Guido Brunetti Gardens: Derivative Donna Leon Gardens for Fathers Day

Guido finds that he "had never been good at remembering the names of flowers," other than carnations, gladioli, lilies and roses and his wife's favorites, irises. 

Elettra Zorzi gets fresh bouquets Mondays and Thursdays from Biancat, Fantin or Rialto as "a necessary expense" for her secretarial anteroom to Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta's "opulence." Metropolitan City of Venice flowers have name recognition for Signorina Elettra: asters, black-eyed Susans, calla lilies, chrysanthemums, crocuses, cyclamens, daffodils, daisies, field lilies, geraniums and hibiscuses. They include hyacinths, lilacs, lilies-of-the-valley, marigolds, orchids, pansies, roses (red, white, yellow), sunflowers, tulips, Venus fly-traps and zinnias and, as climbing vines, clematis, jasmine and wisteria. 

Ground-cover, herbal, kitchen and woody gardenscapes join insular and mainland flowerscapes in the Guido Brunetti gardens that derivative Donna Leon gardens jumpstart for Fathers Day gardenscapes. 

The Sant'Erasmo country gardenscape keeps an "equally long row of rosemary and lavender" left of a "long row" of colored boxes on waist-high stands before trees. Donna Leon's 26-book literary crime fiction series, 1992-2017, lists for the Commissioner's herbal gardenscapes basil, capers, chamomile, garlic, ginger, mints, onions, paprika, parsley, sage and thyme. 

Soil-filled containers make up Metropolitan City of Venice ground-cover gardenscapes and mingle with cereal grasses, gravel, marsh grasses, moss and seagrasses on Sant'Erasmo and the mainland. 

Kitchen gardenscapes need niches for nurturing nutritious apples, apricots, avocados, blueberries, cherries, currants, figs, grapes, kiwis, lemons, olives, oranges, peaches, pears, plums, pomegranates, raspberries and strawberries. 

Guido Brunetti gardens as derivative Donna Leon gardens for Fathers Day gardenscapes offer miscellaneous occurrences of coffee-friendly sugar beets and sugarcane, mushrooms, pasta-friendly grains and rice. 

Kitchen gardenscapes provide places for artichokes, asparagus, beans, beets, broccoli, cabbages, carrots, celery, cucumbers, eggplants, endive, lentils, peanuts, peas, peppers, potatoes, pumpkins and radicchio (Italian chicory). 

Corn, while qualifying as the source of flour for Guido's polenta, queues up with similarly prioritized radishes, spinach, squashes, tomatoes and zucchinis as kitchen gardenscape vegetables.

Woody gardenscapes recall herbal gardening with bay laurel, camphor, linden, verbena and willow and kitchen gardening with almond, cocoa, chestnut, coffee, hazelnut, pistachio and walnut trees. They serve as sources of natural fences with boxwood, of shade with acacia, linden, magnolia, palm and poplar and of timber with mahogany, oak and pine. 

Guido Brunetti gardens, as derivative Donna Leon gardens, thrive wherever Fathers Day gardenscapes take them: in beds, conservatories, courtyards, greenhouses or on patios, terraces, walls, windowsills.

My special thanks to:

• Talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the Internet;
• Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University for superior on-campus and on-line resources.

Leon, Donna. Earthly Remains. New York NY: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2017. 

Leon, Donna. Gondola. New York NY: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2014. 

Leon, Donna. My Venice and Other Essays. New York NY: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2013. 

Leon, Donna. Venetian Curiosities. With a Vivaldi CD by Il Complesso Barocco. New York NY: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2012. 

Pianaro, Roberta; and Leon, Donna. Brunetti's Cookbook. New York NY: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2010. 

Sepeda, Toni. Brunetti's Venice: Walks with the City's Best-Loved Detective. With an Introduction by Donna Leon. New York NY: Grove Press, 2009.