The Mechanical Garden in C. & M. Marsh, Girl Detectives
When I wrote my first Marsh sister’s story, it was with the idea of the mechanical garden in mind. That phrase was actually a child’s mishearing of “botanical garden,” which I loved so much that I wrote a story about such a place and the people who lived there. From there, I wrote several other stories featuring that location as the home of the Marsh family and the starting point of Marigold and Chrysanthemum’s adventures.
The first flowers in the garden were the jeweled roses, which are at the center of “The Recondite Riddle of the Rose Rogue.” That story also mentions some other, more common flowers that had been rendered in clockwork mechanisms. I loved the idea of having the clockwork flowers be actual clocks, in a way, where they could be set to open and close on a schedule, like real flowers that open and close based on sunlight and the lack thereof.
I’m not the only person who has thought of mechanical flowers, of course. If you’ve ever wanted to make one of your own, there’s a set of instructions on Instructable to make an Ever-Blooming Mechanical Tulip. And there’s also a cool kinetic sculpture called “Meadow” that also replicates the day/night cycle of flowers. And while these weren’t the inspirations for my mechanical garden, it’s amazing to see how people have made ideas like these a reality!
You can find my three short stories taking place within the mechanical garden in C. and M. Marsh, Girl Detectives!
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