Call it the secret garden.
It's a magnificent walled oasis hidden in the middle of Towson's business district. Huge magnolia trees shade a 60-foot-by-14-foot pool. Boxwood hedges frame a flagstone terrace. The topiary leads to an office styled like a French chateau. And dormant azaleas await next spring.
That is, if they're still there. The property -- created by an eccentric millionaire and open to the public just one day a year -- is for sale.
"I'm afraid somebody will come in and bulldoze it," said Joan Spurrier, who was secretary to its owner, Thomas Garland Tinsley, for 15 years. "It's really sad. It's so beautiful."
Mr. Tinsley died last year at age 90, leaving the office and garden to be sold as part of his estate, along with three other properties on tree-lined Baltimore Avenue.
They cover almost the entire block, and can be purchased together for about $2.5 million or bought separately. The 20,000-square-foot garden and office property, built in 1974, is listed for $700,000.
"It will take a special owner," said David Tracey, who has been a gardener there for 17 years and faces the prospect of losing his job once the real estate transaction is completed. "It's like my second home."
But, until then, he and Bob Balk, his partner for 12 years, show up each weekday to maintain the formal English gardens the way Mr. Tinsley liked them. He was very exacting, they say. "He told us where to put the plants . . . and what to prune. He wouldn't let you prune by yourself," Mr. Tracey said.
The gardeners also spruce up the neighboring properties, filling window boxes with pink petunias and geraniums, watering lawns and trimming shrubs.
"They work all the time," said attorney Julie Janofsky, whose fifth-floor office in the Court Towers building overlooks the anachronistic Towson greenery. "It's a little garden just for us. I look at it every day."
"It's a garden for a ghost," said her partner, Janet Truhe.
Somehow, the gardeners have come to realize they have an audience. "I know they're looking up there," said Mr. Tracey, who turns on the two 7-foot fountains every afternoon to delight the office workers.
For most people, the gardens, surrounded by a 12-foot-high cinder-block wall, are unknown and off limits except for one time a year on Towson Gardens Day in April.
