Erika de Vasconcelos: My Darling Dead Ones (Writers In Their Garden)

The writer’s spectacular garden is an exquisite extension of her loving home.

It's about 10 o'clock on a June morning in an east Toronto neighbourhood. Erika de Vasconcelos has just put her baby down for his scheduled nap. Luca Ricci was born to de Vasconcelos and her husband, writer Nino Ricci, a few months ago. It is the first child for Ricci, the third for de Vasconcelos, who has two young daughters by a previous marriage.

The couple's wedding in September 1997 was a genuine literary occasion that moved even the most cynical scribes to believe in such a thing as a perfect match. Even their books seemed compatible: both de Vasconcelos and Ricci have published novels examining their southern European heritage. De Vasconcelos's My Darling Dead Ones and Ricci's Lives of the Saints introduced a passionate Latin strain into a reserved Canadian tradition.

de Vasconcelos’ garden

After tucking Luca into his nursery, de Vasconcelos stepped outdoors onto the deck and eased into a settee. She took a moment to admire her garden, which stretched out lush and shady beneath a light canopy of leaves. Her famously flawless complexion looked pearly in the morning sun. She was the picture of maternal health. Behind her a spectacular white clematis floated against the lattice fence. Nearby a champagne-coloured rose struck a pose. ''This is the perfect rose,'' de Vasconcelos said. ''It's a hybrid tea. Rose is my favourite flower but I can't plant very many in this garden. It's too shady. So I just plant different roses in pots and it works.''

For de Vasconcelos, the back garden is very much an extension of the house itself, which, from the front, appears to be situated in a small Mediterranean-style grove. Inside it feels like a villa, with smooth, cool surfaces and thick walls, square rooms and low, heavy furniture. The kitchen opens onto an expansive, casually furnished deck. There is a Mexican fireplace to be lit on cool nights. De Vasconcelos considers the deck, which is framed by a mulberry tree and a delicate Japanese maple, part of the garden's first room.

''We live out here,'' she said. ''We eat out here all summer. We read out here. Nino and I usually write at our desks, but if it's a really gorgeous day, I'll just come out here sometimes.''

My Darling Dead Ones
Vintage Canada
208 pages

An iron archway straddles the paved path that twists through the length of the garden, dividing one bed from another. In My Darling Dead Ones, the garden of Leninha, one of the principal characters, develops along a similar pattern. Marriage and motherhood leave Leninha with little time for career or creative pursuits. She works her passion into the garden, burying the children's baby teeth alongside tulip bulbs, a gift from an illicit lover.

Later, Leninha helps her divorced daughter construct a new garden. Creating a garden can be a way of staking your claim.

''It's a lot like renovating a house,'' de Vasconcelos said. ''You buy a house. It's got all these flaws, but you're going to love it and fix it up and bring it to its full potential. With a garden it's the same thing: You want to make it yours.''

Ricci and de Vasconcelos purchased their home just before their wedding: ''When we bought it Nino said, 'Good! We don't need to do anything to the garden.' But I said, 'Just wait and see what we are going to do with this garden!’”

The back yard was a thicket of trees and overgrown shrubs: ''Dark, moody and oppressive.'' De Vasconcelos ripped out bushes, thinned branches and cut down a number of old trees. She tore out everything she did not like and replanted the flower beds.

Four years later, she thinks of only one bed as completely finished. It boasts several plump hostas, a peony tree, day and Asiatic lilies and tiny apple-scented roses. Its piece-de-resistance is a dramatic magnolia tree that explodes with blossoms each spring. Across the path, a bed of foamflowers, ferns and globe thistle prepares to dazzle in blue and white.

An occasional ornament gives the garden a whimsical touch. A putto - a small statue of an angel, popular in Italy - crouches under the magnolia in honour of Luca's birth. A wire sculpture of a woman, a gift from artist Martha Johnson, will soon be shrouded in clematis. The perfect miniature playhouse roosts in a Manitoba maple. It has sky-blue shutters and a proper door. Tiny pansies peep out of a moss-filled window basket. A plaque announces, Plum Tree Cottage, named for a favourite story de Vasconcelos read to her daughters when they were small.

“Plum Tree Cottage” in the de Vasconcelos’ garden

''Nino built this treehouse for the kids, which was a nice surprise. Who would have thought this writer would be so handy. I always wanted to marry a handy man,'' de Vasconcelos said. Ricci doesn't putter about the garden. A childhood spent labouring on his parents' farm makes it impossible for him to accept horticulture as a leisure activity. Still, he appreciates his surroundings: ''If there is one feature of the house that Nino likes best, it's the garden,'' de Vasconcelos said. ''I feel it is a kind of gift I give my family.''

De Vasconcelos hopes her daughters, who are 8 and 13, will inherit her love of gardening. She brings them out to look at the hostas in bloom, or a rosebud opening up, or the ripening apricots from the apricot tree. But so far they resist. They squirm out of her reach and escape into Plum Tree Cottage, blissfully unimpressed by the Eden they inhabit.

This piece previously appeared in the Montreal Gazette.