a measure which sends a man home one hour earlier to his wife and children, gives him a chance to cultivate his garden... would be of great benefit to the country."

How remarkable that the mind behind the coldly logical Sherlock Holmes should find such comfort among growing things.

Perhaps, dear readers, there is more mystery and magic in our gardens than even Holmes would care to admit.