Chapter 6: A Garden on Display
Keira Park called Mark that evening from the parking lot of a grocery store.
Her voice sounded nervous, but her words came quickly.
“I was hired to photograph the launch, not investigate anyone,” she said.
“I’m a freelance designer.”
“Why did you tell me the gardens had been cleared?”
“Because that was the brief.”
She explained that Crownleaf had prepared a presentation describing Scarlet Star as the rescue of a forgotten local experiment.
The opening slides showed abandoned lawns, rusty gates, and neglected gardens.
None of the images had been taken on Mark’s street.
“They’re stock photographs,” Keira said.
“He wanted them to represent the original neighborhood.”
Mark felt a familiar irritation rising.
At work, he dealt with suppliers who replaced a real photograph of a damaged package with a perfect image from a catalog.
He hated the practice because it made simple problems harder to solve.
“Do you know whether Crownleaf has a real development team?” he asked.
“They do.”
“Do they know about June?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you find out?”
“I could lose my contract.”
“Then don’t risk yourself for a stranger.”
Keira hesitated.
“The contract says the launch celebrates community breeding.”
“That’s different from saying a company invented the plants.”
“Exactly.”
She agreed to email a copy of the public event invitation and nothing confidential.
Before hanging up, she added one more detail.
“They want a woman named Diane Mercer onstage to tell the preservation story.”
Mark looked across the street at Diane’s dark porch.
“I think that will surprise her.”
He called a meeting of the six households for seven thirty.
They gathered in Priya’s garage beneath hanging bicycles and boxes of winter clothes.
Omar brought folding chairs from his basement.
Lucia drew a rough map on a whiteboard, labeling each household by number.
Diane arrived last and sat near the door.
Mark began by explaining the extension team’s observations.
Priya corrected him twice when he confused plant lines with commercial cultivars.
He thanked her both times.
Then he showed everyone the launch invitation.
It promised a presentation honoring a vanished gardening tradition.
The featured guest was Diane Mercer, described as the sole surviving custodian of the Bellweather Collection.
“I never agreed to speak,” Diane said.
Elise leaned forward.
“Why would they put your name on it?”
“Because Pike thinks I won’t embarrass myself in public.”
“He may have a point,” Nate muttered.
Bernard gave him a warning look.
Diane heard the remark anyway.
“You have every reason to dislike me,” she said.
“But this is bigger than the two of us.”
Nate crossed his arms.
“That sentence is usually how people convince me to work for free.”
“Nobody is asking you to work for free,” Mark replied.
“We’re deciding what we want to do with plants that belong in our gardens.”
Omar asked whether Crownleaf could legally sell a descendant of June’s work.
Priya explained that the question depended on facts they had not established, including the origin of the company’s breeding material and any applicable plant rights.
“We should not make legal claims we can’t support,” she said.
“Then what can we do?” Lucia asked.
Mark pointed to the old Garden Walk photograph on the wall.
“We can show what actually happened here.”
The group considered hosting a neighborhood garden walk on Friday at the same time as Crownleaf’s preview.
Diane rejected the idea immediately.
“They’ll arrive with a lawyer and a camera crew.”
“They’re already arriving with a camera crew,” Elise said.
“We’re allowed to invite our neighbors to see flowers.”
Priya suggested making the event educational rather than confrontational.
They could display the publicly shared historical materials, explain what they knew, and clearly label what remained uncertain.
Felix had offered to prepare a short note describing the plants’ observable characteristics.
“We won’t promise that every plant is June’s exact original line,” Priya said.
“We will show evidence that the neighborhood preserved living material through many years.”
Diane finally spoke again.
“If you invite people here, you need to know what Pike could use against me.”
She described the agreement she had signed and the threats she had received when she questioned Crownleaf’s marketing.
Omar frowned.
“Why didn’t you ask for help then?”
“I thought I had already spoiled everything.”
“So you decided the rest of us couldn’t be trusted with the truth.”
Diane nodded.
The room fell quiet.
Mark was surprised by the absence of excuses.
“I’ll support a garden walk,” Nate said at last.
“But Diane doesn’t get to decide what I plant in my yard afterward.”
“Agreed,” Diane replied.
“And you will tell Officer Ramirez that Mark never threatened you,” Omar added.
Diane hesitated only a second.
“Yes.”
Mark looked around the garage.
“Then we have three days to organize something worthwhile.”
Lucia raised her hand as if they were in class.
“Can I make the signs?”
“You can run the whole sign department,” Mark said.
She grinned.
“That sounds like the first authority I’ve ever had on this street.”
