How Does Your Justice Grow: Gardens and Gardening in Agatha Christie’s Fiction

In Agatha Christie’s mysteries, an ‘old-world’ garden serves as more than just a picturesque backdrop – it constitutes an important location reflecting historical reality and bearing deep, often dark, meaning. This paper examines the subject from three different perspectives – social history, plot development, and general symbolism – and claims that gardens and their portrayal in Christie’s books have at least three respective layers of meaning. Regarding social history, they represent the author’s view on phenomena characteristic of twentieth-century England. In terms of storytelling, garden descriptions emerge as one of Christie’s signature tools for developing a captivating plot and enhancing suspense. On the symbolic level, Christie’s fictional gardens serve as a universal metaphor for society in need of order and justice.