The Daily Gardener

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1726 Birth of John Berkenhout, English physician, naturalist, and writer. While studying at Edinburgh, John published a botanical lexicon reference. In it, he wrote, Those who wish to remain ignorant of the Latin language have no business with the study of Botany. 1822 On this day, Caroline Herschel wrote in her diary about her brother, William Herschel, the German-English astronomer and composer. Caroline Herschel assisted her brother in his astronomical work, and she became an accomplished astronomer and comet discoverer in her own right. She's remembered as a comet hunter. Two centuries ago, on this day, Caroline wrote, I had a dawn of hope that my brother might regain once more a little strength; for I have a [note] in my almanac of his walking with a firmer step than usual -- above three or four times the distance from the... house to his library in his garden, for the purpose [of gathering and eating] Raspberries with me; but I never saw the like again. William Herschel died about six weeks later, at the age of eighty-four. This year is the 200th anniversary of his death. Forty-one years earlier, on the night of 13 March 1781, William, with his homemade 6.2-inch reflecting telescope, discovered a new planet: Uranus. He initially thought it was "either a Nebulous star or perhaps a comet," and he named it George - Georgium Sidus (the Georgian Planet) - in honor of his patron, King George III. But surprisingly, the name did not stick, and George was renamed Uranus after the Greek god of the sky. Uranus is the first and only planet (thus far) discovered from a backyard garden. Today William and Caroline's Georgian townhouse and garden at 19 New King Street in Bath is the home of the lovely Herschel Museum. You can stand in the beautiful garden where William and Caroline spent so much time together gazing at the stars. William's son, John, became an accomplished astronomer and a polymath. He was involved in many other sciences, including botany. 1912 On this day, Mrs. F. E. Griggs of Raymond, Nebraska, began selling her surplus tomatoes. She shared the story of her garden with nurseryman Henry Field for publication in his book, The Book of a Thousand Gardens. Mrs. Griggs, who sold over $50 worth of tomatoes from 135 plants, wrote, I had worked very hard for four months, and my garden was a very nice one and I couldn't see it die, so I started in to carry water (a long distance up a 30-foot creek bank). But it did not rain until fall. ...[and] the fall rains washed the fertilier down and they again set the largest crop I ever saw. I pruned my vines severely and also pinched off all tomatoes that would be gnarled or poor shape, as soon as could see them, and it paid well in the nice crop of smooth ones I got. The first were ripe July 4th, and on July 8th we were already oversupplied and began selling the surplus to people who had no gardens at all this year. They were 15c per lb. at first, and people said, "Too dear to eat", so my first ones went at 3c. Later, as they acquired a taste for them, I got 5c, then 7½c and 10c [per pound], but always 3c to 5c under the town retail price, although I had to deliver them. On Aug. 26th they dropped to 5c, as people were just getting a few scattered ones of their own, and up to that date I had sold $50.00 worth. They were then coming so fast that I had to go on the jump almost to dispose of them, and in my haste one foot slipped from the buggy step and I fell, breaking and badly crushing [my leg] just above the ankle. So that ended my garden. Not entirely [though], for my heart was [in the garden] and the following week with this fractured limb in plaster cast, I crawled down to [the garden] and gathered [tomatoes] ... I am still unable to walk much. I then had to give the patch away, and there have been fully 40 bushels eaten, given away and wasted besides my $50.00 worth sold; and the frost has just caught the vines uncovered with an enormous crop of ripe ones and green ones in all stages, just bushels of them. I hope some day to see just what an acre of these Field's Early June tomatoes will do. 1955 Birth of Monty Don, English horticulturist and writer. He once wrote, I always see gardening as escape, as peace really. If you are angry or troubled, nothing provides the same solace as nurturing the soil. Grow That Garden Library™ Book Recommendation Peonies by Jane Eastoe This book came out in 2018, and the subtitle is Beautiful Varieties for Home & Garden. And I should mention that the magnificent romantic photographs are by Georgianna Lane. The publisher wrote this about Jane's book. From Shawnee Chief to Top Brass, this guide to over 60 varieties of peonies presents an eclectic selection of specimens—from those with the best visual appearance and the most fragrant perfume, to those th

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1713 Death of Henry Compton, Bishop of London from 1675 to 1713. Although Henry played an important role in English political and religious circles, his main passion was plants — especially scarce and exotic plants. It was said that Henry relished staying on the fringes of Charles II's court because it gave him more time to devote to his plants and gardens. One of his closest friends was one of the earliest English parson-naturalists, John Ray, who published the first account of North American flora in his Historia Plantarum (1688). Since Henry's role overseeing the Church extended to the American Colonies, Henry was able to get his hands on all the new plant discoveries from the new world. Henry even personally sent a man named John Banister to collect plants for him in Virginia. John is most remembered for sending Henry the Magnolia virginiana and Dodecatheon media. Tragically, John died at 38 after falling from a cliff while exploring the area above James River. Between his involvement with the top plant explorers and nurseries of his day and his special relationship with the Tradescant family, Henry was able to fully stock his garden at Fulham Palace. This Tudor country house was home to England's clergy for over a millennium. When he was alive, Henry's garden was reputed to have a greater variety of plants than any other garden in England. It featured over 1,000 exotic plants and tropicals, making it one of his time's most popular, envied, and essential gardens. Henry's kitchen garden always grew a great crop of his favorite vegetable: kidney beans. In 1686, even William Penn's Pennsylvania gardener was keen to swap seeds and plants with Henry Compton. History records that Henry felt guilt about the amount of church money he had invested in plants. His collection of trees was also particularly exciting. Henry grew the first Liriodendron tulipifera (the tulip tree), Liquidambar (American Sweetgum) used as a veneer or satinwood in furniture, Acacia, Mahogany, and Maple trees in England. The garden designer Capability Brown found a special inspiration after touring Fulham, and it was there that he first saw the cluster-pin, the ash-maple, the cork oak, the black Virginian walnut, and the honey locust. Henry also grew the first American azalea grown in England, Rhododendron viscosum. Henry even managed to grow the first coffee tree in England with the help of his heated "stove.". In 1698, the Governor of Virginia personally sent Henry a Magnolia virginiana for "his paradise at Fulham." Three hundred years after Henry planted the first Magnolia virginiana grown in Europe at St. Anne's Church, a new tree was planted in the exact same spot to honor the botanical work of Bishop Henry Compton. The Arnold Arboretum at Harvard propagated the Magnolia sapling, and it was hand-delivered by Vi Lort Phillips, a member of the International Dendrology Society. The tree was planted on the 19th of May in 1992 and is already forty years old this year (2022). St. Anne's Church was special to Henry. He consecrated the grounds in honor of Queen Anne because he had tutored both Princesses Mary and Anne when they were young. 1893 Birth of Miroslav Krleža, Yugoslav and Croatian writer, poet, and cultural influencer. Miroslav's nickname was Fritz, and he is often credited as the greatest Croatian writer of the 20th century. Miroslav believed that Serbs and Croats were one people suffering from two national consciences, which inevitably pitted them against each other. Today three hours west of his hometown of Zagreb, a celebrated statue of Miroslav stands in Opatija above the city's famous Slatina Beach. During WWI, Miroslav wrote in his diary at the Croatian Botanical Garden in Zagreb. The relaxing gardens edge the city railroad tracks before blending into the native grass and forestlands that feather the countryside. Although Miroslav found the garden suitable for writing, he dismissed its beauty and criticized it as a "boring second-rate cemetery." Miroslav served in the same regiment as Yugoslavian communist dictator Tito during the war, but the two men didn't become lifelong friends until 1937. Tito protected Krleža from pressures in his party. Tito once told him, I know you're an old liberal and that you disagree with me on many things, but I wouldn't want to lose you. In 1938, Miroslav wrote On the Edge of Reason - an instant classic about human nature, hypocrisy, conformism, and stupidity. Miroslav once wrote, There is no justice even among flowers. 1908 Birth of Herbert Rappaport, Austrian-Soviet screenwriter, and film director. Born in Vienna, Herbert first studied law before finding work in the movie business. In 1936, he was invited to help internationalize Soviet Cinema, and he spent the next four decades working as a filmmaker in Russia

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1686 Birth of Antoine de Jussieu ("Ann-twan do Jyou-sue"), French naturalist, botanist, and physician. Born in Lyon, Antoine was the son of an apothecary. After touring Spain, Portugal, and southern France with his brother Bernard, he went to Paris and ultimately succeeded Joseph Pitton de Tournefort as director of the royal gardens. In 1713, Antoine shared the first scientific reference to coffee with the Royal Academy of Sciences of France. He called it Jasminum arabicanum, but Carl Linneaus gave the official botanical classification forty years later in 1753. Antoine once wrote about finding plant fossils in a quarry. I observed on most collected stones the imprints of innumerable plant fragments which were so different from those which are growing in the Lyonnais, in the nearby provinces, and even in the rest of France, that I felt like collecting plants in a new world... The number of these leaves, the way they separated easily, and the great variety of plants whose imprints I saw, appeared to me... as many volumes of botany... [in] the oldest library of the world. 1865 On this day, members of the John Wesley Powell expedition raided a garden on an island in the Green just above the mouth of the White River. The expedition had just thrown out more spoiled food, and the group faced the constant fear of hunger. In Powell of the Colorado (2015), William Culp Darrah wrote, Fresh fruit had been mighty scarce and the temptation to steal some greens was irresistible. The Major, Andy, and Bill Dunn filled their arms with young beets, turnips, carrots, and potatoes. The men rowed a few miles down the river and paused to enjoy the stolen fruit. Of course the season was not advanced enough to yield sizable vegetables, so Andy cooked up the whole mess as greens. It was a not-quite-unpleasant stew. After eating their fill and disposing of the remainder, the men resumed the journey. They had not gone a mile before all hands except Bradley and Howland were violently nauseated. Bradley explained that the potato tops were so bitter he had not eaten any. The Major said their illness was caused by a narcotic in the potato leaves, but Hall swore that it was all his fault; in their haste he had only half-cooked the stuff. Sumner wrote in his diary, "We all learned one lesson--never to rob gardens." 1887 Birth of Marc Chagall (born Moishe Shagal)(books about this person), Russian-French artist of Belarus. He was an early modernist and created in various formats, including paintings, drawings, stained glass, ceramics, and tapestries, among many others. The art critic Robert Hughes called Chagall "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century." And Pablo Picasso once said, When Matisse dies, Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what color really is. It was Marc Chagall himself who once wrote, Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers – and never succeeding. 1907 Birth of Frida Kahlo (books about this person), Mexican painter. Frida is remembered for her portraits, self-portraits, and work inspired by Mexican nature and artifacts. She once wrote, I paint flowers so they will not die. She also wrote, I wish I could do whatever I liked behind the curtain of "madness". Then I'd arrange flowers, all day long. I'd paint pain, love and tenderness. I would laugh as much as I feel like at the stupidity of others, and they would all say: "Poor thing, she's crazy! Grow That Garden Library™ Book Recommendation The Ultimate Flower Gardener's Guide by Jenny Rose Carey This book came out in 2020, and the subtitle is Simple Ideas For Small Outdoor Spaces. In this book, Jenny Rose Carey is essentially teaching a master class on ornamental gardening. If you are looking for ways to add interest, color combinations that are guaranteed to work instead of clash, and how to incorporate favorite blossoms or aspects of flowers, you'll find everything you're looking for in this very inspiring and jam-packed book on all kinds of beautiful flowers. Most flower experts teach color first. Jenny brings new dimensions into play - namely shape and texture. But Jenny's focus on texture and shape works surprisingly well - especially if you are someone who struggles with color in the garden. Shape and texture are two often overlooked floral elements, but they are equally important as color in garden design. Without shape and texture, gardens would lack that sense of excitement, mystery, and magnetism that exist in our most beloved gardens. Jenny also does a great job of keeping today's gardener in mind. She selected the annuals and perennials that she recommends in her book based on their ease of care, appeal to pollinators, and wildlife friendliness. This book is 364 pages of beautiful flower gardening all season long - no matte

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1698 On this day, the English writer, landowner, gardener, courtier, and diarist, John Evelyn, went to Deptford to "see how miserably the Czar... left my house after three months [of] making it his Court." Keep in mind John's appreciation for the amount of work a garden requires as I tell you this little story about him. In 1698, John Evelyn had owned his estate for 40 years. Everyone who knew it said it was magnificent - both inside and out. It was decorated to the nines. Of all he had accomplished, John's garden was his pride and joy. That year, the Russian Czar, Peter the Great, brought an entourage of 200 people to England to visit William III. In a gesture of hospitality, William volunteered John Evelyn's home to host the Czar and his people during their visit. John and his wife graciously moved out to give the Czar his privacy. But it wasn't long before John's servants began sending urgent messages begging him to return. And when John returned home, he walked into a nightmare. The whole estate had been trashed. Priceless paintings had served as dartboards. His floors were ruined, windows were smashed; even the garden was destroyed. The servants told how the 6'8 Czar had played a game with his friends where they put him in one of John's wheelbarrows and then raced him through the garden beds, crashing into walls, trees, and hedges. It must have been a scene akin to the movie Animal House. Clearly, the Czar had shown a complete disregard for the sanctity of John's garden. As gardeners, we can imagine how John must have felt. For twenty years, John had nursed along a hedge of holly that had turned into a glorious living wall. John, who was an expert on trees, was particularly proud of that hedge, and he wrote, Is there under heaven a more glorious and refreshing object of the kind than an impregnable hedge of about 480 feet length, 9 feet high, and 5 feet in diameter Sadly the hedge was also ruined by the Czar. And even the hardscapes were no match for the Czar's party, and part of a stone wall surrounding the garden was toppled over. John immediately sent word to the king about what had happened, and arrangements were made straight away to move the Czar to other lodgings. King William made arrangements to have the Evelyn home fully restored - the house needed to be gutted and rebuilt from the floors up. John Evelyn was 78 years old when this happened to him. I'm sure there was no amount of restitution that could restore the years of love he had spent in his garden. He lived for another eight years before dying in 1706. Today John is remembered for his detailed diary that he kept for 66 years. As a passionate gardener, many of his entries pertain to plants, landscaping, and related garden topics. John believed that gardening was a year-long endeavor and that the experience of gardening provided immeasurable benefits. John wrote, The gardener's work is never at an end, it begins with the year and continues to the next. Gardening is a labor full of tranquility and satisfaction; natural and instructive, and [aids the] most serious contemplation, experience, health, and longevity. 1714 Death of Sophia of Hanover, the Electress of Hanover. She died at 83. Sophia was next in line to become the Queen of England, but she never got the chance. She was strolling through her magnificent garden in Hanover, Germany, when she was caught in a rainstorm, and after she rushed to find shelter, she collapsed and died of heart failure. Today a sculpture memorial of Electress Sophia stands on the southern edge of the garden. In 1714, after Sophia died on June 8th, her cousin, Queen Anne, died just two months later at the beginning of August. And that is how Sophia's eldest son was able to claim the British throne as George I. Today, both Sophia and her son, George I, are buried in the very garden she ran out of over three centuries ago. Incidentally, George I became the last British monarch to be buried outside Britain. And while it is unfortunate that Sophia got caught in the rain, there's no doubt that the beautiful grounds she had installed at Herrenhausen Palace in Hanover brought her great joy. Sophia once said, The garden is my life. A patron of the arts, Sophia commissioned Herrenhausen Palace and the surrounding gardens, which remain the greatest treasure in all of Hanover. As one of the most important historical gardens in Europe, Herrenhausen Gardens is one of the few baroque gardens remaining in Europe. And the garden remains true to its original design and comprises four separate gardens that feature over 60,000 blooming flowers and 1,000 containers. The baroque garden, also called the big garden, is home to thirty-two magnificent statues made of sandstone. The sculptures represent the four continents, the four seasons, the four elem

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1848 Birth of Paul Gauguin (books about this person), one of the leading French painters of the Postimpression- ist period. Born in Paris, Paul Gauguin was a self-taught painter. He was also a rugged individualist, and his incredible talent helped introduce Primitivism to the art world. His best primitive work was created on his 1895 trip to Tahiti - a place he would spend the rest of his life. Flora and fauna of the landscape feature prominently in most of his Tahitian art. Paul was obsessed with art, and he once wrote, Color! What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams. After Van Gogh rented a yellow house in Arles, he invited Gauguin to visit. In preparation for his stay, Van Gogh painted 'Poet's Garden' in the bedroom Gauguin was to stay in. The painting depicts the public garden across from the Yellow House. Van Gogh filled the rest of the house with paintings of sunflowers. When Gauguin arrived, he painted his friend, Van Gogh, painting sunflowers. For nine weeks, the two men painted, and when they weren't painting, they fought. In fact, during one of their final arguments, Gauguin was supposedly sliced off Van Gogh's ear with a sword. Paul was more diverse in terms of his subjects. He didn't exclusively paint florals. Once when he was in a creative lull, he wrote, When I am able to paint again, if I have no imagination, I shall do some studies of flowers . . . . It is a great pleasure for me. 1878 On this day, Fisk Bangs wrote about his blooming White Mustard in the American Bee Journal Volume 14. It began to bloom about June 7th and lasted nearly eight months. The bees commenced work on the 11th. On the 19th, the bees were so thick that their hum sounded something like Prof. Cook's buzz-saw, lacking the screech. This is one of the best honey plants, and I think its bloom call be easily regulated... to have it come after Basswood. 1935 Death of Ivan Michurin (books about this person), Russian botanist and plant breeder. A Russian horticulturist and a Master of selection, Ivan was an Honorable Member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Throughout his life, Ivan created all sorts of fruit plants. He introduced over 300 new varieties and was often called the Russian Luther Burbank. Ivan started out working on the railroad. His job riding the rails allowed him to visit many famous gardens and nurseries across Russia. His informal nursery tour inspired Ivan to start a fruit tree nursery in 1888. Ivan was maniacally focused on improving fruit, and by doing so, he selected the best examples and used them to improve the next generation. And although Russian would not support his work, they made sure that Ivan could never leave the country. The last thing Russia wanted was for Ivan to bring his work to the United States, where many scientists recognized the value of Ivan's work early on. Although the 1917 October Revolution hurt many land owners and farmers forced to give up their land to Mother Russia, Lenin liked Ivan. With Nikolai Vavilov's encouragement, Ivan's work was protected as intellectual property of the Russian government. Today, Ivan's most famous creation is the Antonovka or 'The People's Apple.' It was Ivan Michurin who said, We cannot wait for gifts from Nature. To take them from her – that is our task. (Translation my own.) 2013 On this day, Jane Green planted zucchini in her garden. Then, she wrote about her zucchini in a lovely little article called Conquering the Zucchini Beast. Here's an excerpt: Something's always happening in a garden Upon entering the garden {on the morning of the 4th of July], [my dog] Tootie and I found that our four zucchini plants were in full bloom, and lo and behold, one plant had already popped out a nice-sized fruit. What a stupendous treat! And to think that had planted my garden on the 7th of June, and that I already had a zucchini fruit to enjoy on the 4th of July. What a cause for a celebration! Of course, 1 did cheat just a teensy little bit because I planted zucchini plants and not zucchini seeds this year. But, hey, it was still an awesome experience for me. With the glorious discovery of a zucchini fruit just waiting to be harvested, my saliva juices kicked into full capacity mode and my brain cells started conjuring up all sorts of yummy zucchini dishes to prepare. For instance: making zucchini bread or zucchini relish or zucchini cake or zucchini brownies or preparing a wonderful zucchini hot dish! Yum! I call this zucchini mania time because there are so many foods you can make with zucchini that you don't know which one to make first. Grow That Garden Library™ Book Recommendation The Darling Dahlias and the Red Hot Poker by Susan Wittig Albert This book is a brand new release today, June 7th, 2022, and this is a fiction book. Here's what the publisher wro

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1648 On this day, Elias Ashmole (books about this person), the English antiquary, politician, astrologer, and alchemist, wrote in his diary, Having entered upon a study this day about three o'clock was the first time I went a simpling; Dr: Carter of Reding and Mr. Watling an Apothecary there, accompanying me. To go "a simpling" was an early term for botanizing. People would gather "simples" or medicinal plants, so Elias went out with a Dr. Carter and an Apothecary. They were no doubt looking for herbal remedies. 1816 During June, in New England, six inches of snow fell. The entire year of 1816 was freezing. Every month of the year 1816 had a hard frost. Temperatures dropped to 40 degrees in July and August as far south as Connecticut. This is known as 'The Year Without a Summer' in New England. The weather anomalies originated from the volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora the previous year. The enormous volcanic explosion in recorded history spewed small particles that were light enough to spread over the atmosphere the following year. The impact on the world's climate was profound. The earth's temperature dropped an average of three degrees Celsius across the globe. On the bright side, the terrible summer of 1816 served as an inspiration to many writers. In Lake Geneva, Switzerland, Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein while on vacation with her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and the poet Lord Byron. Thanks to nonstop rain and gray skies, the three writers had been stuck inside for days. On the same trip, Lord Byron wrote Darkness, his poem that begins, I had a dream, which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguished. 1864 On this day, the famous American writer and political reporter, John Beauchamp Jones ("Bo-shamp"), wrote in his journal: Clear and hot, but with a fine breeze-southwest. Yesterday, I learn, both sides buried the dead... What a war, and for what? And then, after giving some updates from the battlefield, John wrote: Small heads of early York cabbage sold in market to-day at $3, or $5 for two. At that rate, I got about $10 worth out of my garden. Mine are excellent, and so far abundant, as well as the lettuce, which we have every day. My snap beans and beets will soon come on. The little garden is a little treasure. John Beauchamp Jones was born in Maryland and served as a Confederate soldier during the Civil War. 2022 National Garden Exercise Day Gardening is a workout. Gardening is therapeutic on so many levels. The physical aspect of gardening is quite demanding and is an excellent way to build muscle and burn calories. And for many garden podcast listeners, the brain is engaged as well - learning about new plants, techniques, or general garden info. Today and every day in your garden, make sure to stay hydrated and make a point of gardening that promotes good health - take breaks, stretch, use garden chairs, add elevated beds, etc. Be careful living heavy items and tuck some bandaids, bee sting relief (like an epi-pen or Benedryl), and betadine in your garden tote. You never know when you might need a little first aid in the garden. Happy gardening!! It's National Garden Exercise day! Grow That Garden Library™ Book Recommendation The Sibley Guide to Trees by David Allen Sibley This book came out in 2009, but this is one of the best when it comes to tree-reference books. This book has over 500 five-star reviews on Amazon, and it's easy to see why — this book is laid out in such an accessible way. It's effortless to use. I keep one tucked in my garden bench in the garage because I love keeping this guide handy. And I should mention that the reason it's called the Sibley Guide to Trees is that it's written by David Alan Sibley. If that name's familiar, it's because he is the bird guide, author, and illustrator. So you have those side-by-side skills of bird identification and tree identification — and they just go together. David Sibley applies the same approach that he used with birds for the equally complex subject of tree identification. And if trees are a challenge for you, you will definitely appreciate the over 4,000 illustrations in this guide. And I had to chuckle just a little bit after reading an Amazon Q&A with David Alan Sibley about this book. They asked him, Were there significant differences in writing this book vs. the Guide to Birds? I got a kick out of David's answer: The obvious difference is that trees are much easier to find. When I needed to study a particular species of tree I could just walk right up to it and spend as much time investigating it as I needed. Birds are more elusive. I had to spend years in the field in order to build up enough observation time to draw them well. I thought David's response was such a clue to the rest of us regarding tree identification because Da

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1731 Birth of Martha Washington (books about this person), the inaugural first lady of the United States. At Mount Vernon, Martha was in charge of the kitchen garden. As mistress of the plantation, she was in charge of entertaining guests and planning the evening meal. This meant that a robust kitchen garden was an absolute necessity. Thus, the kitchen garden is the oldest garden at Mount Vernon. It was installed in 1760, and the grounds have produced edibles now for over 250 years. So while other areas of Mount Vernon have gone through some changes, the kitchen garden or the lower garden remains primarily unchanged from how it was initially used back when the Washingtons lived there. Now George and Martha spent a great deal of time away from the estate. And whenever George Washington would send letters back to Mount Vernon, the last paragraph was reserved for instructions from Martha to the gardener about the kitchen garden. Martha would ask about different crops and suggest planting or collecting seeds. Martha really was a knowledgeable plantswoman, and when it came to the kitchen garden, she was not afraid to make suggestions or changes. Martha knew that the kitchen garden was a reflection of her As George's wife and as the president's wife. And when George and Martha were at Mount Vernon, they hosted an average of 600 guests every single year. And most of those people enjoyed supper at the plantation, and the meal No Doubt featured produce from the kitchen garden. William Spence was the gardener at Mount Vernon. He continued working at Mount Vernon after George Washington's death. In addition, William was s a witness to Martha Washington's will, which he signed on September 22, 1800. 1874 On this day, Ann Pamela Cunningham, founder of the MVLA, gave her farewell address MVLA stands for the Mount Vernon Ladies Association, which was founded in 1853. In 1858, less than five years later, this group of indomitable women purchased Mount Vernon from the George Washington family. By so doing, they saved George Washington's eighteenth-century plantation home from development or destruction. Together with encouragement from tourists, the MVLA worked to restore the home and grounds to their full glory. Ann spoke of the need for continued work in her address: Ladies, the home of Washington is in your charge see to it that you keep It the home of Washington! Let no irreverent hand change it; let no vandal hands desecrate it with the fingers of "progress"! Let one spot, in this grand country of ours, be saved from change. Upon you rests this duty. Today we can say definitively that Ann's advice was followed. Washington's home is in top condition along with the outbuildings and the grounds. The greenhouse, which was in a fire in 1835, was fully restored in 1952. To preserve Washington's view of the Potomac, the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association purchased nearly 500 acres on the other side of the Potomac River, thanks to Mrs. Frances Payne Bolton. The latter ended up organizing one of the country's earliest land trusts. When it came to Mount Vernon, George Washington always dreamed of a fine landscape and beautiful gardens. Many enslaved people and trained gardeners made his dream a reality. George hired his first gardener in 1762. A decade later, he posted an ad that said, "a good Kitchen Gardener is what I want." After seeing the one that Margaret Tilghman Carroll installed at her home, Mount Clare, near Baltimore, George added a greenhouse. In turn, Margaret sent the plans and some plants to help the Washingtons christen their greenhouse. In 1799, one guest at Mount Vernon wrote, "[There] I saw ...English grapes, oranges, limes, and lemons... as well as a great variety of plants and flowers... exquisite in their perfume and delightful to the eye..." 1893 On this day, a witty, thoughtful, and upright citizen of South Yarmouth, Massachusetts, Stephen Sears wrote in his journal about his garden. Stephen kept a journal for posterity, and nature entries are sprinkled throughout his writings in between notes on work, worship, and family. Stephen was a Sunday School teacher, and he wrote that he thought it was "the best thing I can do for the coming generation." On this day in 1893, Stephen was 71 years old. He built a cage around a tree and burned caterpillars. He must have thought them destructive (maybe tent caterpillars?) That spring, he had "plowed [the] garden and planted peas." On June 6, he noted that "summer is here, hot and dry," and then he "transplanted [his] tomato vines and hoed [his] watermelons." Almost every day, Stephen worked in his garden. He watered daily and occasionally added seaweed as a fertilizer. On June 17, after three weeks of no rain, Stephen wrote, "The ground is wet again, and vegetation smiles." At the end of t

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1785 It was on this day that Noah Webster (books about this person) (of Webster's dictionary fame) boarded a little ship named George in Baltimore. When the ship stopped in Norfolk, Virginia, Noah ate some cherries for the very first time. He must have liked them because he later added cherry trees to his orchard. Noah Webster was a fierce gardener. He enjoyed his time in the garden, and he planted all kinds of vegetables, like parsnips, carrots, cucumbers, beets, and potatoes. In fact, in his dictionary, Noah Webster defined potatoes as, one of the cheapest and most nourishing vegetables. And then he got a little spiritual about the potato. Noah wrote, In the British dominions and in the United States, the potato has proved to be one of the greatest blessings bestowed on man by the Creator. Noah Webster was also a fan of farming. He called farming, the most necessary, the most healthy, the most innocent, and the most agreeable employment of men. Noah Webster had a property in Amhurst, and over the years, he gradually acquired the land around his property until he had around ten acres. On this land. Noah built a barn. He had a chaise house, and he also planted a magnificent garden. Everyone in Amhurst knew that Noah Webster's orchard was the best in the town. Noah grew pears. He had apple trees and peach trees - and even grew sweet white grapes, 1859 From The Diary of Calvin Fletcher, American attorney who became a prominent banker, farmer, and state senator in Indianapolis, Indiana This a beautiful day. My early corn one foot high. Early potatoes set for blossom. Early tomatoes six and eight inches high. Grapes in full blossom. Strawberrys Ditto. Two messes of green peas. The grass in the yard cut one week ago. Raspberrys nearly full grown. Currants ditto former good size latter small. 1888 Birth of Henry Beston (books by this author), American writer and naturalist. Last week I discovered Henry Beston when I researched his wife, the writer, and poet, Elizabeth Coatsworth (books by this author). I have to say it was a thrill getting to know both of them. Henry is best remembered for his book The Outermost House (1928). Henry wrote the book during the year spent on the Great Beach of Cape Cod. He isolated himself in a house on the beach and devoted himself to writing about life along the shore. Henry wrote his book in longhand at a kitchen table. During this year, when Henry was sequestered in this house, he actually met his future wife, Elizabeth, at a garden party. Later on, when he proposed marriage to Elizabeth, She told him, "No book. No marriage". So that was an extra incentive for Henry to finish his book. Now Henry and Elizabeth went on to have two little girls. Their daughter, Kate Barnes (books by this author), became a respected author and poet in her own right. Here's a little excerpt from her poem called Old Roses, which is about how her parents met. Kate wrote, When my father met my mother at a dinner party in a garden of very old roses on Beacon Hill one hot evening in early June, he said to his friend, F. Morton Smith, that night, "Morton, I have met the girl I'm going to marry!" (We have Uncle Morton's testimony for that, the certified word of a Boston lawyer.) My mother said my father had looked handsome, yes, and talked delightfully, but what she remembered were the mosquitoes. "If you stopped slapping at them, even for a second, you were eaten up alive." Henry wrote many different books. Of course, most of them are about nature, but there was one garden book that caught my attention, and it's called Herbs and the Earth. And in this book, Henry wrote. A garden of herbs, is a garden of things loved for themselves in their wholeness and integrity. It is not a garden of flowers, but a garden of plants which are sometimes very lovely flowers and are always more than flowers. Isn't that a great quote about herbs? The more I read about Henry Beston, the more it became apparent that Henry was a profound thinker and thought about gardening on a much deeper level. I think it's because Henry was so grounded in the tenants of nature. Listen to how Henry describes watering plants. This is a perspective that I have not heard before. Henry wrote. If gardeners will forget a little the phrase, "watering the plants" and think of watering as a matter of "watering the earth" under the plants, keeping up its moisture content and gauging. its need, the garden will get on very well. And isn't that the truth? Here's a delightful little quote by Henry. It's about. Fall: The leaves fall, the wind blows, and the farm country slowly changes from the summer cottons into its winter wools. 1968 Death of Helen Keller (books about this person), American author, disability rights advocate, and lecture. Helen lost both her sight and hearing w

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1819 Birth of Walt Whitman, American poet, essayist, and journalist. A humanist, Walt is remembered as the father of free verse. When Whitman was 54 years old, he suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed. He spent the next two years immersed in nature, and he believed that nature had helped to heal him. He wrote, How it all nourishes, lulls me, in the way most needed; the open air, the rye-fields, the apple orchards. Walt also appreciated flowers. He wrote, A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books. In 1892, Walt wrote one of his most celebrated prose about Wild Flowers in a piece called Specimen Days. This has been and is yet a great season for wild flowers; oceans of them line the roads through the woods, border the edges of the water-runlets, grow all along the old fences, and are scatter'd in profusion over the fields. An eight-petal'd blossom of gold-yellow clear and bright, with a brown tuft in the middle, nearly as large as a silver half-dollar, is very common; yesterday on a long drive I noticed it thickly lining the borders of the brooks everywhere. Then there is a beautiful weed cover'd with blue flowers, (the blue of the old Chinese teacups treasur'd by our grand-aunts,) I am continually stopping to admire [it] - [it's] a little larger than a dime, and very plentiful. White, however, is the prevailing color. The wild carrot I have spoken of; also the fragrant life-everlasting. But there are all hues and beauties, especially on the frequent tracts of half-open scrub-oak and dwarf-cedar hereabout - wild asters of all colors. Notwithstanding the frost-touch the hardy little chaps maintain themselves in all their bloom. 1840 Birth of Charles McIlvaine, American author, and mycologist. Charles was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania. He served as a captain in the Pennsylvania Infantry. After the Civil War, he always went by "Captain." When he was 40, Charles moved to West Virginia, where he wrote articles for magazines like Century and Harpers. After the war, food was scarce, and Charles started hunting and eating mushrooms. Charles ate virtually every specimen he encountered and even dabbled in mushrooms said to be poisonous. If he suffered no ill effects, Charles deemed a specimen edible. Before Charles's work, the USDA issued a report in 1885 that claimed there were only twelve edible species of mushrooms in the United States. Today Charles is best known for his 1896 book called 1,000 American Fungi. Charles was passionate about mycology, and he included his experiences with eating almost every species mentioned in his book. He wrote, I take no man's word for the qualities of a toadstool. I go for it myself. Charles claimed to have eaten over 1,000 mushrooms and toadstools, and he said he enjoyed the flavor of most of them. His daring ingestion of so many species earned Charles the nickname Old Iron Guts. Charles lived to be 69 and defied the old saying, There are old mushroom hunters and there are bold mushroom hunters, but there are no old bold mushroom hunters. Charles was indeed an old, bold mycologist. Charles's experimentation is all the more impressive given the challenging nature of mushroom identification. If you find plant identification challenging, mushroom identification is much more involved and often requires chemical reagents and microscopic evaluation. In our modern times, DNA sequencing can also definitively establish species. Thanks to his excellent writing skills, Charles wrote about mushrooms in a friendly and conversational manner. Here's what Charles wrote about the Oyster Mushroom: The camel is gratefully called the ship of the desert. The oyster mushroom is the shellfish of the forest. When the tender parts are dipped in egg, rolled in bread crumbs, and fried as an oyster, they're not excelled buy any vegetable and are worth of place on the daintiest menu. Here's how Charles described the Vomiting Russella: Most are sweet and nutty to the taste. Some are as hot as the fiercest cayenne, but this they lose upon cooking. Their caps make the most palatable dishes when stewed, baked, roasted or escalloped. Finally, here's a little-known poem that Charles wrote called Our Church Fight. I'm that nigh near disgusted with the fight in our old church, Where one halfs 'g'in the t'other, an' the Lord's left in the lurch, That I went an' told the parson if he'd jine me in a prayer, We'd slip out 'mong the daisies and' put one up from there. Charles is remembered in the name of the journal of the North American Mycological Association (NAMA), McIlvainea ("Mick-ill-vay-nee-ah"). 1893 Birth of Elizabeth Coatsworth, American writer of fiction and poetry for children and adults. In 1931, She won the Newbery Medal for her children's book, The Cat Who Went to Heaven. Elizabeth'

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1669 Birth of Sébastien Vaillant ("Vy-yaw"), French botanist. Appointed to the King's garden in Paris, Sebastien loved organizing and cataloging plants. Biographical accounts say Sebastian showed a passion for plants from the age of five. His masterpiece, forty years in the making, Botanicon Parisienne, was a book about the flora of Paris. It wasn't published until five years after his death. Sebastian's work on plant sexuality inspired generations of botanists and set the stage for Linneaus to develop his sexual system of plant classification. Linnaeus used the male stamens to determine the class and the female pistils to determine the order. And like Sebastion, Linnaeus often compared plant sexuality to that of humans. Linnaeus wrote, Love even seizes... plants... both [males and females], even the hermaphrodites, hold their nuptials, which is what I now intend to discuss. Sebastian caused a sensation at the Royal Garden in Paris on June 10, 1717. On that day, he presented a lecture titled, Lecture on the Structure of the Flowers: Their Differences and the Use of Their Parts. He began by reinforcing the idea that the flower is the most essential part of a plant - essential to reproduction - and then he began to lead his scientific colleagues into a deep dive on plant sexuality - at six in the morning, no less. Before Sebastian's lecture, the topic of sex in the plant world had only been touched on lightly, allowing flowers and blossoms to maintain their reputation as pure, sweet, and innocent. Today, we can imagine the reaction of his 600-person audience as he began using fairly explicit language and the lens of human sexuality to describe the sex lives of plants. A 2002 translation of Sebastian's speech was presented in the Huntia - a Journal of Botanical History. Sebastian started his lecture with these words, Perhaps the language I am going to use for this purpose will seem a little novel for botany, but since it will be filled with terminology that is perfectly proper for the use of the parts ... I intend to expose, I believe it will be more comprehensible than the old fashioned terminology, which — being crammed with incorrect and ambiguous terms [is] better suited for confusing the subject than for shedding light on it. Sebastian's discussion of the plant embryos was rather poetic: Who can imagine that a prism with four faces becomes a Pansy; a narrow roll, the Borage; a kidney, the Daffodil; that a cross can metamorphose into a maple; two crystal balls intimately glued to each other, [Comfrey], etc.? These are nevertheless the shapes favored in these diverse plants by their lowly little embryos. 1742 On this day, Horace Walpole wrote to Horace Mann, in part describing his visit to Ranelagh ("Ron-ah-lay") Gardens in Chelsea. Ranelagh had opened just two days prior, and it was one of several pleasure gardens opened around this time. Horace wrote, Today calls itself May the 26th, as you perceive by the date; but I am writing to you by the fireside, instead of going to Vauxhall. If we have one warm day in seven, "we bless our stars, and think it luxury." And yet we have as much waterworks and fresco diversions, as if we lay ten degrees nearer warmth. Two nights ago Ranelagh-gardens were opened at Chelsea; the Prince, Princess, Duke, much nobility, and much mob besides, were there. There is a vast amphitheatre, finely gilt, painted, and illuminated, into which everybody that loves eating, drinking, staring, or crowding, is admitted for twelvepence. The building and... gardens cost sixteen thousand pounds. Twice a-week there are to be ridottos... [entertainment] for which you are to have a supper and music. I was there last night, but did not find the joy of it. Vauxhall is a little better; the garden is pleasanter, and [you arrive] by water... Horace must have come to prefer Ranelagh. He later wrote, It has totally beat Vauxhall... You can't set your foot without treading on a Prince, or Duke of Cumberland. Finally, it was Horace Walpole who wrote, When people will not weed their own minds, they are apt to be overrun by nettles. 1811 On this day, Thomas Jefferson wrote to his granddaughter, Anne, who was visiting her in-laws: Nothing new has happened in our neighborhood since you left us. The houses and trees stand where they did. The flowers come forth like the belles of the day, have their short reign of beauty and splendor, and retire like them to the more interesting office of reproducing their like. The hyacinths and tulips are off the stage, the irises are giving place to the belladonnas, as this will to the tuberoses etc. Thomas was not able to garden much during the summer of 1811. His arthritis had flared, and he found himself almost entirely bedridden. 1921 On this day, Kate Lancaster Brewster resigned as editor o

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1803 Birth of Ralph Waldo Emerson, American transcendentalist, essayist, philosopher, and poet. After graduating from Harvard, Ralph decided to go by his middle name, Waldo. He was beloved by his fellow Harvard classmates, and many became his lifelong friends. Waldo served as his class poet. Waldo met his first wife, Ellen, on Christmas Day six years later. Two years later, he lost her to tuberculosis. Her death eventually made him a wealthy man — although Waldo had to sue his inlaws to get his inheritance. After losing Ellen, Waldo traveled to Europe and visited the Royal Botanical Garden while he was in Paris. The experience was a revelation to him. There Waldo began to see connections between different plant species thanks to Jussieu's natural way of organizing the garden. The American historian and biographer Robert D. Richardson wrote about this period of heightened awareness for Waldo. He wrote, Emerson's moment of insight into the interconnectedness of things in the Jardin des Plantes was a moment of almost visionary intensity that pointed him away from theology and toward science. When he returned to the states, Waldo became friends with other forward thinkers and writers of his time: William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Thomas Carlyle. In 1835, Waldo married again. His second wife was named Lydia Jackson. Waldo changed her name to Lidian, and he also had many pet names for her, like Queenie and Asia - but she always called him "Mr. Emerson." Around that time, Waldo began to think differently about the world and his perspective on life. As the son of a minister, his move away from religion and societal beliefs was quite impressive. In 1836, Waldo published his philosophy of transcendentalism in an essay he titled "Nature." He wrote: Nature is a language and every new fact one learns is a new word; but it is not a language taken to pieces and dead in the dictionary, but [a] language put together into a most significant and universal sense. I wish to learn this language, not that I may know a new grammar, but that I may read the great book that is written in that tongue. Waldo also advised, Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience. As Waldo grew older, he immensely enjoyed gardening. His time in the garden also proved revelatory. Waldo had hired workers to help him in the landscape as a younger man. As a mature man, he recognized the benefits of exercise and a feeling of satisfaction from doing garden work all by himself. Waldo wrote, When I go into the garden with a spade and dig a bed, I feel such an exhilaration and [good] health that I discover that I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me what I should have done with my own hands. He also quipped, All my hurts my garden spade can heal. In the twilight of his life, Ralph Waldo Emerson was invited to join a group of nine intellectuals on a camping trip in the Adirondacks. The trip had one mission: to connect with nature. Waldo's traveling companions included Harvard's naturalist Louis Agassiz, the great botanist James Russell Lowell, and the American naturalist Jeffries Wyman. They had a marvelous time. It was Ralph Waldo Emerson who wrote, The landscape belongs to the person who looks at it. And another Waldo quote is a personal favorite, The Earth laughs in flowers. Finally, here's a little prayer Waldo wrote to thank God for the gifts of nature. For flowers that bloom about our feet; For tender grass, so fresh, so sweet; For song of bird, and hum of bee; For all things fair we hear or see, Father in heaven, we thank Thee! 1909 On this day, Miss Amanda Palmer, a teacher at Wilmington Normal School in Wilmington, North Carolina, shared her experience of taking her students on nature-based field trips. Her report was published in the Atlantic Educational Journal. Amanda wrote, On a field trip, a pupil... gains more of life's lessons than could possibly be learned in the schoolroom. These trips lead the children to ask questions, which the teacher must answer. My class is composed of children in the fourth year primary. On one trip, trees of the neighborhood were studied. The flowers commanded our attention on still another trip. [Flowers like] the wild carrot, the yarrow, and wild mustard were examined. On one occasion a great mullein, or velvet dock, was brought into school. It was greatly admired by the children. On the next field trip no child had to be told what a mullein was. They, themselves, each saw and knew the mullein. On our trips, we sometimes catch glimpses of shy, wild creatures-a water-snake or, perhaps, a prairie hen. Again we may see only tracks here, the tiny footprints of a field-mouse; there, the path of a snake. On one trip we looked for birds especially, using field glasses. After hearing and seei

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1794 Birth of William Whewell ("Hyoo- uhl"), English polymath, scientist, and Anglican priest. He was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. William was a unique blend of right and left brain aptitudes. As a university student, he was recognized for his work in both poetry and mathematics. In Elizabeth Gilbert's The Signature of All Things, she wrote of William's signature accomplishment - devising the word "scientist." She wrote, ...the word scientist had been coined, by the polymath William Whewell. Many scholars had objected to this blunt new term, as it sounded so sinisterly similar to that awful word atheist; Why not simply continue to call themselves natural philosophers? Was that designation not more godly, more pure? But divisions were being drawn now between the realm of nature and the realm of philosophy. Ministers who doubled as botanists or geologists were becoming increasingly rare, as far too many challenges to biblical truths were stirred up through investigation of the natural world. It used to be that God was revealed in the wonders of nature; now God was being challenged by those same wonders. Scholars were now required to choose one side or the other. 1819 Birth of Queen Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from June 20, 1837, until she died in 1901. Her reign of 63 years and seven months was longer than any previous British monarch and is known as the Victorian era. In 2019, Kensington Palace celebrated the bicentenary, the 200th anniversary, of Victoria's birth with a large floral display in the sunken garden. The display included blossoms from the Victorian era, such as heliotropes, cannas, pelargonium, and begonias. The humble violet was Queen Victoria's favorite flower. Today many plants are named for Queen Victoria, including the Victoria agave and the giant waterlily, Victoria amazonica. 1861 It was on this day that 45-year-old Anne Frobel, who lived outside of Alexandria, Virginia, not far from Mount Vernon started her Civil War diary with these words, I never saw 'Wilton' my dear old home looking more lovely and inviting. The trees and plants had put on their loveliest spring attire, and the garden was resplendent with the bloom of rare and brilliant flowers, and the fields were all smiling with a bright prospect of an abundant harvest. The following day, Anne's farmhouse, like many homes in Alexandria and all along the Potomac, was ceased by Union soldiers looking for quarters. Anne shared her home with her sister Lizzie. The two women never married. Anne's journal gives a glimpse of what it was like for Southern women of the Civil War era to endure four years of occupation as troops and scavengers used their land for firewood, food, and water. One day, Anne recounted how a Union officer shared a story over dinner at her table about how he had destroyed the last turnips. Anne wrote, My very blood boiled! 1905 On this day, the banker H. Howard Pepper of Providence, Rhode Island, wrote a letter to the magazine Country Life in America, I have had the gardening fever for three summers. ...All the work in the garden is done by myself, and it takes about two hours a day. We started with these objects in view: To have cut flowers for the house at all times. To have a mass of roses in the backyard. To have [flowers] in the garden all season. Our lot is the average city size, fifty by one hundred feet. The house is twenty feet from the street line, where there are two large elm trees that shade the lawn and beds in front. While these trees are beautiful and we would not part with them, yet they are great deal of trouble, They require spraying each spring, and their roots fill ... the drainpipes, causing much annoyance and expense. I should never plant elm trees near flowerbeds or drain pipes. The backyard is surrounded by a five-foot board fence on the north and east and picket fence on the south. Climbing nasturtiums cover the picket fence, and [we want] to have climbers hide the board fence, which is covered with wire netting hung on hooks In case the fence is to be painted, the vines and netting can easily be laid down. A woodbine trumpet-vine and Clematis paniculeta are already established, The single tuberous begonias are the best bedding plants I know; they bloom all summer. Last year's hollyhocks were affected with blight; we have overcome that disease by spraying with ... One ounce of carbonate of copper made into a paste with one• half pint of water; slowly add one-half pint of strong ammonia water (twenty-six degrees}; water, nine gallons. Our spraying outfit consists of a wooden pail and whisk broom. The broom is far ahead of the ordinary syringe, as it is not so wasteful. The sweet-pea bed, or No. 5, is twelve feet long and three and one-half feet wide. Last year, by

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1707 Birth of Carl Linnaeus (books about this person), Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician. Carl was a fan of flowers early on in his life. As a young child, his mother gave him flowers to soothe him whenever he was upset. On May 1st, 1753, the publication of his masterpiece Species Plantarum changed plant taxonomy forever. The work gave Linnaeus the moniker Father of Taxonomy; his naming system is called binomial nomenclature. Binomial means "two names," which in the naming game includes the plant's genus (which is capitalized or could be abbreviated by its first letter) and species or specific epithet (which is all lowercase and can be shortened sp.) If you have trouble remembering taxonomy, I like to think of it as a person's given name and surname, but in reverse order. Linnaeus's names live on unchanged and are distinguished by an "L." after their name. And it was Linnaeus himself who said: God created, Linnaeus ordered. There are many stories about Linnaeus, but I thought I'd share a few more-obscure stories about him and his work. First, Linnaeus' friend Anders Celsius created the Centigrade thermometer in 1742, with water boiling at 0 degrees and freezing at 100. Three years later, Linnaeus reversed the scale - sharing it in an article with the Botanical Garden at Uppsala University. Second, there is a memorable story about Linnaeus and the genus Commelina, the genus of the Asiatic Dayflower. Linnaeus named the genus after the three Commelin brothers, two of whom achieved much in botany and one who died young before amounting to anything. Linnaeus wrote: Commelina has three petals, two of which are showy — where the third is not conspicuous. Next time you see the Commelina communis or Asiatic Dayflower (with two large blue petals and one tiny white petal), you can remember the Commelins and Linnaeus' kind commemoration of the three brothers. Another fun story about Linnaeus involved a trip he took to Lapland when Linnaeus was 25 years old. Carl spent nearly six months there, and he came back with stories of an obscure part of Scandinavia few people knew existed. The expedition was trying, and Linneaus suffered from hunger, mosquitoes, freezing temperatures, near death from a rockslide and a gunshot wound. Through it all, Linnaeus fell in love with the Lapland. He even brought home a traditional costume complete with a magical drum as a souvenir from his adventure. Five years later, an obscure German painter named Martin Hoffman painted Linnaeus' portrait. And, guess what did Linnaeus choose to wear for the sitting? His Lapland costume (Of course!). In Hoffman's Linnaeus, a 30-year-old Linnaeus is seen wearing boots made of reindeer skin. He's also wearing an early version of a toolbelt. Suspended from the belt is a magical drum from a shaman, a needle to make nets, a snuffbox, a cartridge box, and a knife. Linnaeus is also wearing traditional Laplander gloves, and in his right hand, he holds his favorite plant: the Twinflower, Linnaea borealis. 1799 Birth of Thomas Hood was an English poet, author, and humorist. Thomas is remembered for his poems "The Bridge of Sighs" and "The Song of the Shirt." Here's an excerpt from his poem Song. 'Tis like the birthday of the world, When earth was born in bloom; The light is made of many dyes, The air is all perfume: There's crimson buds, and white and blue, The very rainbow showers Have turned to blossoms where they fell, And sown the earth with flowers. And here's my all-time favorite Thomas Hood poem, and it's called No. No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease, No comfortable feel in any member - No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees, No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds - November! 1843 Birth of Georgiana Molloy (books about this person), English-Australian pioneer and one of the first botanical collectors in Western Australia. Georgiana's life in the 1830s in Western Australia was one of extreme hardship. Her first child died shortly after it was born, and her only son ended up drowning in a well. After these events, Georgiana naturally struggled to find joy in her life. But in 1836, at the end of the year, Georgiana received a letter from a man named James Mangles. James was an officer in the Royal Navy and a naturalist, horticulturist, and writer. He wrote to ask Georgiana for help, and his request for botanical specimens gave her life new meaning. James had made arrangements for several people to collect for him in Australia. He was very strategic in that regard. But it also meant that James was uniquely qualified to review the work done by collectors in Western Australia before 1850. The result was that James was a huge fan of Georgiana's work. He once wrote. [Georgiana's collections] were full of pressed plants that were mounted and set

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events National Pick Strawberries Day Here are a few fun facts about this beloved sweet fruit: The etymology of the name strawberry (books about this topic) is likely a corruption of the phrase "strewn berry." This would reference the way the plant produced thanks prolifically to runners, resulting in berries strewn about the ground. Fragariaphobia is a little-known word and is the fear of strawberries. In terms of their uniqueness, strawberries are the only fruit that wears its seeds on the outside, and the average strawberry has 200 seeds. Strawberries are perennial and are members of the rose family. The strawberry flower averages five to seven petals. In terms of harvesting, strawberry plants are hand-picked about every three days. A single acre of land can grow almost 50,000 pounds of strawberries. California produces a billion pounds of strawberries every year which means that 75% of the American strawberry crop is grown in California - with Florida and North Carolina in the 2nd and 3rd place. As for strawberry quotes, the author Tsugumi Ohba, Death Note Box Set, wrote, If you keep my secret, this strawberry is yours. 1846 On this day, the Prussian botanist Ludwig Leichhardt (books about this person) wrote a letter to a fellow botanist about his impressive and arduous collecting efforts in Australia. For his part, Ludwig loved Australia. He wrote, I would find it hard to remain in Germany, or even in Europe, now. I [prefer] the clear, sunny skies of Australia. On this day, 1846, Leichhardt wrote a letter to his botanist contact and friend, the Italian Gaetano Durando, living in Paris. Ludwig's message conveys the extreme difficulties and dangers faced by the early plant explorers. He wrote, My dear friend, You have, no doubt, noticed and regretted my long silence... But you must bear this in mind, my good friend, ... it was not my lot to travel all at my ease... Gladly would I have made drawings of my plants, and noted fully all particulars of the different species which I saw; and how valuable would such memoranda have been... [as] four of my pack-horses having been drowned. Botanical and geological specimens thus abandoned — how disappointing! From four to five thousand plants were thus sacrificed... In the spring of 1848, Ludwig Leichhardt and a small group of explorers began what was to be a two- to three-year expedition across Australia. Shortly after starting the trek, the entire party vanished with barely a trace. Still known as the 'Prince of Explorers,' Leichhardt was 35 when he was lost to time. 1858 On this day, in The Flower Garden, Or Breck's Book of Flowers, Tulips at their peak per Joseph Breck A bed of late tulips is generally in its highest perfection about the 20th of May and may be kept in fine condition a fortnight longer, taking the trouble to erect an awning over them. I take up my Tulips about the 20th of June, and dry them undercover in an airy place, and, when dry, take off the offsets and plant them out, while the flowering roots are each wrapped in a piece of waste paper, and put away, in a box or drawer, in a dry place, until wanted to plant. One hundred different varieties, with their names and colors, reputed to be the very best, mabe obtained from Holland, at the cost of about $25; but I have found, by experience, that some of the rarer and most expensive sorts are not included. Very good border Tulips, including finedouble sorts, early and late, single, parrots, etc, may be obtained from 50 cents to $1 per dozen, and some of the common sorts at much less price. So there is some tulip pricing for you courtesy of Joseph Breck back in 1858. And just for comparison, I went out to brecks.com and priced some of their deluxe tulips. They sell eight tulips for $15. 1922 On this day, the sorority of Pi Beta Phi at West Virginia University held a party to celebrate the arrival of spring. In a report of their activities to the 1922 edition of The Arrow, the chapter wrote, The spring party comes on May 20. It will be a Japanese party, with lanterns, spring blossoms, and wooden programs. Present Day On or around this day in Blackville, South Carolina, that Cuke Season gets underway. The Encyclopedia of South Carolina (2000) says this about Blackville: Named for Alexander Black, an early railroad executive who shipped cantaloupes, watermelons, and cucumbers in large quantities by rail. During the "cuke" season, beginning about May 20, the town council employs an auctioneer to conduct daily sales, generally starting at 10 in the morning and frequently lasting until 6. At the auction, growers may accept or refuse the offered prices. Buyers are usually local produce merchants, though there are often purchasers from markets out of state. Grow That Garden Library™ Book Recommendation Garden Maker by Christie Purifoy

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1780 It was on this day that much of New England was shrouded in darkness. In fact, many feared that Judgment Day had arrived And so this day became known as The Dark Day. During this day, the sun rose as per usual. But around 10 o'clock in the morning, the sky grew dark. So dark that there were reports of candle-lit lunches, and people stopped what they were doing to pray. The blackout spread from Portland, Maine, to New Jersey. Boston newspapers reported that chickens returned to their roosts after the darkness began, and animals returned to their places in the barn - even they knew that something odd was going on. Even General George Washington wrote about the dark day in his diary. The nature poet John Greenleaf Whittier (books about this person) wrote about the event in a poem. Twas on a May-day of the far-old years Seventeen hundred eighty, that there fell Over the bloom and sweet life of the spring, Over the fresh earth, and the heaven of noon, A horror of great darkness.' "Men prayed, and women wept; all ears grew sharp To hear the doom-blast of the trumpet shatter The black sky. Instead of Judgment Day, it's now generally believed that the darkness stemmed from a fire out west. And the following night, on May 19th in 1780, New England was treated to a full moon that was said to be as red as blood set against the night sky - a spring to remember. 1864 Death of Nathaniel Hawthorne (books about this person), American novelist, and short-story writer. In May 1866, Nathaniel's sister Sophia was writing about The Wayside landscape in a letter to her friend, Annie Fields. She wrote: There is a beauty in May which there is not in July. After these latter rains, the glory of tender and deep greens surpasses all words . . . the walks — the paths look so nice, and there is no knowing what enormity of sauciness the weeds will arrive at by July. In 1843, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a crazy short story that not many people know about today. The story was about a mad scientist who becomes obsessed about removing his wife Georgiana's birthmark. And so the scientist, concocts a remedy for the blemish and creates a solution using the leaves of geraniums. As his wife drinks this potion, her birthmark does fade away, but in the process, the mixture also kills her. Thus, she dies a perfect unblemished woman. And that's the end of this little known and very bizarre short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne. 1906 On this day, Country Life gave an update on the season of tulips. They wrote, The writer regards the season of Tulips as one of the brightest and happiest of the year. Daffodils still flutter in the wind, the first of the Roses are bursting their buds, and the whole air is filled with the scent of wayside of garden flowers. But it is the Tulip that gives the colour, splashes of crimson,scarlet, yellow, rose, white, and even black. A black Tulip is a reality, and is known as The Sultan. It belongs to the race called Darwin, but we prefer the homely name of the May or Cottage Tulip. Dusky as the firm, short segments are, they have weird, strange beauty, which is as fascinating as the clear crimson of the greatest of all Tulips, Tulipa gesneriana major, which opens its big goblets to the sun and discloses a pool of inky blue at the base. A few years ago the May Tulips were seldom seen, but persistent reference to them has brought about a revolution: so much so, that one greets the Tulip with much the same affection as the Daffodil which precedes it. We believe it was in the Royal Gardens, Kew, that the Gesner and other Tulips were first planted in large beds, and the effect of their glorious colour we shall ever remember, it was a novel sight... So there you go—an update on tulip season from 1906. And isn't it interesting to think about how tulips were perceived compared to the daffodil a little over a hundred years ago? 1934 Birth of Ruskin Bond (books about this person), Indian author of British descent. Ruskin's novels, The Room on the Roof and Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra, received critical acclaim and he's written hundreds of short stories, essays, and books for children. In The Room on the Roof, Ruskin wrote, I don't want to rot like mangoes at the end of the season, or burnout like the sun at the and of the day. I cannot live like the gardener, the cook and water-carrier, doing the same task everyday of my life... I want to be either somebody or nobody. I don't want to be anybody. From Rain in the Mountains: Notes from the Himalayas, Ruskin wrote, Yes, I'd love to have a garden of my own--spacious, and full of everything that is fragrant and flowering. But if I don't succeed, never mind--I've still got the dream. Finally, in his book, A Book of Simple Living: Brief Notes from the Hills, Ruskin wrote, Botanists have done their best to in

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1868 Birth of Tsar Nicholas II (books about this person), the last Emperor of Russia, King of Congress Poland, and Grand Duke of Finland, ruling from 1 November 1894 until his abdication on 15 March 1917. On his fiftieth birthday on this day in 1918, he was essentially under house arrest by the Bolsheviks along with the rest of his family, the Romanovs (books about this family), in Yekaterinburg "Yek-ah-teerin- borg" (the fourth largest city in Russia) in a private home called Ipatiev ("ee-pah-tee-iv") or the "House of Special Purpose." It would be Nicholas's last birthday. In June, he wrote in his diary "It was unbearable to sit that way, locked up, and not be in a position to go out into the garden when you wanted and spend a fine evening outside." That same month, his wife, Alexandra, wrote, "Out in the garden, fearfully hot, sat under the bushes. They have given us. . . half an hour more for being out. Heat, airlessness in the rooms intense." By the 23rd of June, Alexandra noted the wonder of breathing in the fresh summer air. She wrote, Two of the soldiers came and took out one window in our room. Such joy, delicious air at last, and one window no longer whitewashed. The air in the room became clean and by evening, cool. Nicholas observed, The fragrance from all the town's gardens is amazing. This moment would be one of the family's last happy times. On July 17, 1918, the entire family, including their children and most faithful servants, were brought to the basement and executed. Today there is nothing left of the Ipatiev house. It was demolished in September of 1977, and the land was given to the Russian Orthodox Church. The altar inside a church called the Church on the Blood is on the very spot where the Romanovs died. The beautiful church honors Nicholas and his family, now regarded as saints in the Russian Orthodox Church. 1926 On this day, Ralph Waldo Emerson (books by this author) wrote in his journal: My garden is an honest place. Every tree and every vine are incapable of concealment and tell after two or three months exactly what sort of treatment they have had. The sower may mistake and sow his peas crookedly: the peas make no mistake, but come up and show his line. 1944 Birth of Winfried Georg Sebald ("Say-bald") (books by this author), who went by Max and wrote as W. G. Sebald, German writer and academic. When Max died at 57, he was regarded as one of the greatest authors of his time. His 2001 novel Austerlitz was Sebald's final novel. The book was honored with the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2019, it ranked 5th on The Guardian's list of the 100 best books of the 21st century. Here's an excerpt: In the warmer months of the year, one or other of those nocturnal insects quite often strays indoors from the small garden behind my house. When I get up early in the morning, I find them clinging to the wall, motionless. I believe, said Austerlitz, they know they have lost their way since if you do not put them out again carefully, they will stay where they are, never moving, until the last breath is out of their bodies. Indeed they will remain in the place where they came to grief even after death, held fast by the tiny claws that stiffened in their last agony until a draft of air detaches them and blows them into a dusty corner. Sometimes, seeing one of these moths that have met their end in my house, I wonder what kind of fear and pain they feel while they are lost. 1955 Death of Mary McLeod Bethune (books about this person), American educator, philanthropist, humanitarian, womanist, and civil rights activist. Mary was the fifteenth child - and the first baby born free - to her newly freed parents, who were enslaved before the Civil War and owned by a different master. Mary's father, Samuel, had worked to "buy" his bride. Most of Mary's older brothers and sisters were sold to other masters. Mary was also the first person in her family to go to school. In 1904, Mary moved to Daytona, Florida. There, she created the Daytona Literary and Industrial School for Training Negro Girls, and within two years, she had 250 students. Without any means, Mary improvised and used sticks of charcoal for pencils, mashed elderberries for ink, and cardboard boxes for tables and chairs. Mary put fifteen dollars in pennies, nickels, and dimes down on a swampy piece of land that served as a garbage dump. It was called Hell's Hole. With the help of benefactors, Mary built a four-story building on the site. Over the main doors were the words "Enter to Learn," and looking up over the same doors upon leaving, students saw the words "Depart to Serve." Mary's school continued to grow until it merged with an all-boys school and became Bethune-Cookman College (B-CC). As the school's first president, Mary reflected, When I walk throug

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1510 Death of Sandro Botticelli, Italian Renaissance master. His painting Allegory of Abundance or Autumn is one of his most elaborate and detailed drawings, and it depicts an abundance of flowers and fruits. Sandro painted idyllic garden scenes filled with beautiful women and men from the classical period. His painting, Primavera, depicts nine springtime gods and goddesses from classical mythology in a garden. Venus, the goddess of love, presides over the Garden of the Hesperides. To her right, Flora, the goddess of flowers, sprinkles roses. The garden features orange and laurel trees and dozens of other species of plants. 1642 On this day, Paul de Chomedey, Sieur de Maisonneuve, French military officer, catches his first glimpse of Montreal's landscape. He is recognized as the founder of Fort Ville-Marie (modern-day Montreal) in New France (Province of Quebec, Canada). In George Waldo Browne's 1905 book, The St. Lawrence River: Historical, Legendary, Picturesque, he wrote, On the 17th of May, the rounded slopes of Mount Royal, clad in the delicate green foliage of spring, burst into sight, stirring the hearts of the anxious beholders with newfound joy. They were delighted with the scenery. The fragrance of the springing forest permeated the balmy air, and, what was dearer far to them, over the water and over the landscape, rested an air of peace quite in keeping with their pious purpose. Maisonneuve was the first to step upon the land, and as the others followed him... they fell upon their knees, sending up their songs of praise and thanksgiving. Their first work was to erect an altar at a favorable spot within sight and sound of the riverbank, the women decorating the rough woodwork with some of the wildflowers growing in abundance upon the island, until the whole, looked very beautiful. Then every member of the party... knelt in solemn silence while M. Barthelemy Vimont... performed ...high mass. As he closed, he addressed his little congregation with these prophetic words: You are a grain of mustard seed that shall rise and grow till its branches overshadow the earth. 1810 Death of Robert Tannahill, Scottish poet, and lyricist. Remembered as the 'Weaver Poet,' Robert was born in Paisley and is often hailed as Paisley's own Robert Burns, as his work is said to rival Robert Burns. Today in Paisley, a stunning 50ft high mural of a young Robert Tannahill was painted by Mark Worst, collaborating with Paisley Housing Association. The mural overlooks where Robert Tannahill was born on Castle Street in 1774. One of Robert's most beloved songs is Will Ye Go Lassie, Go. The lyrics mention picking Wild Mountain Thyme, a plant known botanically as Thymus serpyllum (TY-mus sir-PIE-lum). Wild Mountain Thyme is a showy, wide growing groundcover from the Old World and has beautiful rose-red flowers and glossy deep green, mat-forming foliage. In the song, the thyme has grown in and around the heather. O the summer time has come And the trees are sweetly bloomin' The wild mountain thyme Grows around the bloomin' heather Will ye go, lassie, go? And we'll all go together To pull wild mountain thyme All around the bloomin' heather Will ye go, lassie, go? 1885 Birth of Elvin Charles Stakman, American plant pathologist. Elvin is remembered for his work identifying and combatting diseases in wheat. In 1917, he married fellow a plant pathologist named Estelle Louise Jensen. He also encouraged Norman Borlaug to pursue his career in phytopathology after Norman's job at the Forest Service was eliminated due to budget cuts. Elvin was Norman's teacher. And Norman went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize (1970) after discovering dwarf wheat varieties that reduced famine in India, Pakistan, and other third world countries. In 1938, Elvin gave a speech entitled These Shifty Little Enemies that Destroy our Food Crops. During his talk, Elvin focused on one shifty little enemy in particular: rust. Rust is a parasitic fungus that feeds on phytonutrients in grain crops like wheat, oat, and barley. Today, Elvin is remembered with the naming of Stakman Hall - the building where Plant Pathology is taught - at the University of Minnesota's St. Paul campus. In The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World, Charles Mann reflected, Stakman did not view science as a disinterested quest for knowledge. It was a tool—may be the tool—for human betterment. Not all sciences were equally valuable, as he liked to explain. "Botany," he said, "is the most important of all sciences, and plant pathology is one of its most essential branches. Grow That Garden Library™ Book Recommendation 150 Gardens You Need To Visit Before You Die by Stefanie Waldek This book came out in 2022. Stefanie writes in her introduction: In 150 Gard

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1735 On this day, a French expedition made the first attempt to transport cinchona trees to Europe. The scientist Charles Marie de La Condamine was the first man to describe the Cinchona tree, the scientist Charles Marie de La Condamine, was on the expedition along with the botanist Joseph de Jussieu. Their mission was to add the trees to a Paris collection, but sadly the trees were lost when they were washed overboard. Once Europe learned of the power of the Cinchona tree, they were eager to get their hands on the bark. Cinchona's name was in honor of a Spanish Countess named Ana, and her second marriage was to the Count of Chinchon. After the Count was given the job of serving as the viceroy of Peru, a station that oversaw the entire continent of South America, except for Brazil, the couple arrived in Lima in 1629. The following year, the Countess grew gravely ill with tertian ague. She suffered a fever that occurred every other day, the Governor of Loxa, Don Francisco Lopez de Canizares, sent over a life-saving parcel of cinchona bark. With the cinchona powder, the Countess made a rapid recovery. Eleven years later, when the Count and Countess began their return trip to Spain, they brought along a precious supply of the curative Quina bark for use with their people. They also hoped to introduce cinchona medicine to the rest of Europe. Sadly, Ana died during the long voyage home in Cartegena in December 1639. But Ana's legacy lives on in the medicine we know today as quinine. After her husband, the Count returned to Spain, the medicinal Quina bark powder became known as Pulvis Comitissa in honor of the Countess. And over 100 years later, Linneaus named the genus Cinchona in honor of the Countess of Chinchon in 1742. Linneaus should have called it Chinchona, but he forgot the "h." 1809 On this day, the herbalist and midwife Martha Ballard worked in the raised beds in her garden and recorded her annual spring gardening efforts. For 27 years, Martha kept a journal of her work as a gardener, town healer, and midwife for Hallowell, Maine. Today, Martha's great journal gives us a glimpse into the plants she regularly used and how she applied them medicinally. As for how Martha sourced her plants, she raised them in her garden or foraged them in the wild. As the village apothecary, Martha found her own ingredients and made all of her herbal remedies personally. As a midwife, Martha assisted with 816 births. In May of 1809, Martha worked in the gardens surrounding her house. She sowed, set, planted, and transplanted. On May 15, she planted squash, cucumbers, muskmelons, and watermelons. And on this day, May 16, she sowed string peas at the end of her garden. In Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's work, The Life of Martha Ballard, she writes, Martha's was an ordinary garden, a factory for food and medicine that incidentally provided nourishment to the soul. "I have workt in my gardin," she wrote on May 17, the possessive pronoun the only hint of the sense of ownership she felt in her work. The garden was hers, though her husband or son or the Hallowell and Augusta Bank owned the land. "I have squash and Cucumbers come up in the bed [on the] east side the house," she wrote on May 22. The garden was hers because she turned the soil, dropped the seeds, and each year recorded in her diary, as though it had never happened before, the recurring miracle of spring. 1861 On this day, Union Captain Jacob Ritner wrote back to his wife, Emeline. Jacob and Emeline exchanged marvelous letters throughout the Civil War that depicted their heroic lives on both the battlefield and homefront. While Jacob wrote with the tragic news of war, Emeline kept him apprised of their four small children and the challenges of maintaining the family farm. Emeline's news from home kept Jacob sane and anchored to the happier reality that awaited him after the war. Emeline often wrote about the garden and the landscape, proving that even news of a faraway garden can be anchoring and grounding amid hardship. And so, on this day back in 1861, Jacob wrote in his letter, Now Emeline dear, you must write me a great long letter next Sunday. Tell me all the news, how the trees grow, the garden and grass, what everybody says... 1918 On this day, the rose season began at Munstead Wood, the Arts and Crafts style home and surrounding gardens in Surrey, England, created by garden designer Gertrude Jekyll. Munstead Wood became famous thanks to Gertrude's books and articles in magazines like Country Life. Gertrude lived at Munstead Wood from 1897 to 1932. Volume 82 of The Garden celebrated the first rose to open at Munstead Wood on this day by reporting, The rose season begins. The opening the first Rose is always a source of delight. The first we have seen in the open this year was the pink R

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1815 On this day, Mary Russell Mitford wrote about the changing times in a letter to her friend, Sir William Elford, English banker, politician, and amateur artist. Our grandmothers, when about to make a beau-pot (A large ornamental vase for cut flowers.), proceeded, I fancy, much as their gardeners when clipping a yew hedge or laying out a parterre. Every stalk and stem was in its place; tulip answered tulip, and peony stared at peony. Even a rebellious leaf was reduced to order, and the huge bouquet spread its tremendous width as flat, as stiff, and almost as ugly as its fair framer's painted fan. We, their granddaughters, throw our honeysuckles and posies into their vases with little other care than to produce the grace of nature by its carelessness and profusion. And why should we not...? 1896 Death of Nora Perry, American poet, newspaper correspondent, and writer. In her poem, What May Be, Nora wrote, When the days are longer, longer, And the sun shines stronger, stronger, And the winds cease blowing, blowing, And the winter's chance of snowing Is lost in springtime weather. Here's an excerpt from her poem, The Coming of Spring. All this changing tint, This whispering stir and hint Of bud and bloom and wing, Is the coming of the spring. So, silently but swift, Above the wintry drift, The long days gain and gain, Until on hill and plain— Once more, and yet once more, Returning as before, We see the bloom of birth Make young again the earth 1906 Birth of Enid Annenberg Haupt, American publisher and philanthropist. The president of the New York Botanical Garden called Enid, The greatest patron American horticulture has ever known. Enid was one of eight children; her parents, Sadie and Moses, had one son and seven daughters. Her father was the founder of a large publishing empire. Enid followed in his footsteps and became an heiress to the large family fortune. Enid's first marriage ended in divorce. Her second marriage to Ira Haupt launched her philanthropic activities and introduced her to the world of gardening. When they got engaged, Ira gave Enid a cymbidium orchid. Enid was immediately enthralled by it. She told Ira that for her wedding present from him, she would be very happy with a gift of 13 cymbidium orchids. Enid's brother, Walter, put her in charge of the magazine Seventeen in 1953. During her tenure, Seventeen magazine was more popular than Glamor and twice as popular as Mademoiselle. At one point, more than half of the teenage girls in the United States were reading Seventeen magazine. Enid ran the magazine until 1970. When Enid died in 2005, she had donated more than $140 million to charities. Her favorite charities involved gardening. This is how Enid became known as "the fairy godmother of American horticulture" and "the patron saint of public gardens." One of Enid's most significant gifts was to the New York Botanical Garden. Over her lifetime, Enid gave them over $34 million – $5 million of which was dedicated to restoring the stunning Victorian glass greenhouse now called the Enid Haupt Conservancy. Without Enid, the greenhouse would have been demolished. After she retired from Seventeen magazine, Enid learned that the Soviet Union was considering purchasing River Farm, the 27-acre property once owned by George Washington as part of his Mount Vernon estate. The news was abhorrent to Enid. In 1973, she donated a million dollars to the American Horticultural Society to buy the property with the stipulation that it would remain open to the public. In November 2020, the American Horticultural Society attempted to sell River Farm for $32.9 million. AHS Board Chair Terry Hayes argued that selling River Farm was the only way to effectively carry out its national mission of "connecting people with plants and to help all Americans learn about sustainable gardening." The move caused a rift on the board after five board members — Skipp Calvert, Tim Conlon, Holly Shimizu, Marcia Zech, and Laura Dowling — argued that it was "not only morally and ethically wrong, but... fraught with serious legal issues." A year later, in the fall of 2021, the AHS officially took River Farm off the market. The AHS board had shrunk to the five board members who had fought to keep the historic property. In a statement, they said River Farm would remain as the permanent headquarters of the AHS and as a green space open to the public in honor of Enid Annenberg Haupt. 1823 On this day, William Bartram, American botanist, ornithologist, natural historian, and explorer, wrote in his diary that there were, numerous tribes of small birds, feeding on the aphids on the apple, pear trees - towhe buntings building their nests in the garden. Sharon White summarizes William Bartram's May garden life in her book Vanished Gardens: Finding Nature in Phil

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1735 Birth of Charles-Joseph Lamoral, French Field Marshal, writer, and member of the princely family of Ligne ("Leen-ya"). Charles once wrote, I should like to inflame the whole world with my taste for gardening. There is no virtue that I would not attribute to the man who lives to project and execute gardens. 1812 Birth of Edward Lear, English artist, musician, and writer. Edward is remembered for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose. He once wrote, As for myself, I am sitting up today for the first time - partly dressed - [something] the cucumber said when oil and vinegar were poured over him, salt & pepper being omitted. Edward also popularized the limerick. Here's an Edward Lear limerick for gardeners. There was an old person so silly, He poked his head into a lily; But six bees who lived there, filled him full of despair, For they stung that old person so silly. 1820 Birth of Florence Nightingale (books about this person), English social reformer, statistician, and founder of modern nursing. Florence earned the moniker "The Lady with the Lamp" during the Crimean War because she would make her rounds to visit wounded soldiers with a lamp during the night. The American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow used the term in his poem Santa Filomena, which he wrote in honor of Florence's work in Scutari Hospital. Florence was named after Florence, Italy - the city where she was born. As a young girl, she and her sister had their garden to plant and tend. When Florence was 13, she collected flowers with a 77-year-old botanist named Margaret Stovin. Together they gathered and pressed over 100 different species of plants. This charming story was featured in a 2008 book by Richard Mendelsohn. Today, Florence and Margaret's flowers are housed at the Natural History Museum in London. As an adult, Florence wrote, Poetry and imagination begin life. A child will fall on its knees on the gravel walk at the sight of a pink hawthorn in full flower, when it is by itself, to praise God for it. As a nurse, Florence believed flowers helped with the morale and recovery of her patients. And personally, the foxglove was her favorite flower. And Florence received a lovely bouquet every week from William Rathbone, the man who founded the Queen Victoria Jubilee Institute for Nurses. In 2020, one of the anticipated gardens was dedicated to Florence during the pandemic. The year 2020 marked the 200th Anniversary of her birth, and the garden was to be called The Florence Nightingale Garden - A Celebration of Modern Day Nursing. Instead, the garden debuted at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2021. The garden featured "Images from Florence Nightingale's pressed flower collection and echoes of her handwriting … on… the timber walls." Today Florence is remembered in the Florence Nightingale Museum in London, which celebrates the life and work of the best-known figure in nursing history. She is also honored with the Florence Nightingale rose — a pretty pale pink fragrant rose. 1856 Birth of Andreas Franz Wilhelm Schimper, German botanist and phytogeographer Andreas was a significant player in the early days of plant ecology. In 1901, his work was cut short due to his untimely death at 45 after contracting Malaria in Cameroon. Andreas coined the terms tropical rainforest and sclerophyll and is honored in many species names. Grow That Garden Library™ Book Recommendation P. Allen Smith's Garden Home by P. Allen Smith This book came out in 2003, and the subtitle is Creating a Garden for Everyday Living. Well, to me, this book is a garden classic. You get to know a little bit about P. Allen Smith's biography. His family's love of gardens, his experience working in the nursery business - plus all of the great relationships that he made working in some of England's top gardens. (He could write a book on that alone.) Fascinating stories. But in all seriousness, this book is so foundational to gardening. It's a great book to give new gardeners. And it's also an excellent book for gardeners who are considering a redesign or, after a long winter, feel like they need to brush up on their skills. The bulk of this book is dedicated to Allen's twelve garden design principles. He'll talk about aspects like framing a view, having texture in the garden, rhythm, pattern, color, etc. Now I thought I'd share this little excerpt from Allen's introduction. And here he's talking about how he created the garden rooms on his own property. He writes, I began working out the various outdoor rooms to see how they related to the house itself. The shape to one another and to the of the house and the lot created a series of rectangular spaces. I recognized an opportunity to design strong unbroken lines of sight or axes from one garden room into the next. Like an open door, these visual sight li

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1904 Birth of Salvador Dalí, Spanish surrealist artist. Educated in Madrid, Salvador was a son of Catalonia, and he never lost his love for the beauty of his homeland. Early in his career, Salvador gravitated toward surrealism. By 1929, Salvador Dali was regarded as a leading figure in the art form. Like Sigmund Freud, Salvador Dalí used the landscape to metaphor the human mind. He once said about the coastline of his beloved Catalonia, I personify the living core of this landscape. Today, two museums are devoted to Salvador Dalí's work: the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres, Spain, and the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. And in 2020, the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota, Florida, presented Salvador Dalí: Gardens of the Mind. The exhibit's centerpiece was Flordalí, a fantastically-colored series of flower lithographs from 1968. In Flordali, Salvador created imaginary surrealist enhancements to favorite blossoms. He made Dahlia unicorns, which feature a twisted horn in the middle of the bloom. Lilium musicum has vinyl records and sheet music for petals. Pisum sensuale is a sensory plant with fingers with painted nails and voluptuous lips. Panseé (Viola cogitans) is a self-portrait with pansies for the eyes and mouth. 1907 On this day, the American botanist Nathaniel Lord Britton was in Nantucket preparing for a lecture on plant protection. Nathaniel had brought along fifty colored lantern slides from the Van Brunt collection to use in his presentation. Nathaniel and his wife co-founded the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, New York. Nathaniel's time in Nantucket was brief - only for a day - but he wrote these observations in a letter about his trip. [On Nantucket] The mayflower is the most abundant of spring wildflowers, carpeting the moors on the south side of the island and lending a rich, spicy fragrance to the ocean breezes that sweep over these exposed tracts. It is in less danger from picking than from the surface fires, which are common occurrences in spring. The later blooming wildflowers suffer more or less at the hands of summer tourists, but I was glad to observe that the residents of Nantucket as a whole are keenly alive to the importance of preserving the natural beauties of the island and carefully guard the localities for many rare plants, especially the Scotch heather and the two European heaths (Erica cinerea and E. tetralix) which occur there. 1923 On this day, a schoolyard garden reported outside of Lochness gave the following update, As sheep are constantly breaking into the garden work has been stopped till the walls are rendered sheep-proof. This little entry was discovered by the modern-day owner of the property Katharine Stewart, and she shared it in her delightful month by month garden book called A Garden in the Hills (2006). Katharine reflected on the journal entry regarding the sheep and wrote, I know exactly what he meant. More than sixty years later, the sheep, the more agile variety, are still sometimes managing to leap over the wall, where the superimposed netting has given way. That can mean goodbye to all the summer lettuce and the winter greens, not to mention the precious flowering plants and all the work that went into producing them. The little school in the Scottish highlands closed in 1958. A few years later, Katharine and her husband, Sam, bought the property known as the croft at Abriachan near Loch Ness. There, Katharine began her writing. Reflecting on her first days in the garden at the croft, Katharine wrote, When we arrived, wild raspberries, willowherb, and sweet cicely had largely taken over. To bees and butterflies and to many kinds of birds, this was paradise! For us, it held all the thrill of uncharted territory. Every day a fresh discovery was made. Even now, I come on surprises each summer. Digging [has] revealed many other interesting things-worn-out toys, pieces of pottery, a pile of school slates from a dump against the top wall, evidently discarded when jotters came in-and, most interesting of all, several 'scrapers' dating from prehistoric times. Meanwhile, I often imagine my predecessors here looking on the same outline of hills, the same scoop of the burn in the hollow, listening to the same sounds of lark and owl, the bark of deer, and many more long gone-the howl of wolf, maybe the growl of bear. The heather would have been their late summer delight, making drinks of tea or ale, thatching for their roofs, and kindling for their fires. Sometimes envy them the simplicity of their lives, though the hardships must have been great. They didn't have a Christmas to celebrate, but they knew all about the winter solstice, and they must have been happy to see the bright berries on the holly, as we do today. Late in life, Katharine Stewart went on

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1725 Birth of John Hope, botanist, professor, and founder of the Royal Garden in Edinburgh. John produced considerable work on plant classification and physiology. He was appointed the King's botanist for Scotland and superintendent of the Royal Garden in Edinburgh. At the time, Edinburgh was the place to study medicine, and all medical students had to take botany courses. John created a school for botanists after spinning off the school's materia medica (pharmacy) department, which allowed him to specialize exclusively in botany. John was a captivating instructor. He was one of the first two people to teach the Linnean system. He also taught the natural system. John was one of the first professors to use big teaching diagrams or visual aids to teach his lectures. John led over 1,700 students during his tenure. His students traveled from all over Europe, America, and India. John Hope Alumni include the likes of James Edward Smith, founder and first President of the Linnaean Society, Charles Drayton, and Benjamin Rush. A field botanist, John encouraged his students to go out and investigate the Flora of Scotland. He awarded a medal every year to the student who collected the best herbarium. 1818 Birth of Arthur Cleveland Coxe, American theologian and composer. Arthur served as the second Episcopal bishop of Western New York. He once wrote, Flowers are words, which even a baby can understand. 1891 Death of Carl Wilhelm von Nägeli, Swiss botanist. Although he studied cell division and pollination, Carl's claim to fame is being the guy who discouraged Gregor Mendel from pursuing his work on genetics. Gregor regarded Carl as a botanical expert and his professional hero. When Gregor sent Carl an overview of his work with pea plants in a letter, Carl dismissed the results out of hand, labeling them "only empirical, and impossible to prove rationally." Carl poo-pooed natural selection. Instead, he believed in orthogenesis, a now-defunct theory that living organisms have an internal driving force - a desire to perfect themselves- and evolve toward this goal. Over a seven-year period in the mid-1800s, Gregor Mendel grew nearly 30,000 pea plants - taking note of their height and shape and color - in his garden at the Augustinian monastery he lived in at Brno (pronounced "burr-no") in the Czech Republic. His work resulted in what we now know as the Laws of Heredity. Gregor came up with the genetic terms and terminology that we still use today, like dominant and recessive genes. Carl Wilhelm von Nägeli's dismissal prompted Gregor to give up his work with genetics. After his promotion to the abbot of the monastery, Gregor focused on his general duties and teaching. In 1884, Gregor died without ever knowing the impact his work would have on modern science. Fifteen years later, in 1899, a friend sent the Dutch botanist Hugo de Vries a copy of Gregor's work - calling it a paper on hybridization - not heredity. At the same time, Gregor's paper was uncovered by a student of Carl Wilhelm von Nägeli's - a man named Carl E. F. J. Correns. Hugo de Vries rushed to publish his first paper on genetics without mentioning Gregor Mendel. But he did have the nerve to use some of Gregor's data and terminology in his paper. Carl Correns threatened to expose De Vries, who then quickly drafted a new version of his paper, which gave proper credit to Gregor Mendel. Through his work with the humble pea plant, Gregor came up with many of the genetic terms still used today, like dominant and recessive genes. 1907 It was on this day that Francis Younghusband, British Army officer, explorer, and spiritual writer, documented the progression of spring in the Residency Garden in Kashmir. Francis shared his observations in a book called Kashmir(1909). The Residency Garden was an English country house that was built specifically for guests by the Maharajah, and so naturally, Francis loved staying there. Here's what Francis wrote in May of 1907 about the Residency Garden, which was just coming into full flower. Francis observed, By May 1st ...The May trees were in full blossom. The bank on the south side of the garden was a mass of dark purple and white irises, and [the] evening [sun] caused each flower to [become] a blaze of glory. Stock was in full bloom. Pansies were out in masses. Both the English and Kashmir lilacs were in blossom, and the columbines were in perfection. The first horse chestnuts came into blossom on May 10th, and on that date, the single pink rose, sinica anemone, on the trellis at the end of the garden, was in full bloom and of wondrous beauty; a summer-house covered with Fortune's yellow was a dream of golden loveliness; I picked the first bloom of some English roses that a kind friend had sent out... and we had our first plateful of strawberries. A

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events National Public Gardens Week This week marks the beginning of National Public Gardens Week (May 6-15). This celebration started in 2009 as part of the effort to bring attention to the country's public gardens. Go Public Gardens is an ongoing, evergreen Association initiative to drive the public to visit, value, and volunteer at public gardens in their area and when they travel. You can be part of the celebration by visiting a public garden this week. You can find gardens near you on the interactive Garden Map. 1781 Birth of Henri Cassini, French botanist and naturalist. Henri's second great grandfather was the famous Italian astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini; he discovered Jupiter's Great Red Spot and the Cassini division in Saturn's rings. Henri took a decidedly different path than his ancestors. He was the fifth generation of a family of star scholars, so Henri is often referred to as Cassini V. Henri became a lawyer, and like many professionals, botany was a hobby for Henri. His heart belonged to the sunflower family, and it is fitting that the genus Cassinia(the sunflower genus) was named in his honor by the botanist Robert Brown. Henri's work had staying power. Many of his sunflower descriptions and observations are still valid over two centuries later. Henri married his cousin and had no children. He died of cholera at 50, and he was the last of the Cassini name - and a punctuation mark on the wonderful Cassini legacy. 1807 On this day in 1807, Lewis and Clark returned a book they had borrowed from Benjamin Smith Barton. Before starting their incredible expedition, Meriwether Lewis visited Barton at his home. Meriwether left with Barton's copy of The History of Louisiana by Antoine le Page. Meriwether memorialized the gesture in the flyleaf of the book, writing: Dr. Benjamin Smith Barton was so obliging as to lend me this copy of Mons. Le Page's History of Louisiana in June 1803. It has been since conveyed by me to the Pacific ocean through the interior of North America on my late tour thither and is now returned to its proprietor by his friends and obedient servant, Meriwether Lewis. Philadelphia, May 9, 1807. 1860 Birth of James Matthew Barrie (books by this author), Scottish novelist, and playwright. James is best remembered as the creator and author of Peter Pan, and he drew inspiration from the real world's Kensington Gardens. In 1912, James commissioned Sir George Frampton to build a statue of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. It's been a favorite of visitors to the park ever since. Gardens and flowers were other sources of inspiration for James. The following are just a few samples of his garden inspired prose: There is almost nothing that has such a keen sense of fun as a fallen leaf. The unhappy Hook was as impotent as he was damp, and he fell forward like a cut flower. All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old, she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, 'Oh, why can't you remain like this forever!' This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end. James also wrote, God gave us memories that we may have roses in December. 1921 Birth of Sophia Magdalena Scholl (books about this person), German student, and anti-Nazi activist. Sophia was part of the White Rose non-violent resistance group started by her brother Hans. The two were arrested and convicted of high treason after distributing anti-war leaflets at the University of Munich. Sophia was executed by guillotine. Her last words were, "long live freedom." Since the 1970s, Sophia has been praised and remembered for her anti-Nazi resistance work. In 2021, Sophia was commemorated on a special sterling silver collector's coin issued on her 100th birthday. It was Sophie Scholl, leader of the White Rose Movement, who said, Who would have thought it possible that a tiny little flower could preoccupy a person so completely that there simply wasn't room for any other thought. Grow That Garden Library™ Book Recommendation Patina Living by Steve Giannetti and Brooke Giannetti This book came out in 2019, and this is The heartwarming story of how the Giannetties live and entertain in the well-designed and lushly planted gardens of their farm in Ojai, California. If you're a longtime listener of the show, you know that I recommended Steve and Brooke's second book Patina Farmjust a few weeks ago. But this is actually their third book, and it's called Patina Living, and it came out in 2019. And as the publishe

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events Compost Awareness Week 1742 Birth of Jean Senebier, a Swiss pastor and botanist. Where would we be without Senebier? We'd still be breathing, but we'd lack the knowledge that carbon dioxide is consumed by plants and, in turn, that plants produce oxygen as part of the process of photosynthesis. In a nutshell, Senebier's work is crucial because he had learned the function of leaves: capturing carbon for food. Before Senebier, the purpose of leaves and what they did for plants and people was unknown. It was Jean Senebier who said, Observation and experiment are two sisters who help each other. 1754 Birth of Joseph Joubert, French moralist and essayist. Remembered mainly for his Pensées ("Pon-see") or (Thoughts), which were published posthumously, he once wrote, All gardeners live in beautiful places because they make them so. 1856 Birth of Sigmund Freud (books about this person), Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis. Freud once offered this humorous insight: Common sense is a rare flower and does not grow in everyone's garden. Freud offered up a few dispassionate observations regarding the natural world. He once wrote, Beauty has no obvious use, nor is there any clear cultural necessity for it. Yet civilization could not do without it. And he also wrote, Flowers are restful to look at. They have neither emotions nor conflicts. Online there are many photos of Freud and his family in the garden of their home in London. The Freuds left their home in Austria to escape the Nazis with the help of Princess Marie Bonaparte (books about this person), known as Princess George of Greece and Denmark. In 1938, there was a photo of Sigmund with his daughter Anna and Martha in the garden of Marie Bonaparte's house in Paris after arriving on the Orient Express from Vienna. Anna looks happy, Martha looks at a flower, and Sigmund has a little snooze in his garden bed. The Freud home in London was much larger and nicer, and there was a large backyard with a garden. The property still boasts Freud's rose garden and is now the Freud Museum at 20 Maresfield Gardens in Hampstead, London NW3, England. In 2008, the French botanist and biologist Francis Hallé wrote, Everyone knows that going to the garden does not solve the problems of everyday life, yet it relativizes them and makes them more bearable. Sigmund Freud had this late regret: 'I lost my time; the only important thing in life is gardening.' 1925 On this day, at the age of 29, the great twentieth-century reformer of Japanese gardens, Mirei Shigemori (books about this person), changed his name from Kazuo ("Kah-zoh") to Mirei ("me-RAY"). The name change was a tribute to the 19th-century French painter of pastoral landscapes and daily life, Jean Francois Millet (books about this person), who once said, It is the treating of the commonplace with the feeling of the sublime that gives to art its true power. In 1932, Mirei founded the Kyoto Garden Society. Mirei practiced the art of tea - Chado ("Cha-doe") and the art of flower arranging - Ikebana ("ick-aye-bah-na"). Mirei once advised, People who try to do research on the garden have to very seriously study the way of tea. Mirei wrote eighty-one books, including the Illustrated Book on the History of the Japanese Garden in 26-volumes, released in 1938. Mother Nature played an important role in shaping Mirei's life when the Muroto Typhoon destroyed much of Kyoto in 1934. Many sacred temples, shrines, and gardens were wiped out in the life-altering storm. In response, Mirei took action. He used his own money and became one of the first designers to survey every garden in Japan - creating records for restoration if they were ever damaged or destroyed. The tour provided a valuable service to his country and was also a means for Mirei to learn garden design - with a particular focus on incorporating rocks and stone. As a garden designer, Mirei was entirely self-taught. Throughout his fifty-year career, Mirei designed over two hundred gardens, including the checkerboard North Garden/Moss Garden at Tofukuji ("Tofu-kah-gee") Temple, Kyoto (1939), the dry landscape at Zuiho-in ("zwee-ho een" (1961), and the garden at the oldest shrine in Kyoto City, the Matsuo Taisha ("maht-sue-oh Ty-sha"(1975). The shrine is dedicated to the gods of water in western Kyoto and was an important place for sake-brewing families to worship over the centuries. In 2020, the second edition of landscape architect Christian Tschumi's book, Mirei Shigemori - Rebel in the Garden, was released. In it, Christian breaks down the profound influences and meanings behind Mirei's most iconic gardens. Christian once wrote, Shigemori's body of work is a compelling manifesto for continuous cultural renewal. Grow That Garden Library™ Book Recommendation The Layered Garden by David

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1830 Birth of Thomas Edward Brown, late-Victorian scholar, schoolmaster, poet, and theologian from the Isle of Man. Thomas was published under T.E. Brown, and here's a little excerpt from his poem called My Garden. A GARDEN is a lovesome thing, God wot! Rose plot, Fringed pool, Fern'd grot— The veriest school Of peace; and yet the fool Contends that God is not— Not God! in gardens! when the eve is cool? Nay, but I have a sign; 'Tis very sure God walks in mine. 1833 Birth of Richard Watson Dixon, English poet, and clergyman. Richard was the son of the clergyman, Dr. James Dixon. He's most remembered for that lyrical poem that begins. The feathers of the willow Are half of them grown yellow Above the swelling stream; And ragged are the bushes, And rusty now the rushes, And wild the clouded gleam. But today, I thought I would share an excerpt from his little-known poem called The Judgement Of The May. Come to the judgement, golden threads upon golden hair in rich array; Many a chestnut shakes its heads, Many a lupine at this day, Many a white rose in our beds Waits the judgement of the May. 1890 Birth of Christopher Morley, American journalist, novelist, essayist, and poet. Christopher also produced plays and gave college lectures. And in addition to all of that, He wrote little sayings, like The trouble with wedlock is that there's not enough wed and too much lock. And he also wrote Heavy hearts, like heavy clouds in the sky, are best relieved by the letting of a little water. And then finally, here's a Christopher Marley quote on spring. April prepares her green traffic light, and the world thinks: Go. 1921 Birth of Mavis Lilian Batey, English Codebreaker and garden historian. Mavis served as an English Codebreaker during World War II, and her unique skillset broke the German enigma code, which allowed the allied forces to stage their D-Day invasion. Mavis became a champion for forgotten, yet historically significant, English gardens. She also helped establish garden history as an academic specialty. In 1955, Mavis and her Codebreaker husband, Keith, settled on a farm in Surrey. It was this property that sparked Mavis's passion for landscape history. After moving to Oxford, Mavis and her family lived in a fantastic park designed by Capability Brown. The park was also home to a garden designed by William Mason in 1775. Mavis recalled, We lived in the agent's house right in the middle of Capability Brown Park. But it was William Mason's garden that really got me. We had to cut our way into it. It was all overgrown and garden ornaments were buried in the grass. I knew at once it wasn't just an ordinary derelict garden. Someone had tried to say something there. Mavis Batey used her wit and determination to become a force in numerous conservation organizations and missions. In 1985, Mavis was honored with the RHS Veitch Memorial Medal for her invaluable work, preserving gardens that would otherwise have been lost to time. Grow That Garden Library™ Book Recommendation The Magical World of Moss Gardening by Annie Martin This book came out in 2015, and Pacific Northwest magazine said this about Annie's book: Instead of eradicating this deer-resistant, pest-resistant, rootless, stemless, wonder of a plant, Annni Martin tells us how to encourage and cultivate it. Well, mosses are near and dear to many gardeners' hearts, and there have been many gardeners who try to grow and cultivate moss to no avail. And that's because moss has some special requirements. Annie writes, In my own garden, I feel angst when mosses is dry out and I obsessively respond to my compelling desire to give them a rejuvenating drink. And as they begin the saturation process, I regain my own glowing state. As I watch leaves swiftly unfold and colors, magically intensify. In addition to being mesmerizing, there are many reasons to pursue moss gardening. There are also many environmental benefits. Moss can be a lawn substitute - depending on where you live and your garden set up. If you have a shady property, you should definitely look into mosses as an option. Mosses are super carbon sequesters. They're great at erosion control and flood mitigation - and they have a built-in filtration system, which means that moss can help reclaim land in locations where cleanup is needed. Now, if Annie's name sounds familiar, it's because she is a moss expert. Her nickname is Mossin' Annie, and she's the proud owner of Mountain Moss Enterprises. I appreciate books like this because you have a true subject matter expert acting as your guide. Annie will help you identify dozens of Moss species, and she'll teach you how to propagate moss successfully. (This is something most gardeners want to know how to do). Finally, Annie is a master when designing and installing moss gardens. This bo

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events Today is Bird Day! 1556 Death of Luca Ghini ("Gee-nee"), Italian physician and botanist. Luca is remembered for creating the first recorded herbarium and the first botanical garden in Pisa, Italy. Historical accounts indicate he was an outstanding and beloved botany teacher at the university in Bologna. By 1527, Luca was giving lectures on medicinal plants and essentially teaching what is considered the first official university-level classes on botany. Luca was also the first to press flowers to create a plant collection. The English botanist William Withering wrote about flower pressing in the 1770s. Luca used his pressed and dried plants the same way future botanists would - he used them to study when fresh or live specimens were not available. In this way, he could teach his students, and they could use the dried specimens to continue their studies all year long. Luca mentored his students - taking them on field trips and encouraging them to learn all about plants. And if Luca Ghini seems an obscure character in botanical history, it's because he didn't publish anything. He was too busy interacting with his botanist peers and teaching his students - through whom he left a lasting legacy. 1749 Birth of Charlotte Turner Smith, English novelist, and Romantic poet. She revived the English sonnet, was an early Gothic fiction writer and helped establish the genre. She also wrote about sensibility in her political novels. Charlotte's novels, Emmeline (1788) and Desmond (1792), reflect womanly hope and disenfranchisement with eighteenth-century Common Law. Charlotte once wrote, Oh, Hope! thou soother sweet of human woes! How shall I lure thee to my haunts forlorn! For me wilt thou renew the withered rose, And clear my painful path of pointed thorn? And here is an excerpt of Charlotte's poem called Written at the Close of Spring. The garlands fade that Spring so lately wove, Each simple flow'r, which she had nurs'd in dew, Anemones that spangled every grove, The primrose wan, and harebell, mildly blue. No more shall violets linger in the dell, Or purple orchis variegate the plain, Till Spring again shall call forth every bell, And dress with humid hands her wreaths again. Ah, poor Humanity! so frail, so fair, Are the fond visions of thy early day, Another May new buds and flow'rs shall bring; Ah! Why has Happiness—no second Spring? 1858 Birth of Sophie Emma Magdalene Grieve (pen name Mrs. Grieve), English writer and herbalist. Her friends called her Maud. In addition to her writing, Maud founded an Herb School and Farm in England. She was a Fellow of the Royal Horticultural Society, President of the British Guild of Herb Growers, and a Fellow of the British Science Guild. Today, Maud is best remembered for her book, A Modern Herbal (1931). Maud's Herbal is still regarded as one of the best herbals ever written. She provided detailed information about each herb she profiled, including "Medicinal Actions and Uses." Here's a sampling of her information. Purple Loosestrife: As an eyewash this invasive herb is superior to Eyebright for preserving the sight and curing sore eyes. Chives: Useful for cutting up and mixing with the food of newly-hatched turkeys. Borage: May be regarded as a garden escape. (A delicate way of saying it is invasive.) Valerian: A powerful nervine, stimulant, carminative, and anti-spasmodic. The drug allays pain and promotes sleep. It is of especial use and benefit to those suffering from nervous overstrain…During the recent War (WWI), when air-raids were a serious strain on the nerves of civilian men and women, valerian…proved wonderfully efficacious, preventing or minimizing serious results. Garlic: There is a Mohammedan legend that when Satan stepped out from the Garden of Eden after the fall of man, Garlick sprang up from the spot where he placed his left foot and Onion from that where his right foot touched. Moneywort: We are told by old writers that this herb was not only used by man, but that if serpents hurt or wounded themselves, they turned to this plant for healing, and so it was sometimes called 'Serpentaria'. Agrimony or Church-Steeple: the small root is sweet-scented, especially in spring. Lemon: It is probable that the lemon is the most valuable of all fruit for preserving health. English Summers: 'It has been said, with some truth, that our English summer is not here until the Elder is fully in flower, and that it ends when the berries are ripe." 1894 Birth of Margaret Leland Goldsmith, American journalist, historical novelist, and translator. In June of 1936, in "The Perils of Gardening" for Scribner's Magazine, she wrote: For years I have avoided magenta with feverish zest. I do not like it. It kills my henna reds. It fights with the cedar brown of my cottage. Yet every year something of that hue

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events Happy National Garden Meditation Day! 1580 Thomas Tusser (English poet and farmer) died. In 1573, Thomas wrote his Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, where he advised: In January, the housewife should be busy planting peas and beans and setting young rose roots. During March and April, she will work 'from morning to night, sowing and setting her garden or plot,' to produce the crops of parsnip, beans, and melons which will 'winnest the heart of a laboring man for her later in the year. Her strawberry plants will be obtained from the best roots which she has gathered from the woods, and these are to be set in a plot in the garden. Berries from these plants will be harvested later the same year, perhaps a useful back-up if the parsnips have failed to win the man of her dreams. 1941 During this week, Martha Crone, American botanist and horticulturist, wrote some entries in her Minneapolis diary that reflect the wild swings in temperatures that can be so frustrating to gardeners in the shoulder seasons. At the start of May: [The weather is] still very warm (81 hi 59 lo) and flowers coming out everywhere, everything at least 2 weeks in advance, like midsummer, many insects and flies out. Violets - never so beautiful - as well as Trillium and other flowers. On the 3rd of May: Bitter cold all day [49-41] stove going continuously... but no mosquitoes. On the 8th: Heat unbearable [88-60] On the 19th: Hottest so far... 1942 On this day, Charles Kikuchi wrote in his Japanese Tanforan Internment camp journal: These industrious Japanese! They just don't seem to know how to take it easy. They've worked so hard all their lives that they just can't stand idleness or waste . Two months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans were mandated to relocate to one of the ten relocation camps in the "exclusion zone" of Oregon, California, western Washington, and southern Arizona by order of the president. Ken Helphand's fantastic 2006 book, Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime, tells the story of the gardens that were created in the camps. The gardens were part of the effort to make the camps more bearable. In addition to gardens, there were orchards, parks, baseball diamonds, playgrounds, and farms. In Defiant Gardens, Ken wrote, Entry gardens were part of the Japanese tradition of dooryard gardens, linking household to community, and functioning as entry and marker, displaying the craft and skill of the resident and embellishing both the barracks and the community space....Many persons inscribed their names in cement at the doorstep. Barracks gardens displayed great variety, using gathered cacti and rocks, transplanted plants, and plants propagated in the camp nursery. While people waited daily for the communally served meals, they enjoyed the elaborate displays of great artistry and effort that characterized the mess-hall gardens. Created with rocks and water as well as plants, these gardens were most closely identified with the Japanese American garden tradition. All these gardens brought beauty to the camps and reinforced the internees' sense of cultural identity… 1946 On this day, Frida Kahlo (books about this person) gave a painting called Weeping Coconuts to her friends Lina and Arcady Boitler as a wedding gift. Frida used two weeping coconuts to represent her pain and deteriorating health in the painting. Frida was mixing prescription painkillers and alcohol by this point in her life. The coconuts were one of fifty-five self-portraits. Her best-known self-portrait is 'Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird.' Kahlo said, I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best. Four years later, Frida's pain became unmanageable. In 1953, her right foot - and later right leg - were amputated. Frida died shortly after her 47th birthday in the summer of 1954. Before she died, she wrote in her journal: I hope the exit is joyful — and I hope never to return — Frida. Coconuts are an ancient plant that initially hailed from the South Pacific, and because of their buoyancy, coconuts can travel the world on the ocean's waves. Plant Explorers found the coconut growingng throughout the Pacific, the Indian Ocean regions, and Africa. Like mangoes, cashews, and cherries, the coconut is actually a drupe and not a nut. The drupe is an item that has a fleshy outer around a pit. Coconuts are anti-viral, fungal, bacterial, and anti-parasite. There are more than twenty billion coconuts produced each year. The coconut palm is actually the national tree of The Maldives. Before the dominance of soybean oil in the 1960s, Coconut oil was the world's leading vegetable oil. May 8th is National Coconut Creme Pie Day. Falling coconuts kill 150 people every year – 10 times the number of people killed by sharks. Gr

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1772 Birth of Friedrich von Hardenberg (pen name Novalis ("NO-vol-liss")), the German romantic poet-philosopher. Friedrich's pen name, Novalis, was a nod to his 12th-century farming ancestors who called themselves the Novali, which translates to "people who cultivate new land," - and his first work under his pen name was Blüthenstaub (Pollen). In the book, Novalis advised his artistic friends to be prolific in their work, writing, Friends, the soil is poor, we must scatter seed abundantly for even a moderate harvest. Novalis is most remembered for his unfinished work Henry von Ofterdingen: A Romance. This work resulted in a nickname for Novalis as the poet of the blue flower. Henry von Ofterdingen was a fabled poet from the 13th century. In Novalis's story, his romantic yearning is symbolized by his love for a blue flower, which Novalis later revealed was inspired by a heliotrope. For centuries, Novalis has been seen primarily as a love-struck poet who mourned the death of his first love, Sophie, only to be reunited with her in heaven after he, too, succumbed to the white plague or tuberculosis. Today, blue flowers remain a symbol of desire and a striving for the unreachable. They also represent humanity's connection with nature - a rare and fragile relationship. Today, blue flowers remain among gardeners' most coveted color of blossoms - as in the Himalayan blue poppy, the delphinium, the cornflower, and the forget-me-not. In Henry von Offerdingen, Novalis wrote, I care not for wealth and riches. But that blue flower I do long to see; it haunts me and I can think and dream of nothing else... 1853 Frederick Arther Walton, English nurseryman, cactus collector, and jeweler. Born in Birmingham, Frederick owned one of the largest private cactus collections in England, and he started a cactus nursery called The Friary. He also created and edited The Cactus Journal - a monthly journal devoted exclusively to cacti and other succulent plants, which ran for 24 issues. Frederick also founded the first cactus society in England. In 1899, he traveled to America and Mexico to collect cactus, and he wrote, Possessing one of the largest collections in England, I decided to go to the native home of the cactus – California, Arizona, and Mexico. so on January 7th, 1899, I left Liverpool Fort New York; then I went to the great city of St Louis where there is a cactus a society and a very good collection of cacti in the Botanical Gardens. After spending a few pleasant days at St Louis I took the train to Kansas City… then through New Mexico and arrived at San Bernardino California where I met Andrew Halstead Alverson a very enthusiastic Cactus collector. He took me out into the desert, and for the first time in my life, I was in the midst of wild cacti. The trip was the adventure of a lifetime for Frederick. He battled snakes, scorpions, pumas, centipedes, and the harsh desert sun in an exploration of cactus country covering over 20,000 miles in the western hemisphere. In January 1900, for unknown reasons, Frederick's cactus journal and the cactus society abruptly ended. There was a mention in the final issues of The Cactus Journal that he was exploring the creation of a daffodil journal - but it was never printed. At the turn of the century, European gardeners outside of Germany had no real interest in cactus or succulents - that interest wouldn't be rekindled until the 1930s. And so, in 1905, Frederick's health was waning, and he sold his nursery. Frederick died in 1922. 1858 On this day, the poet, teacher, abolitionist, and writer Charlotte Forten started writing her poem called, To a Beloved Friend. Charlotte was friends with Sarah Cassey Smith and had lived with the Smith family while attending school. In 1856, Charlotte became Salem State's first African American graduate. Sarah and Charlotte shared a love for all flowers. The young women made and received May baskets in the springtime, and they both enjoyed spring nosegays or little bouquets. Once when Charlotte's teacher gave her a little bouquet, Charlotte wrote in her diary. Your voiceless lips, dear flowers, are living preachers. The day before this day, in 1858 (May 1st), Charlotte found herself homesick for Salem. She disliked the noisy city life in Philadelphia, and she also confronted more significant restrictions on her activities as an African American in the City of Brotherly Love. She had noted in her diary that she had been "refused at two ice cream salons." And so, when Sarah's bouquet arrived on May 1st, Charlotte quickly interpreted the meaning of each flower according to floriography or the language of flowers - a common way for people to communicate in the 1800s. Sarah's handpicked Mayflowers symbolized welcome. The little Violets represented constant friendship, and the d

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Podchaser Leave a Review Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events St. Robert's Day Saint Robert of Molesme ("mo-LESS-mah") was an 11th-century herbalist, abbot, and founder of the Cistercian ("sis-TUR-shin") order - a Catholic religious order of monks and nuns that branched off from the Benedictines. They are also known as Bernardines ("BUR-nah-deen"), after the highly influential Bernard of Clairvaux, or as White Monks - a reference to the color of the cowl worn over their habits as opposed to the black cowl worn by Benedictines. They are commonly called Trappists. Many common wildflowers are named in honor of St. Robert. Some believe that Herb Robert, or Bird's Eye, the little Wild Geranium, was named in honor of St. Robert. Another theory is that Herb Robert is named for Robin Goodfellow, a pseudonym for the forest sprite known as Puck. 1852 On this day, Henri Frederic Amiel, Swiss philosopher and poet, wrote in his journal: I went out into the garden to see what progress the spring was making. I strolled from the irises to the lilacs, round the flowerbeds, and in the shrubberies. Delightful surprise! At the corner of the walk, half-hidden under a thick clump of shrubs, a small-leaved corchorus had flowered during the night... the little shrub glittered before me... Mother of marvels, mysterious and tender Nature, why do we not live more in thee? 1869 Birth of Agnes Chase, American botanist. Agnes was an agrostologist—a studier of grass. She was a petite, fearless, indefatigable person and entirely self-taught as a botanist. Her first position was as an illustrator at the USDA's Bureau of Plant Industry in Washington, D.C., working for the botanist Albert Spear Hitchcock. When Hitchcock applied for funding to go on expeditions, higher-ups approved the travel for Hitchcock, but not for Agnes - saying the job should belong to "real research men." Undeterred, Agnes raised her own funding to go on the expeditions. She cleverly partnered with missionaries in Latin America to arrange for accommodations with host families. She shrewdly observed, The missionaries travel everywhere, and like botanists do it on as little money as possible. They gave me information that saved me much time and trouble. During a climb of one of Brazil's highest mountains, Agnes reportedly returned to camp with a "skirt filled with plant specimens." One of her major works, the "First Book of Grasses," was translated into Spanish and Portuguese. It taught generations of Latin American botanists who recognized Agnes's contributions long before their American counterparts. When Hitchcock retired, Agnes was his backfill. When Agnes reached retirement age, she ignored the rite of passage altogether and refused to be put out to pasture. She kept going to work - six days a week - overseeing the largest collection of grasses in the world in her office under the red towers at her beloved Smithsonian Institution. When Agnes was 89, she became the eighth person to become an honorary fellow of the Smithsonian. A reporter covering the event said, Dr. Chase looked impatient as if she were muttering to herself, "This may be well and good, but it isn't getting any grass classified, sonny." While researching Agnes Chase, I came across this little article in The St. Louis Star and Times. Agnes gave one of her books on grass a biblical title, The Meek That Inherit the Earth. The story pointed out that, Mrs. Chase began her study of grass by reading about it in the Bible. In the very first chapter of Genesis, ...the first living thing the Creator made was grass. ... for grass is fundamental to life. [Agnes] said, "Grass is what holds the earth together. Grass made it possible for the human race to abandon... cave life and follow herds. Civilization was based on grass [and] this significance... still holds." 1954 Birth of Jerry Seinfeld, American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and producer. He is best known for playing a semi-fictionalized version of himself in the sitcom Seinfeld, which he created and wrote with Larry David. He once joked, Why do people give each other flowers to celebrate various important occasions? They're killing living creatures? Why restrict it to plants? "Sweetheart, let's make up. Have this deceased squirrel." 2017 On this day in 2017, The New York Times tweeted that, The Brooklyn Botanic Garden cherry blossom festival is set for today and tomorrow, regardless of when nature [decided] to push play. Grow That Garden Library™ Book Recommendation The Language of Butterflies by Wendy Williams This book came out in 2020, and the subtitle is How Thieves, Hoarders, Scientists, and Other Obsessives Unlocked the Secrets of the World's Favorite Insect. If you're a fan of blue morpho butterflies, you're going to love the cover of Wendy's book because it is covered with a kaleidoscope of blue morpho

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Podchaser Leave a Review Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events Floralia April 28th marks the beginning of a six-day festival called Floralia in the Roman calendar. And it's held in honor of the goddess of flowering crops and plants, and she was known as Flora. Now the goal of this weeklong festival was a satisfying appeal to Flora for a great growing season, a bountiful harvest, safety for workers, and probably a solid grape harvest for good wine. 1834 Birth of Harry Bolus, South African botanist, artist, businessman, and philanthropist. If you've ever heard of the Bolus Herbarium in South Africa, it was named in honor of Harry. Harry founded the Herbarium, and he bequeathed his extensive library and part of his fortune to establish the South African College, now known as the University of Cape Town. Harry Bolus was not originally from South Africa. He was actually born in Nottingham, England. And the school that he attended, Castle Gate School, had a headmaster who corresponded with a plant collector named William Kensit. When Kensit required an assistant, Harry Bolus was the student who was selected for the job. Harry moved to South Africa and promptly fell in love with William's sister Sophia. The two were married, and they had three sons and a daughter. In 1864, when their oldest son died at six years old, a friend and fellow botanist named Francis Guthrie suggested that Harry take up botany to help heal his broken heart. Well, the rest, as they say, is history. Harry started his great botanical collection in 1865, and he soon struck up a correspondence with the most famous botanists of his day. And there's one other story about Harry Bolus that I thought you would enjoy. In 1876, Harry and Francis Guthrie traveled together to the world's Mecca for botany - Kew gardens in England - along with a large collection of plants. Even though their ship hit a reef on their return voyage and their collection was lost, Harry always referred to that trip as "Forty happy days." 1852 On this day, Henri Frederic Amiel, Swiss philosopher and poet, wrote in his journal: Once more, I feel the spring languor creeping over me, the spring air about me. This morning the poetry of the scene, the song of the birds, the tranquil sunlight, the breeze blowing over the fresh green fields — all rose into and filled my heart. 1947 Birth of Bonnie Marranca, New York City-based critic, publisher, and writer. In her book, American Garden Writing (1988), Bonnie wrote, I judge a garden by the gardener who cares for it, the one who invests space with daydreams. How well I know the downward gaze into the face of the earth, the feeling of a luxurious body and good, dark soil that slips through the fingers in the rush to return to its dirty delirium. Each gardener creates an ideal world of miniature thoughts that drift languidly into each other like flowers on a dry afternoon. Hear silence has the rhythm of wishes. Grow That Garden Library™ Book Recommendation The Perfect Specimen by Durlynn Anema This book came out in 2019, and the subtitle is The 20th Century Renowned Botanist: Ynes Mexia. This book is a wonderful biography of Ynes Mexia - the Mexican American botanist born in 1870 and who discovered the Sierra Club at age 50. And that led her to her life's calling and her legacy as a botanist. And so I love what Durlynn wrote and the dedication of this book because she wrote, This book is dedicated to those people who gained confidence in their abilities later in life. And that is certainly the case with Ynes Mexia. She loved her experience with the Sierra Club so much that she decided to enroll in botany classes at Berkeley. In fact, over a 16-year period, she just kept taking botany classes on and off; She never had the goal of graduating. She just wanted to keep learning - so that's quite a paradigm shift. And as the mom of four young adults who are either in college or about to go to college, I love that perspective of being a lifelong learner - which is undoubtedly something that Ynes achieved. Now, I don't want to give the impression that Ynes was all about coursework and classrooms because that's really only a very small portion of Ynes's story. She was actually very drawn to fieldwork. She took countless trips through the Southwestern part of the United States into New Mexico and even into South America. She was very drawn to unique plants. She loved sunflowers, and she was a voracious collector. Many scholars argue that Ynes was one of the most accomplished collectors of her time. On her very first collecting trip, she collected over 500 specimens, which is essentially the same amount Darwin collected on his first expedition on The Beagle. Over her lifetime, Ynes collected over 150,000 specimens -500 of which were brand new plant species that had never been identified before. Ynes's stor

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Podchaser Leave a Review Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Friends of the Garden Meeting in Athens, Georgia Register Here Historical Events 1814 Birth of Charles MacKay, Scottish poet, writer, and songwriter. In The Collected Songs of Charles Mackay, Charles wrote a song about the Meadow Sweet: Rose! We love thee for thy splendor, Lily! For thy queenly grace! Violet! For thy lowly merit, Peeping from thy shady place! But mine airy, woodland fairy, Scattering odors at thy feet, No one knows thy modest beauty, No one loves thee, Meadow-Sweet! 1851 Birth of Alice Morse Earle (books by this author), American historian and author. Alice wrote two garden books: Old Time Gardens (1901) and Sun Dials and Roses of Yesterday (1902). Alice wrote, Farm children have little love for nature and are surprisingly ignorant about wildflowers save a few varieties. The child who is garden bred has a happier start in life, a greater love and knowledge of nature. On the peony, Alice wrote: [She] always looks like a well-dressed, well-shod, well-gloved girl of birth, breeding, and of equal good taste and good health; a girl who can swim, and skate, and ride, and play golf. 1902 Birth of Thomas "Tommy" Dolliver Church (books by this author), California landscape architect. Tommy pioneered the modern California Style design style. In 1955, Tommy wrote, When your garden is finished I hope it will be more beautiful than you anticipated, require less care than you expected, and have cost only a little more than you had planned. Unlike people, gardens never strive for perpetual youth—they want to look old from the day they were born. Their greatest glory comes with maturity. 1904 Birth of Cecil Day-Lewis (books by this author), Irish-born British poet. He used the pen name Nicholas Black for his mystery stories. Cecil was the Poet Laureate for four years before his death in 1972. He was also the father of actor Sir Daniel Day-Lewis. In Cecil's Overtures to Death and Other Poems (1938), In June we picked the clover, And sea-shells in July: There was no silence at the door, No word from the sky. A hand came out of August And flicked his life away: We had not time to bargain, mope, Moralize, or pray. Grow That Garden Library™ Book Recommendation The Food Forest Handbook by Darrell Frey and Michelle Czolba This book came out in 2017, and the subtitle is Design and Manage a Home-Scale Perennial Polyculture Garden. Before I even get started with my review, I have to say that this book gets high praise on Amazon; it's a five-star book. The authors are passionate about growing food year-round - without fossil fuels - and increasing biodiversity on the land and wild market gardening. In the introduction to their book, Darryl and Michelle point out that the food forest is one of the oldest ways to garden. It's the edges of the forest that were the most fruitful places for both hunting and gathering. And today, food forests are making a comeback. Now you might be asking yourself, what is a food forest? Well, a food forest is simply a food-producing garden that's built around trees and perennials. I've been a passionate fan of orchards and mini orchards for the past couple of years. I'm installing one up at my cabin, planting even more trees this spring. Darryl and Michelle point out that, A well-managed food forest is an integrated system and it includes all kinds of plants, fruits, vegetables, herbs, medicinal plants, and plantings that promote beneficial insects and balanced nutrients. And in case you're starting to feel a little overwhelmed. Don't be. Because these food forests can be simple and include only a few species, or they can contain a myriad of plants. The bottom line here is that Darryl and Michelle will help you feel confident and inspired to create your own food forest, whether on a small or grand scale in your backyard, front yard, patio, or allotment. This book is 256 pages of planning, designing, and managing your very own food forest. You can get a copy of The Food Forest Handbook by Darrell Frey and Michelle Czolba and support the show using the Amazon link in today's show notes for around $20. Botanic Spark 1920 Birth of Edwin George Morgan (books by this author), Scottish poet and translator associated with the Scottish Renaissance. He is remembered as one of the foremost Scottish poets of the 20th century. In 1999, Edwin became the first Glasgow Poet Laureate. In 1968, Edwin wrote, Yes, it is too cold in Scotland for flower people; in any case who would be handed a thistle? Thanks for listening to The Daily Gardener And remember: For a happy, healthy life, garden every day.

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Podchaser Leave a Review Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1684 Death of Jan Davidsz. de Heem, Dutch ornate still-life painter. He is remembered as the most influential flower painter of his day. Jan's flowers were known for their vibrancy and realism. But gardeners would catch that Jan's bouquets were just a beautiful fantasy since the individual flowers bloom at different seasons of the year. 1785 Birth of John James Audubon, American self-trained artist, naturalist, and ornithologist. He once wrote, A true conservationist…knows the world is not given by his fathers but borrowed from his children. The Ottowa Daily Republic published a charming story about his burial. John J. Audobon, the naturalist, and bird lover, is buried in Trinity, cemetery. There has been erected over his grave an Iona cross; the arms of which are connected by a circular band of stone, making apertures of the four corners at the intersection. In one of these, (apertures) robins built a nest last month. This fell under the eye of a caretaker, who got a pole and dislodged the nest. The birds flew about disconsolately for a time, then went away. So far as anyone knows, Audubon did not turn over in his grave, and neither did any of the carved birds on the [cross] cry out. 1798 Birth of Eugene Delacroix, French Romantic artist. He is remembered as the leader of the French Romantic school and one of the last great historical painters. Eugene received his artistic training in Paris. His striking piece called A Vase of Flowers (1833) shows a crystal vase filled mostly with dahlias. It is Eugene Delacroix's earliest-surviving flower painting. 1822 Birth of Frederick Law Olmsted, American landscape architect, journalist, social critic, and public administrator. Regarded as the father of landscape architecture, Frederick is remembered for designing many popular urban parks with his partner Calvert Vaux. Their first project was Central Park, followed quickly by Prospect Park in Brooklyn and Cadwalader Park in Trenton. Frederick wrote, The root of all my good work is early respect for, regard, and enjoyment of scenery. Frederick's firm was passed onto his sons who expanded the business under the name Olmsted Brothers. Aside from his legacy as a landscape architect, Frederick dedicated his entire life to social reform. In many ways, his designs for public spaces played an important role in his social work. His vision for Central Park was an ordered oasis for all of the city's social classes, where everyone could come together and enjoy nature. It was Frederick Law Olmsted who said, The enjoyment of scenery employs the mind without fatigue and yet exercises it; tranquilizes it and yet enlivens it. Grow That Garden Library™ Book Recommendation Crinum by Augustus Jenkins Farmer Augustus is better known as the plantsman Jenks Farmer. This book came out in 2021 - right at the very end of December - and the subtitle is Unearthing the History and the Cultivation of the World's Biggest Bulb. Well, Crinums are a passion for Jenks. What he's done in this book is he has collected every possible story and nugget of information about the Crinum species and hybrids that flourish in our gardens. Crinums are classic plants. They're also heirlooms and pass-down plants - and because of that sentimental quality, there are an endless number of stories about Crinums. Now I have to share what Jenks wrote about Crinums in the introduction to this book. He wrote, Plants that hunker down below ground reveal only a small part of themselves to people. Called geophytes or earth lovers, the below-ground bulbs are the heart of the being. Down there, a Medusa's tangle of bony, basel plates, armlong roots, and crisp bud tips explode from mother bulbs. Once you see the underground being, you understand why in some cultures Crinums represent connections to the underworld and the dead. You also understand why people carry them continent to continent and share them friend to friend. If you've ever had a sourdough starter or overplanted zucchini, then you understand the urge to share a passion, to give parts away. I'm compelled to give Crinums away. I give little bulbs to farm visitors, take them as house gifts, pass them on at conferences, offer them to strangers, or plant them guerrilla-style in parking lots. Based on my experience, growing and planting hundreds of thousands of Crinum, this book becomes comprehensive with the advice of generous Crinum professionals and enthusiasts. You'll fall for the hidden stories, the hidden plant parts in a few years you'll share too. Then you'll leave a happy trail of Crinum lilies marking your travels, telling your stories, and sharing your passion too. This book is 100 pages of a passion for Crinums by one of our modern plantsmen. You can get a copy of Crinum by Augustus Jenkins Farmer and supp

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Podchaser Leave a Review Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events Today is National Zucchini Bread Day. 1851 Birth of George Herbert Engleheart, English clergyman and daffodil breeder. In 1889, George began breeding daffodils - some 700 varieties in his lifetime. Fans of Beersheba, Lucifer, or White Ladyowe a debt of gratitude to Reverend Engleheart. George spent every spare minute breeding, and his parishioners would often find a note tacked to the church door saying, No service today, working with daffodils. 1852 Birth of Marcus Jones, American geologist, mining engineer, and botanist. Marcus's mother loved plants, and every day, she sent Marcus to gather fresh flowers, which she displayed on the family's mantle. This daily chore was the beginning of his passion for botany. Marcus won national recognition for his work as a prominent botanist of the American West, and in 1923, he sold his personal herbarium for $25,000 - an impressive amount at the time. To this day, his collection represents the largest archive of plants from Utah. Marcus died in 1934 in San Bernardino, California. At the age of 81, he returned from a plant collecting trip at Lake Arrowhead when another driver hit his car. As seatbelts wouldn't be invented for another 25 years, Jones was ejected from his vehicle and died from a skull fracture. Jones columbine, Aquilegia jonesii (ii = "ee-eye") is named for him. It is rare and, like most columbines, does not transplant well. Jonesii plants and seeds are sold by select nurseries. 1925 Birth of Joseph Henry Maiden, English-Australian botanist. Born in London, Joseph immigrated to New South Wales, Australia, hoping that the climate would improve his health. Joseph quickly landed a job as a museum curator in Sydney, and he also married a local woman named Eliza Jane Hammond. During his time in Australia, Joseph contributed to understanding Australian flora, especially the Eucalyptus genus. After thoroughly studying Australian woods and essential oils, Joseph wrote his book called The Useful Native Plants of Australia. In 1896, Joseph was appointed the Director of the Sydney Botanic Gardens. In total, Joseph served as a botanist in Australia for 43 years. As for his Australian legacy, Joseph is remembered every September 1st, the first day of spring down under. It's also known as Wattle Day or Acacia Day. In Australia, the Wattle is a common name for Acacia. Recognizing their beauty and value, Joseph established the Wattle Day League, which fought to make the Golden Wattle (Acacia pycnantha "ah-KAY-see-ah pik-NANTH-ah") Australia's national floral emblem, and he also worked to establish Wattle Day. Since the inception of Wattle Day in 1909, Australians have worn a Wattle blossom, which looks like a little yellow pompom, in honor of the day. The Wattle blossom is also a favorite with pollinators. As plants, Wattles are tough evergreen shrubs and trees that can withstand Australia's droughts, winds, and bushfires. There are 760 Wattle species native to Australia's forest understory, woodlands, and open scrub. The common name Wattle refers to an old germanic term for weaving and the English craft of building with interwoven flexible twigs and branches. As the English settled in Australia, they often harvested Wattle (Acacia) and used it in their building construction. And here's a fun fact about Wattles (Acacia): Giraffes love to eat them. 1873 Birth of Walter de la Mare, English poet, short story writer, and novelist. He is best remembered for his works for children. In his poem, Peacock Pie, Walter wrote: A poor old Widow in her weeds Sowed her garden with wild-flower seeds; Not too shallow, and not too deep, And down came April -- drip -- drip -- drip. Up shone May, like gold, and soon Green as an arbour grew leafy June. Weeps she never, but sometimes sighs, And peeps at her garden with bright brown eyes; And all she has is all she needs -- A poor Old Widow in her weeds. Grow That Garden Library™ Book Recommendation The Essential Garden Design Workbook by Rosemary Alexander and Rachel Myers This book came out in 2017, and the subtitle is Completely Revised and Expanded. Well, the original version of this book was a best-selling classic. This is the upgraded book that came out five years ago. In this book, the eminent designer and educator Rosemary Alexander teamed up with rising design star Rachel Myers. And what these two women did is they share new garden plans, a ton of new photos and diagrams, and updated profiles of their 50 top plants that they think are timeless and that should be used by today's designers. So there are all kinds of fantastic, modern tips and advice in this book. This is also an excellent book for designers and gardeners interested in incorporating sustainability or plant diversity into their plans. Rosemary and Rachel show how to

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events Happy Earth Day - a celebration that started in 1970. 1812 On this day, Mary Russell Mitford (books by this person), the English writer and poet, wrote to Sir William Elford, an English banker, politician, and amateur artist. In her letter, Mary wrote, I place flowers in the very first rank of simple pleasures, and I have no very good opinion of the hard worldly people who take no delight in them. 1832 Birth of Julius Sterling Morton (books about this person), American newspaper editor, Secretary of Agriculture, and father of Arbor Day. In 1867, after moving west from Detroit, J. Sterling and his wife Caroline were shocked by Nebraska's treeless landscape. Together, they conceived of a day to promote tree planting. The original proposal to the agricultural board of Nebraska was for a "Sylvan Day" - to promote forest trees. In Latin, "sylva" means "wood" or "forest." And Sylvanus was the Roman god of woods and fields. But, J. Sterling decided that a broader celebration of all trees was in order, and he proposed "Arbor Day." The first Arbor Day on April 10, 1872, was an overwhelming success - with over a million trees planted in frontier Nebraska. Arbor Day quickly became a national holiday - celebrated on April 22 to honor J. Sterling Morton's birthday. Nowadays, Arbor Day is generally celebrated on the last Friday in April in the United States. Arbor Day 2022 will occur on Friday, April 29th. Despite his many professional and honorable appointments at the state and federal levels, J. Sterling considered Arbor Day the ultimate accomplishment of his life. In 1923, the beautiful Morton family home, known as Arbor Lodge, and the surrounding property were gifted to Nebraska. Today Arbor Lodge is a historic state park. It was J. Sterling Morton who said, Other holidays repose upon the past; Arbor Day proposes for the future. 1839 Birth of August Wilhelm Eichler, German botanist. Wilhelm developed one of the first widely used natural plant classification systems to reflect evolution. In addition, he divided the plant kingdom into non-floral plants and floral plants. Wilhelm worked tirelessly as a private assistant to the naturalist Karl Friedrich Philipp von Martinus. When Karl died, Wilhelm continued working on Karl's Flora Brasiliensis. It was a labor of love, but it was still unfinished. And after Wilhelm died, botanist Ignatius Urban continued with the project until its completion. Today, Wilhelm Eichler Strasse (Street) in Dresden is named in Wilhelm's honor. It was Wilhelm Eichler who said, The felling of the first tree is the beginning of human civilization. The felling of the last is his end. 1946 Birth of Midas Dekkers (books by this author), Dutch biologist, and writer. A beloved children's book author, Midas has written over fifty children's and young adult books. In his book about "the way things fall apart -- about the inevitable ruin of everything from bodies and works of art to ideals and whole societies," called The Way of All Flesh: The Romance of Ruins, Midas wrote, It's a sign of wisdom that seeds don't squander their energy all at once, instead calmly waiting until the time is right. Seeds aren't stupid. Grow That Garden Library™ Book Recommendation The First Mess Cookbook by Laura Wright This book came out in 2017, and the subtitle is Vibrant, Plant-based Recipes to Eat Well Through the Seasons. To review the book today, I had to run over into my kitchen about 15 steps away and grab my dog-eared copy of The First Mess. I love this cookbook. If you're looking to totally revamp the way you cook, if you want to make plants the star of most of the dishes you're making- especially in the summertime- you need to get a copy of Laura Wright's The First Mess Cookbook. It's a beautiful, beautiful book. It actually looks more like a book than it does a cookbook, which appeals to me. It's so pretty that I can have it out and on display in my kitchen. Before I get into the cookbook, I wanted to share a little story with you that Laura wrote in the introduction. Raspberry picking throughout the humid Ontario summers was my first job as a youth and I suppose this is where the inspiration for my blog, The First Mess, began. I would put on my rubber boots, grab a basket, and head toward the back of my parents' two-acre property in the country at the end of the line where rows of raspberry bushes, heaving with fruit under the steamy July sun. One Berry in the basket, one in my mouth. My brother and I would get $2 for every pint we could scrounge up. And Dad would sell them at his farm market store the next day. I don't think I ever made it to more than $10 a pick. I was too busy, eating those warm berries that tasted of jam, nectar, and light. That all- sensory field experience is my first clear memory of connecting to food beyond

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1619 Birth of Jan van Riebeeck, Dutch navigator and colonial administrator of the Dutch East India Company. In 1660, Jan planted a hedge, now known as Van Riebeeck's Hedge, to mark the border of the Dutch East India Company settlement in Cape Town, South Africa. The hedge was made up of native wild almond trees (Brabejum stellatifolium). Today, parts of the hedge still live in the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden and Bishopscourt. The Van Riebeeck Hedge is not considered a National Monument in South Africa. 1752 Birth of Humphry Repton (no 'e' in Humphry!), English landscape designer. Humphry was trained and molded by the great Capability Brown. Yet as he matured, Humphry began to forge his own path in his approach to design and led a transformation of English gardens that was all his own. He designed over 400 gardens, and his picturesque landscapes are known for their gently rolling vistas, attractive clumps of trees, terraces, and homes nestled in amongst shrubs and foliage. Humphry wanted landscapes to bring out "the natural beauty" and minimize "the natural defects." Like many successful modern landscape designers, Humphry put a great deal of energy into planning his designs. He painstakingly created these gorgeous red leather portfolios for his clients. His red books, as he called them, showcased his design ideas. Humphry's clients could see his pastoral watercolors depicting the current state of their property. Then they would lift a flap of paper and see what their property would look like after Humphry improved it. It was a kind of popup book for their property. Today Humphry's red books are regarded as impressive works of art - and many have been preserved in public and private collections. Humphry Repton coined the term landscape gardener. He had the term carved into his pinebark business cards. In 1818, Humphry died, and per his request, he was buried in a rose garden. Humphry used these words for his epitaph: Unmixed with others shall my dust remain; But moldering, blended, melting into earth, Mine shall give form and color to the rose. And while its vivid blossoms cheer mankind, Its perfumed odor shall ascend to Heaven. 1816 Birth of Charlotte Brontë, English novelist, and poet. Charlotte was the oldest of the three Brontë sisters (Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë) who survived into adulthood. Their novels became classics of English literature. The sisters published their first collaborative work called Poems under the pseudonym of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. They wanted to hide their gender to help sales, so the sisters kept the first letter of their first names: Charlotte was Currer, Emily was Ellis, and Anne was Acton. Still, only two copies of Poems were sold. Emma Emmerson wrote a piece called The Brontë Garden. In it, she revealed: The Brontës were not ardent gardeners, although… Emily and Anne treasured their currant bushes as 'their own bit of fruit garden'. While they may not have been avid gardeners, they knew enough about growing flowers for Charlotte to write: Emily wishes to know if the Sicilian Pea (Pisum sativum)and the Crimson cornflower are hardy flowers, or if they are delicate and should be sown in warm and sheltered situations. In her writing, Charlotte could be a little glum about flowers. In Villette (1853), Charlotte wrote, I like to see flowers growing, but when they are gathered, they cease to please. I look on them as things rootless and perishable; their likeness to life makes me sad. I never offer flowers to those I love; I never wish to receive them from hands dear to me. In The Professor (1857), Charlotte wrote, In sunshine, in prosperity, the flowers are very well; but how many wet days are there in life—November seasons of disaster, when a man's hearth and home would be cold indeed, without the clear, cheering gleam of intellect. 1838 Birth of John Muir, Scottish-American naturalist, conservationist, and author. John Muir was known by many names: "John of the Mountains," "Father of Yosemite," and "Father of the National Parks." John's work to preserve Yosemite resulted in a famous picture of himself posing with President Teddy Roosevelt on Overhanging Rock at the top of Glacier Point in Yosemite in 1903. There's a fun little story about John and Charles Sprague Sargent, the director of the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard, that was featured in a 1915 article. The two men had gone on a fall trip to hike the mountains in North Carolina. John found the scenery so inspiring that when they got to the top of Grandfather Mountain, he began to sing and dance and jump around, while Charles just stood there. This must have been a common trait among the botanists and academics John knew because he once wrote, In drying plants, botanists often dry themselves. Dry words and dry facts will no

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1492 Birth of Pietro Aretino ("Pee-et-tro Air-ah-TEE-no"), Italian writer, poet, and blackmailer. He was critical of the powerful and sympathetic to religious reformers. He once wrote, Let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius. 1646 Birth of Charles Plumier, French priest and botanist. He was born in Marseille and was regarded as one of the most important botanical explorers of his time. Charles served as a botanist to King Louis XIV of France. He traveled to the New World many times, documenting plant and animal species. During his third expedition to the Greater Antilles, Charles discovered the Fuchsia triphylla on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola (modern-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic). Charles named the fuchsia plant after the 16th-century German botanist Leonhart Fuchs. And because he named the Fuschia, Charles is sometimes referred to as the Father of the Fuchsia. The Fuchsia has colorful upside-down blossoms that hang from the stems, and this is how Fuchsias get the common name Lady's Eardrops. The drooping habit is also reflected in the Irish word for Fuchsia - Deora Dé - which translates to "God's Tears." And it's worth noting that the fruit of all the species of Fuchsia is edible. However, many Fuschia fruits are bland and have a terrible aftertaste. But the Fuschia variety Splendens has flavorful fruit and can be used to make jam. In addition to the Fuchsia, Charles discovered and named both the Begonia and the Magnolia. Charles named the Begonia after Michel Begon, who was the governor of the French Antilles for three years, from 1682 to 1685. It was Begon who recommended Charles for the position of plant collector in the Caribbean to King Louis XIV. So this naming of the Begonia was a little payback by Charles to Michel Begon. On the other hand, the naming of the Magnolia was in recognition of the great botanist Pierre Magnol - who introduced the concept of plant families. Carl Linnaeus and his wife were huge Plumier fans. They used Charles's artwork to make wallpaper for their home. Today, Charles is remembered by the genus Plumeria. A tropical, the Plumeria grows in shrubs and trees. Plumeria is sometimes called the common name Frangipani. An Italian Marquis named Frangipani used Plumeria blossoms to create a perfume used to scent gloves during the 16th century. 1826 Birth of Peter Barr, Scottish nurseryman, plant hunter, and merchant. Peter is credited as the man who popularized the daffodil. In America, Peter's promotion of daffodils inspired a daffodil craze after the Civil War ended. Over his lifetime, Peter bred over two million daffodils in his Surrey nursery, which earned him the moniker "The Daffodil King." Each spring, people would travel from all around to see thousands of daffodils representing over a hundred unique daffodil varieties blooming at Peter's nursery. At one point, the Peter Barr daffodil - a white trumpet variety - commanded $250 per bulb. During his seventies, Peter gave the nursery to his sons, and he went out and traveled the world in search of daffodils in Asia and South America. After seven years of searching, Peter finally retired. He went home to his native Scotland, and once there, he pivoted away from daffodils and began cultivating primroses. Two years before his death in 1909, Peter famously mused, I wonder who will plant my grave with primroses? Today, the Royal Horticultural Society awards the Peter Barr Memorial Cup for excellence in daffodils. And in 2019, there was a Grand Blue Plaque Unveiling at Peter's English nursery along Garratt Lane. 1849 On this day, Henri-Frédéric Amiel, Swiss philosopher, and poet, was in Geneva and wrote in his journal: It is six years today since I last left Geneva. How many journeys, how many impressions, observations, thoughts, how many forms of men and things, have since then passed before me... Three snowstorms this afternoon. Poor blossoming plum trees and peach trees! What a difference from six years ago, when the cherry trees, adorned in their green spring dress and laden with their bridal flowers, smiled at my departure along the Vaudois fields, and the lilacs of Burgundy threw great gusts of perfume into my face! Grow That Garden Library™ Book Recommendation Flavors from the Garden by William Woys Weaver This book came out in 2021, and the subtitle is Heirloom Vegetable Recipes from Roughwood. Of course, Roughwood is a reference to the Roughwood Seed Collection of heirloom food plants that William maintains at the historic Lamb Tavern in Devon, Pennsylvania. William is an expert not only on gardening but also on food history. And he is a four-time winner of the prestigious Julia Child Cookbook Award. Now, what I first noticed about this book is the gorgeous cover, which features a simple yellow plate with a beautiful to

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1792 On this day, the Naturalist Gilbert White wrote in his Selborne journal in England: Redstart appears. Daffodils are gone. Mountain-snow-drops, and hyacinths in bloom; the latter very fine: Fritillaries going. Then, four years later, in 1796, Gilbert wrote, Sowed Holly-Hocks, Columbines, and Sweet Williams. 1797 Birth of Adrian Hardy Haworth, British entomologist, and botanist. Adrian was trained to be a lawyer, but once he inherited his family's estate, he devoted himself to the study of natural sciences. The Haworthia genus described by French botanist, Henri Auguste Duval, honors Adrian. The genus consists of around 200 species. Today, Haworthias are very popular since the are succulents. Native to South Africa, Haworthias range in color from transparent green to all shades of purple - and even black. They also vary in shape and texture. One of the most popular Haworthias is the Haworthia Fasciata or the Zebra Succulent. Haworthiopsis fasciata, or Zebra Plant, known for its zebra stripes, has pointy green leaves with bumps of white tubercles arranged in a zebra pattern. And one of the reasons that the zebra succulent is so popular is that it is so easy to grow. Haworthia fasciata is tough as nails, and you can even find it in all the major big box stores. Adrian is also remembered for his work as an entomologist. In the early 1800s, Adrian wrote one of the most authoritative works on British butterflies and moths. His book was called Lepidoptera Britannica. In his lifetime, Adrian named 22 new genera of moths. And finally, Adrian was also the first person to describe the Epiphyllum oxypetalum - commonly known as the Dutchman's Pipe Cactus, Queen of the Night, or Night-Blooming Cereus. 1889 Birth of E. Lucy Braun, American botanist, and ecologist. The "E" stood for Emma, but she always went by Lucy. In 1950, Lucy was the first woman elected president of the Ecological Society of America and an expert on deciduous forests of the eastern United States. A quiet, bright, and dedicated field scientist, Lucy worked as a botany professor at the University of Cincinnati. Lucy became interested in the outdoors as a child. Growing up on May Street in Cincinnati, Lucy's parents would take her and her older sister, Annette, by horse-drawn streetcar to the woods in Rose Hill so they could spend time botanizing. The girls were taught to identify wildflowers by their mother, and they also gathered specimens for their mother's herbarium. Lucy and Annette both got Ph.D.'s; Lucy in botany, Annette in Zoology. Neither ever married. Instead, they lived together at home in Mount Washington. The sisters turned the upstairs of the house into an indoor laboratory, and the gardens became their outdoor laboratory. Lucy was a go-getter. At the age of 80, she was still leading people on field trips in Ohio. Friends of Lucy said, "To be with her in the field was something. She made everything so real, so exciting she was just so knowledgeable." "She loved to be out in the field; rain wouldn't stop her. She could walk forever." 1943 On this day, the Warsaw Ghetto uprising broke out in German-occupied Poland during World War II to oppose Nazi Germany's final effort to transport the remaining ghetto population of Jews to death camps. In 2018, the Shalom foundation planted the Tree of Tears in a square in Warsaw. The tree is a weeping willow, and the leaves symbolize the tears of Jewish mothers who gave their children to Catholic mothers to save their lives. But April 19th is also remembered with yellow paper daffodils thanks to Marek Edelman, a cardiologist and uprising commander who passed away in 2009. When he was alive, Marek began receiving an anonymous bunch of daffodils on the anniversary of the uprising. Marek would lay the bouquet at the ghetto hero monument. Today the paper daffodils symbolize resilience and hope and represent the Yellow Star that Jewish residents were forced to wear during the Holocaust. Grow That Garden Library™ Book Recommendation The Flower Book by Rachel Siegfried This book came out in 2017, and the subtitle is Let the Beauty of Each Bloom Speak For Itself. Before I tell you about Rachel's book, let me share a little bit about Rachel's background. In 2008, Rachel set up a flower farm called Green and Gorgeous in the Oxfordshire countryside. At Green and Gorgeous, Rachel not only provides flowers locally but also handles special events like weddings. In her spare time, Rachel and her partner, Ashley, offer floristry and gardening classes for amateurs and professionals. Rachel starts her book by walking us through how she arranges flowers. This is a little step-by-step tutorial - and if you've ever considered a career as a florist, you will get a little one-on-one here from Rachel. As Rachel mentions at the beginning of her

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1844 Birth of Helene Cramer, German landscape and flower painter. Helen and her sister Molly were both painters in Hamburg, Germany. Their father, Cesar, disapproved of them as painters, so the two women didn't start painting until middle age. (Helen was 38 when she first picked up a brush.) Helen and Molly exhibited their art throughout Germany and at the 1883 World's Fair in Chicago. Most folks say that their favorite Helene Cramer painting is her work called "Marsh Marigolds and Crown Imperials." In 1916, Helen died at 72. She and Molly are buried in Plot 27 of the "Garten der Frauen," or the Garden of Women at the Hamburg Ohlsdorf cemetery. 1888 Birth of Harry Saier, American nurseryman, printer, and garden writer. In 1911, Harry started his seed company in Lansing, Michigan. A 1916 newspaper ad encouraged women to "help beautify Lansing by a pretty home garden." Harry pledged, We supply everything necessary for making your home and lawn a beauty spot. We have assembled a rare collection of beautiful shrubs, trees, flowers and seeds. Lovers of horticulture will find much to interest them here. By the fall of that same year, Harry posted an ad for: [A] lady to canvass city for shrubs, seeds and garden supplies. Harry acquired a new building at 3 West Michigan Avenue for his florist shop three years later. Newspapers reported that, A resplendent posy shop [was] to open. One of the features of the... shop will be an icebox, which will be the largest in the state of Michigan for its purpose. It will measure twelve [by six and made] entirely of glass and... decorated with German silver trimmings. ...The new marble tables... will be arranged about a large fountain which will occupy the center of the building. In 1926, Harry moved his operation to the century farm he bought on highway 99 in Dimondale. Harry was known for producing his exceptional and exhaustive garden catalog. He included a pronunciation list, plant descriptions, and miscellaneous advice. Throughout the 40s, 50s, and 60s, if someone were looking for a plant or seeds, they would usually find their way to Harry as their last best hope. Katherine White wrote about Harry's work in her book Onward and Upward in the Garden: Consider the case of Harry E. Saier, who issues three or four catalogues a year, each of them listing as many as eighteen hundred genera and eighteen thousand kinds of seed. Mr. Saier is not a grower but a collector and distributor of seeds... [he] primarily depends on his two hundred seed collectors, who are stationed all over the world, and on commercial growers from many countries. There is nothing beautiful about his latest catalogue and its hundred and seventy-six pages of small-print lists, interspersed with occasional dim photographs, but it is fascinating to browse in, translating, if you can, the abbreviations made necessary by lack of space. ...His global lists of clients include nurseries, greenhouses, seedsmen, universities, botanical gardens, and drug manufacturers, but a third of them, he tells me, are amateurs like you and me. And just to spark your nostalgia for simpler times, listen to Elizabeth Lawrence describe ordering from Harry. I find most plantsmen send their wares without cash, even when they have never heard of you, but I certainly would never ask them to. I am always in debt to Mr. Saier because he sends things at odd times, and I wake up in the night and remember that I have owed him a quarter for three years. After Harry died in 1976, JL Hudson inherited Harry's seed collection. Harry's Dimondale property is now a cemetery. 2017 On this day, the Beijing Crabapple Conference began. Conference-goers toured the Crabapple Garden, which featured many American cultivars like Brandywine, Cinderella, Molten Lava, Lollipop, and Madonna - all varieties created by Jim Zampini, a beloved nurseryman from Lake County, Ohio. During the conference, attendees learned that Jim had passed away at 85. Today, Jim's legacy lives on in his fantastic crabapple varieties like Centurion, Harvest Gold, Lancelot Dwarf, Sugar Tyme, and the Weeping Candied Apple. Generally speaking, a crabapple tree takes two to five years to bear fruit. Crabapples differ from standard apple trees in that they offer smaller fruit. Apples that are less than 2 inches in diameter are considered crabapples. And, Crabapples rarely grow taller than 25 feet high. If you want to plant a mini-orchard of Crabapple trees, space the saplings six to fifteen feet apart depending on the variety - plant tighter if you are planting dwarf or more upright varieties. Right now, crabapple trees are just starting to bloom in our 2022 gardens. Most gardeners agree that few flowering trees can rival the charm of a crabapple tree in flower. In Polish folklore, apple trees were considered drea

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1711 Birth of John Mitchell (books about this person), American physician, botanist, and polymath. John was educated in Edinburgh. As a young man, John returned to Virginia and settled in Urbanna - about seventy miles from Richmond. There, he began botanizing throughout Virginia, and he corresponded with most of the colonial botanists of his time. For instance, John sent a list of Virginia plants to Peter Collinson for inclusion in his book on new world plants. John Mitchell and John Clayton both botanized in Virginia. The American writer Henry Theodore Tuckerman once wrote, Mitchell and Clayton together gave to the botany of Virginia a distinguished lustre. John also corresponded with Linnaeus, who named the sweetly trailing Partridgeberry Mitchella repens ("Mi-CHEL-uh REE-pens") in his honor. The word repens means "creeping" and describes its growing habit. Partridgeberry is in the Madder family. The berries are red and sport two bright red spots. By 1746, John and his wife had returned to England. He arrived utterly penniless after losing all of his botanical work on the voyage over from America. He paused his botanical work to create a map to help Britain identify their colonial territories. The Mitchell Map took five years to complete and became the most detailed and largest 18th-century map of eastern North America. The Mitchell Map also is regarded as one of the most significant maps in American history. Published before the Seven Years' War, the Mitchell Map was used in the Treaty of Paris (1783) and (ironically) helped define the boundaries of the newly independent United States. And Lewis and Clark used the Mitchell Map on their expedition. 1743 Birth of Thomas Jefferson (books about this person), American statesman and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. Thomas loved plants and gardening. He once wrote, The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture. He also once wrote, On a hot day in Virginia, I know nothing more comforting than a fine spiced pickle, brought up trout-like from the sparkling depths of the aromatic jar below the stairs of Aunt Sally's cellar. 1851 Birth of Helen Maria Winslow (books by this author) (pen name Aunt Philury), American writer and poet. Helen's nature poems are charming. Here's the beginning verse to her poem, Spring Song. The bluebird from the apple-tree Pours forth a flood of melody ; The sky above as blue as he. Shimmers and shines, an azure sea. And the robin sings, 'What cheer, what cheer ?' Summer is coming, and Spring is here!" 1909 Birth of Eudora Alice Welty (books by this author), American writer and photographer who wrote about the American South. Eudora's novel The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. She famously wrote, One place comprehended can make us understand other places better. Today, Eudora's house and garden in Jackson, Mississippi, is a National Historic Landmark and is open to the public. The home was built by Eudora's parents, Christian and Chestina. Eudora lived in her family home for seventy-six years and wrote all her major works there. In the 1930s, Eudora hosted the 'Night Blooming Cereus Club' of Jackson, Mississippi, in her moon garden to watch the annual blossoming of the flower known as the 'Queen of the Night.' Eudora learned to love gardening from her mother, Chestina. Chestina designed the garden at Eudora's home in 1925. The two spent the next two decades working in the garden - planting, digging, weeding, and harvesting. Today, the gardens are beautifully restored based on Eudora's photos and letters and Chestina's garden journals. The garden is not a show garden - it's a gardener's garden - and that's the way Eudora wanted it to be maintained for future generations. Eudora found inspiration in the natural world. Over 150 different plants are mentioned in her various works. In 1931, Eudora and her mother turned to the garden after the sudden death of her father. During that time, she wrote short stories, including a story inspired by the garden called A Curtain of Green. Looking back at the years following the loss of her dad, Eudora wrote, No experience could have taught me more about grief or flowers, about achieving survival by going, your fingers in the ground, the limit of physical exhaustion. In Delta Wedding (1946), Eudora wrote, The evening was hot; it was the fragrance of the lemon lilies that was cool, like the breath from a mountain well. Gardeners often say that gardening is cheaper than therapy. Eudora knew that garden time had benefits that were on a higher level. She once wrote to a friend, I like the work in the yard, never get tired, and can think out there... or maybe it's dreaming. Grow That Garden Library™ Book Rec

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1661 Birth of Georg Joseph Kamel ("CAH-mel"), Czech pharmacist, naturalist, and Jesuit missionary. Georg was born in Brno (pronounced "burr-no"), the city where Gregor Mendel lived in a monastery and experimented with peas. In 1688, after graduating from a mission school in Vienna, he was sent to the Philippines, which was then a Spanish colony, and he ended up spending the rest of his life helping the people as a doctor and botanizing in his free time. Early on, he once confided in a friend. There is no physician here but four brorthers who know little more than my pair of trousers. Georg also worked as a pharmacist and a botanist at the College in Manila. He set up the first pharmacy in the Philipines, and he ran it according to Austrian standards. Georg Joseph Kamel was a true naturalist. He enjoyed learning everything he could about the natural world. His work as an herbalist led him to explore the medicinal potential of the plants he encountered, and he valued the way locals treated ailments. For instance, he believed that low doses of the Saint Ignatius bean - the source of strychnine - had medicinal value since Filipinos used it to treat cholera. But modern research has proved otherwise, and even trace amounts of strychnine damage the liver and the kidneys. Thanks to his work treating the sick, Georg was well known. He treated the poor for free, and he happily received many plants from grateful locals to plant in his medicinal garden. Between his own collecting efforts and the plants received from locals, Georg completed the first flora of the Philippines. Georg sent a copy of his flora to his peer and friend, John Ray, who, in turn, included the Philippine flora in the appendix of the third volume of his great work- the Historia Plantarum - the history of plants. Georg also named several plants. He called the ubiquitous ornamental houseplant the kalanchoe ("kal-an-KOH-ee"), which was based on the Philipino name for the plant. Georg also was the first person to describe the tea plant or the Camellia, which is why Carl Linneaus named the Camellia in honor of Georg Joseph Kamel. He used Georg's Latinized last name, Camellus, for the genus name Camellia, which translates to "helper to the priest." Sadly, Georg Joseph Kamel died young at 45 from an intestinal infection. 1748 Death of William Kent (books about this person), English landscape gardener, artist, and designer. Before William's picturesque approach to landscapes, gardens were formal, following Dutch or French design principles that used a geometric and orderly layout. But William started out as a painter and not a landscape architect, and when he worked on landscapes, he approached them as a living canvas. He once wrote, All gardening is landscape painting. For William to make art out of the earth, he needed scenery, and he went to great lengths to accomplish his visions. He moved soil to create rolling hills; he used swaths of land for lush lawns, groves of trees for interest and contrast, and paths with benches for the characters/visitors that he envisioned arriving on the scene. William planned for people to walk or ride through his landscapes in the same way that people might dot the landscape of one of his paintings. William often placed elements in the garden against a green backdrop, a hillside, or a group of evergreens, to accent the piece's beauty. Much of what William Kent attempted to do has become mainstream. As gardeners, we often must contend with unattractive areas in the landscape: fences, sheds, or utility areas. Well, William Kent faced these same concerns for his beautiful landscapes. At Rousham, William employed a haha or wall sunken into a ditch instead of fencing to keep the gardens separate from grazing land. He also improved the exterior of an eyesore - an old mill - by adding gothic elements. He also added a folly to look like a ruin with three arches that William called the eye-catcher. William wanted visitors at Rousham to look off in the distance toward the eye-catcher and feel the expansiveness of the property. It was William Kent who said, Garden as though you will live forever. 1899 Birth of Gladys Taber, American author, columnist, and animal lover. Gladys wrote over fifty books that ran from fiction to cookbooks, children's books to poetry. She once wrote, Nothing decorates a room like books. There they are, waiting to decorate the mind, too! She's best remembered for her series about life at Stillmeadow, her farm in rural Connecticut. She also wrote about her smaller Cape Cod home called Still Cove. Stillmeadow and Still Cove were the most common topics of her columns for Ladies Home Journal (1937 - 1957) and Family Circle (1959 - 1967). Gladys was a gardener, and she once wrote, A garden is evidence of faith. It links us with all

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1722 Birth of Christopher Smart, English poet. He was known for his pen name as the midwife "Mrs. Mary Midnight." The back half of Christopher's life was spent in madhouses or prisons. He wrote his long religious poem, Jubilate Agno (Rejoice in the Lamb), in a debtor's prison. It includes the words, For the flowers are great blessings. For there is a language of flowers. For the flowers are peculiarly the poetry of Christ. In this same poem, Christopher praises his beloved cat Jeoffry. The Jeoffry verses inspired Oliver Soden's whimsical biography of Jeoffry, which debuted in April 2021 to the delight of cat lovers everywhere. In 1752, Christopher published The Hop-Garden, a long poem of 733 lines about a hop garden that tells the reader how to cultivate hops. The poem is part personal history and part instruction. In The Hop-Garden, Christopher mentioned the river that ran past his childhood garden, and he dedicated the second half of the poem to his dear friend Theophilus Wheeler. Christopher was in the middle of writing The Hop-Garden when Theophilus died during his sophomore year at Christ College. After The Hop-Garden was published, Christopher's friend, Samuel Johnson, said the poem was proof that, one could say a great deal about cabbage. In the poem, when a storm threatens the harvest, Christopher writes, Haste then, ye peasants; pull the poles, the hops; Where are the bins? Run, run, ye nimble maids, Move ev'ry muscle, ev'ry nerve extend, To save our crop from ruin, and ourselves. Christopher Smart died in debtor's prison in London in 1771, at 49. 1897 Death of David Burke, English plant collect and gardener. The Veitch nurseries became obsessed with the painting of a Pitcher-plant (Nepenthes Northiana) by Marianne North. After Marianne's death, Veitch sent David on his first collecting trip with Charles Curtis to bring back specimens of the North Pitcher plant. During the trip, David discovered the beautiful Leea amabilis, which is now a popular tropical houseplant that features dark, jagged-shaped leaves with have white color along the midrib. David continued to travel extensively for James Veitch & Sons, and he collected plants in British Guiana, Burma, and Colombia. David was honored with the naming of a pitcher plant he discovered called Nepenthes Burkei. In the Philippines, David also collected Phalaenipsis stuartiana. He found the orchid growing abundantly along the coastline, where it thrived being sprayed by the ocean. The Veitch firm praised Burke's writing. This traveller (Burke) crossed a greater area of the earth's surface and covered more miles in search of plants than any other Veitchian collector, with the possible exception of the two brothers William and Thomas Lobb. The writer Sue Shephard wrote a biography of the Veitch family, and in it, she described David as Veitch's strangest, longest–serving and most adventurous orchid collector. James Veitch once remarked, Burke was one of those curious natures who live more or less with natives as a native, and apparently, prefer[ed] this mode of existance. In 1896, David left on what was to be his final voyage. He died of cholera on Ambon island. 1912 Birth of Elsie Elizabeth Esterhuysen, South African botanist. Elsie's been described as the most outstanding collector of South African Flora. She collected over 36,000 herbarium species. A botanist at the Bolus Herbariumin Cape Town, Elsie was humble, and she would never publish the results of her work under her own name. After Elsie died, over 200 people gathered at her memorial, which featured three tributes from her botanist family. The botanist John Rourke recalled, It's an astonishing fact that for the first 18 years of her employment she received no proper salary and was paid out of petty cash at a rate not much better than a laborer. She did not collect randomly; Elsie was above all an intelligent collector, seeking range extensions, local variants, or even new species, filling voids in the Bolus Herbarium's records, often returning months later to collect seeds or fruits that were of diagnostic importance. […] Always self-deprecating, one of her favorite comments was 'I'm only filling in gaps'. The botanist Peter Linder said, She was what I thought a botanist was supposed to be. She was in the mountains every weekend, and came back with big black plastic bags full of plants, that she sorted and passed to Gert Syster to press. Elsie taught me that each species has an essence, a character—that it liked some habitats but not others and that it flowered at a particular time. ...She was interested in the plants themselves—she cared about them. The botanist Ted Oliver remembered, Her mode of transport was the bicycle (we have her latest model here today). She rode to the University of Cape Town up that dread

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1805 Birth of Hugo von Mohl, German botanist. One newspaper called him the "greatest botanist of his day." He coined the word protoplasm. He discovered Mitosis and chloroplasts - describing them as discrete bodies within the green plant cell in 1837. In 1846 he described the sap in plant cells as "the living substance of the cell" and created the word "protoplasm." 1859 On this day, the Ohio Legislature named Alliance, Ohio, the "Carnation City," saying "truly it is the home of Ohio's State flower," thanks to the work of the amateur horticulturist Levi L. Lamborn (books by this author). In 1876, Levi ran against his friend William McKinley for congress. Before every debate, Levi gave William a "Lamborn Red" Carnation to wear on his lapel. Levi had propagated and named the Lamborn Red Carnation from seedlings he had received from France. After William won the election, he considered the Lamborn Red Carnation his good luck charm - his lucky flower - and he wore a Lamborn Red Carnation during his successful campaigns for Governor of Ohio and President of the United States. William wore a Lamborn Red Carnation when he was sworn into office. He was also wearing one when he attended the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, in 1901. At that event, he removed the Carnation and gave it to a 12-year-old girl named Myrtle Ledger, saying, I must give this flower to another little flower. Minutes later, in the receiving line, he greeted his assassin, Leon Czolgosz. President McKinley lingered for eight days after being shot twice before finally succumbing to infection. When McKinley's funeral train passed through Alliance, Ohio, the train tracks were covered in Lamborn Red Carnations. The Ohio General Assembly named the scarlet Carnation the official Ohio floral emblem three years later. The resolution reads: Even though the first mention of the Dianthus genus of plant... is traced to some four hundred years before the birth of Christ, it was not until a native son of Alliance, Ohio, (Levi L. Lamborn) worked his floricultural magic that it blossomed as the matchless symbol of life and love that is today. Representative Elijah W. Hill, from Columbiana County, said, England has the rose, France has the lily; Ireland, the shamrock; Scotland, the thistle. ...To these ends, we seek to adopt the scarlet Carnation as Ohio's floral emblem. Fifty-five years later, on this day, April 8, 1959, Alliance, Ohio, became the "Carnation City" thanks to the work of Levi L. Lamborn. Every year since 1960, Alliance has held a Carnation festival. In 2022, the 10-day festival takes place between August 4 - August 14. 1892 Birth of Mary Pickford (books about this person), born Gladys Marie Smith, became known as America's sweetheart and a Hollywood legend. Mary was also a lover of trees. If you jump on Twitter, search for "Mary Pickford Tree," and you'll see images of Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford planting a tree at their PickFair estate. #ArborDay Mary Pickford was the first to plant a Japanese cedar tree in the Forest of Fame at the California Botanic Garden. And Trivia/Folklore says that Mary Pickford used to eat flowers - especially roses. Katie Melua sang about Mary in a song that goes: Mary Pickford Used to eat roses Thinking they'd make her Beautiful, and they did- One supposes. In real life, Mary did indeed eat roses. Mary Pickford revealed in her autobiography, Sunshine and Shadow that as a young girl living in Toronto, she would buy a single rose and eat the petals, believing the beauty, color, and perfume would somehow get inside her. Mary starred in Madame Butterfly (1915). The movie was shot in the Japanese garden of Charles Pfizer's Bernardsville, New Jersey estate called Yademos, the word "someday" spelled backward. The elaborate three-and-a-half-acre Japanese garden - complete with a lake filled with Japanese goldfish, a tea house, and a hooped and arched bridge - looked like it had been there forever - but in reality, the garden was only nine years old. 1918 Birth of First Lady Betty Ford (books about this person). As a woman, Betty Ford consistently defied the odds. She was an incredible trailblazer and very open about her struggles with alcohol and breast cancer. She revolutionized addiction treatment and opened her center for treatment while she was in the middle of working on her own recovery. Today' the Betty Ford Alpine Gardens is a fitting living tribute to this remarkable woman. Known as Vail's Alpine Treasure, the garden was founded in 1985 by the Vail Alpine Garden Foundation and renamed in honor of Betty three years later in 1988. This special place is located in Ford Park right next to the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater–named in honor of her husband, the 38th president of the United States. Over the years, the Betty Ford A

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1727 Birth of Michel Adanson, French botanist and naturalist. He created the first natural classification of flowering plants. Although today we think mainly of Darwin and Linnaeus when it comes to classification, these two men and others stood on the shoulders of Michel Adanson. The great botanist Jussieu ("Juice You") adopted Michel's methodology to create his masterpiece called Genera Plantarum (1789). Michel was the first person to question the stability of species. When he saw breaks or deviations in nature, he came up with a word for it: mutation. Linnaeus honored Michel's contributions with the genus Adansonia, which features the spectacularly unique Baobab ("BOW-bab") trees of Africa, Australia, and Madagascar. The Baobab tree (books about this topic) has a Seussical quality, and it is one of the most massive trees in the world. They are called "The Queens of the Forest" or "The Roots of the Sky in Africa." The last name refers to a legend that tells how long ago, in a fit of anger, the devil pulled the Baobab tree out of the ground, only to shove it back into the earth upside down - leaving its roots shooting up into the air. The story offers the perfect description of how the trees look. The enormous trunks of the Baobab tree can store up to 32,000 gallons of water. The outer bark is about 6 inches thick, but the cavity is spongy and vascular. This is why animals, like elephants, chew the bark during the dry seasons. Carbon dating indicates that Baobabs may live to be 3,000 years old. And here's a fun fact: the cooking ingredient Cream of Tartar was initially made from Baobab seed pulp. Today, it is mainly sourced as a by-product of making wine. 1775 Birth of Francis Cabot Lowell (books about this person), American industrialist and anthropologist. The first planned company town - the city of Lowell, Massachusetts, is named in his honor. One of the fathers of the Industrial Revolution in America, Francis once wrote, One lifetime is never enough to accomplish one's horticultural goals. If a garden is a site for the imagination, how can we be very far from the beginning? 1869 Birth of David Fairchild (books about this person), American botanist. In terms of plant exploration, David was single-handedly responsible for introducing more than 200,000 plants to the United States, including pistachios, kale, mangoes, dates, nectarines, soybeans, and flowering cherries. In 2019, David's incredible adventures and contributions intrigued author Daniel Stone so much that he wrote a magnificent biography of David called The Food Explorer: The True Adventures of the Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats. David also brought the Avocado to America. David loved the Avocado and wrote, The avocado is a food without rival among the fruits, the veritable fruit of paradise. In 1905, David married Mary Ann Bell; his father-in-law was none other than Alexander Graham Bell - who, along with his wife, also enjoyed gardening. Today the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral Gables is filled with many of the plants David collected, and of course, the garden is named in David's honor. In The World Was My Garden: Travels Of A Plant Explorer (1938), David wrote, The human mind prefers something which it can recognize to something for which it has no name, and, whereas thousands of persons carry field glasses to bring horses, ships, or steeples close to them, only a few carry even the simplest pocket microscope. Yet a small microscope will reveal wonders a thousand times more thrilling than anything which Alice saw behind the looking-glass. 1940 Birth of Steven Vogel, American biomechanics researcher and the James B. Duke professor in the Department of Biology at Duke University. In The Life of a Leaf (2012), Steven wrote, I'm not even much of a gardener—my contribution to the family garden consists mainly of compost. Grow That Garden Library™ Book Recommendation The Fine Art of Paper Flowers by Tiffanie Turner This book came out in 2017, and the subtitle is A Guide to Making Beautiful and Lifelike Botanicals. When it comes to making permanent arrangements and using elements like paper flowers, there is no better teacher than Tiffany Turner. By the way, this book has the most beautiful cover. Tiffany is a bit of a polymath - she's multitalented. She's licensed as a California architect. She's a fine art instructor and an artist in her own right. Her work has been featured all over the country. Tiffany typically explores nature in her work, and she creates botanical specimens that can be staggeringly large or very, very, very tiny. Now, Tiffany was raised in the woods of New Hampshire. But, for the past twenty years, she's made San Francisco her home, and that's where she and her husband are raising their two children. There's

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1528 Today is the anniversary of the death of the German painter, engraver, printmaker, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg, Albrecht Dürer (books about this person). Albrecht's work was extraordinary, and by the time he was in his 20s, he was already quite famous. During Albrecht's lifetime, explorers shifted their focus from medicinal plants to ornamental plants. As an artist, Albrecht captured many new exotic plants with incredible attention to detail. If you're looking for bunny art, you should check out Albrecht Dürer's watercolor called Young Hare. It's a beautiful piece, remarkable for its accuracy and realism. One of Albrecht's most famous pieces is The Great Piece of Turf (German: Das große Rasenstück), which he created in 1503. This exceptional watercolor shows a very natural grouping of natural plants together in community and features grass that has gone to seed, plantain, and dandelion. 1732 Birth of José Celestino Mutis (books about this person), Spanish priest, botanist, and mathematician. He's remembered as the architect of the Royal Botanical Expedition of the Kingdom of Granada (what is now Columbia) in 1783. For almost 50 years, José worked to collect and illustrate the plants in Colombian lands. In Columbia, José created an impressive botanical library and a herbarium with over 24,000 species. During his lifetime, only Joseph Banks had a bigger herbarium than José. José's study of the Cinchona tree (Cinchona officinalis) at the Bogota Botanical Garden helped develop a cure for yellow fever or malaria. The Cinchona tree grows in the cloud forests of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. The bark of the cinchona tree contains quinine, the chemical used to create medicines. During José's lifetime, Cinchona was believed to have the potential to cure all diseases, and so the Spanish crown encouraged José to continue his work with Cinchona. José sent thousands of specimens back to the Madrid Botanical Garden. He also used local artisans to create over 6,500 pieces of botanical art. The majority of the collection remained in shipping crates until 2010 when they were finally exhibited at Kew. Today, thousands of pieces of the Mutis collection are housed at the Botanical Garden in Madrid, Spain. The pieces are significant - mostly folio size - and since they haven't seen much daylight over the past two centuries, they are in immaculate condition. The old 200 pesos banknote in Colombia bears the portrait of José Mutis, and the Bogota Botanical Garden is named in his honor. 1759 Death of Johann Zinn, German anatomist and botanist. He died young from tuberculosis at 32. Johann accomplished much in his short life, and he focused on two seemingly disconnected areas of science: human anatomy and botany. From an anatomy standpoint, Johann focused on the eye. He wrote an eye anatomy book and became the first person to describe the Iris. Today, several parts of the eye are named in Johann's honor, including the Zinn zonule, the Zinn membrane, and the Zinn artery. As a young man, Johann was appointed the University Botanic Garden director in Göttingen (pronounced "Gert-ing-en"). He initially thought the University wanted him to teach anatomy, but that job was filled, so he took the botany job instead. One day, Johann received an envelope of seeds from the German Ambassador to Mexico. After growing the plants, Johann wrote about them, drew the blossoms, and shared the seed with other botanists throughout Europe. Those seeds were the Zinnia (click here to order Zinnia seeds). When Johann died so young, Linnaeus named the Zinnia in his honor. The Aztecs had a word for Zinnia, which basically translates to "the evil eye" or "eyesore." The original Zinnia was a weedy-looking plant with a dull purple blossom. This is why the Zinnia was initially called the crassina, which means "somewhat corse." Once the French began hybridizing Zinnias, the dazzling colors began turning the heads and hearts of gardeners. This gradual transformation of zinnias from eyesores to beauties is how Zinnias earned the common name Cinderella Flower. Zinnia's are a favorite flower of gardeners, and it is Indiana's state flower. In addition to their striking colors, zinnias can be directly sown into the garden, they attract pollinators like butterflies, and they couldn't be easier to grow. 2021 On this day, The Book of Difficult Fruit: Arguments for the Tart, Tender, and Unruly by Kate Lebo was released. In her book, Kate Lebo - essayist, poet, and pie lady - shares a natural, culinary, medical, and personal history of twenty-six fruits, including: Aronia or chokeberry - a member of the apple family and it is not poisonous. Like raspberries, the Aronia pigment stains clothes. Durian - fruit from the tree of the hibiscus, or mallow, family. The unique

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1898 On this day, The Lilies of the Valley Fabergé egg (books about this topic)was presented to the Russian Tsar Nicholas II. The egg was a gift for his wife, Empress Alexandra. Today the egg is kept in the Fabergé Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Lily of the valley, Convallaria majalis ("con-vah-LAIR-ee-ah mah-JAY-liss), is a woodland plant that flowers in the spring with sweetly scented, delicate, bell-shaped white flowers. Despite its common name, Lily of the valley is in the asparagus family - not the lily family. It's not a lily at all. The etymology of the Latin name "majalis" means "belonging to May," In addition to blooming in May, the Lily of the Valley is the birth flower for May. In France, Lily of the Valley Day is celebrated every May 1st. In floriography, the Lily of the Valley represents good luck. The tiny blossoms are favorite for making perfume. Lily of the Valley is a favorite bridal flower and was included in the wedding bouquets of Queen Victoria, Princess Astrid of Sweden, Grace Kelly, and Kate Middleton. Lily of the Valley thrives in cool growing zones - it cannot thrive in hot conditions. 1908 Birth of Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis (books about this person), American actress. Her career spanned over five decades. She often played tough, unsympathetic characters. As Margo Channing in All About Eve (1950), she said, Remind me to tell you about the time I looked into the heart of an artichoke. 1913 Birth of Anne Scott-James (books by this author), English author and pioneering journalist. In 1934, Anne started out as a secretary at Vogue before rising through the ranks to become the Beauty Editor. After a brilliant career in journalism - including stints at Harper's Bazaar and the Daily Mail - Anne became a garden writer. Her books included The Best Plants For Your Garden, The Pleasure Garden, Down to Earth, and Sissinghurst: The Making of a Garden. Regarding Sissinghurst, Anne wrote, Sissinghurst is the last cottage garden made on a grand scale, but fortunately, it does not mark the end of cottage gardening. Both of Anne's children followed in her footsteps and ended up in journalism. Anne's daughter Clare Hastings also became a garden writer, and she is the author of Gardening Notes from a Late Bloomer. She also wrote a memoir of her mother released in 2020 called Hold the Front Page!: The Wit and Wisdom of Anne Scott-James. It was Anne Scott-James who wrote, However small your garden, you must provide for two of the serious gardener's necessities, a tool shed, and a compost heap. and To pick a flower is so much more satisfying than just observing it or photographing it ... So in later years, I have grown in my garden as many flowers as possible for children to pick. 2011 Death of Kim McDodge, American garden founder and artist. In 1993, Kim used her inheritance to buy two parcels of land in the Sabin neighborhood of Portland, Oregon, near NE Fremont and 11th, called Ariadne Garden. Two years later, she donated the 100 x 100-foot plot to the Oregon Sustainable Agriculture Land Trust (OSALT). The Ariadne Garden became a volunteer-staffed, organic, urban farm selling blooms like peonies, roses, yarrow, lilies, gladiola, zinnias, and a diverse array of produce. Kim designed the Hopi mother and child maze at Ariadne. It is a nod to the lore of Ariadne herself. In Greek mythology, Ariadne (books about this topic) was a Cretan princess. She is remembered for helping Theseus escape the labyrinth after slaying the Minotaur with the help of a golden thread. Ariadne then became the wife of Dionysus. In Jhan Hochman's beautiful tribute to Kim, he wrote, Before the mortal Ariadne more famously enabled Theseus to kill the minotaur and escape the labyrinth, she was a Minoan vegetation goddess celebrated by rituals reflecting the death and revival of the vegetation she personified. Kim elegantly fused these two Ariadne's in her garden-labyrinth, becoming remarkably Ariadne-like herself by showing the rest of us at least one way to kill the minotaur of corporate agriculture, thread our way out of the labyrinth of supermarket aisles, and find our way back to the mazing paths of an organic garden. Grow That Garden Library™ Book Recommendation Get Growing by Holly Farrell This book came out in 2020, and the subtitle is A Family Guide to Gardening Inside and Out. I should mention that this book is by the RHS, and it is really fantastic as per usual for the RHS. The goal here with this book was to put fun into gardening with this excellent family guide to help you make gardening a family affair. Now, you know, it's hard to beat RHS books because they're so well put together, and of course, they're grounded in science — the latest science — so that's always a plus. One of the reasons why you might want to consider getting th

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1802 Birth of Dorothea Lynde Dix, Boston activist, writer, and schoolteacher. As a young woman, she visited England and met the philanthropist and mental-health reformer Samuel Tuke, the director of the York Retreat. There, the patients tended the flower and vegetable gardens surrounding the buildings. Samual called his methods "moral treatment," His work inspired Dorothea to pursue new ways of treating mental illness back home in America. Dorothea championed the causes of the marginalized, incredibly the mentally ill. She successfully lobbied for the creation of mental asylums. Despite today's negative connotations, the word asylum was initially intended to be a place of safety and refuge. Dorothea's asylums were a complete departure from the punitive madhouses that had come before. Today, the Dorothea Dix Park in Raleigh stands on the site of North Carolina's first mental health facility, Dorothea Dix Hospital, which existed for 160 years. Before that, the land was part of the Spring Hill Plantation, which was worked by hundreds of enslaved people for 150 years. Dorothea Dix Park is known for daffodils in spring and a field of sunflowers at the end of July. Dorothea Dix often included flower petals in letters to her friends. In 1829, she wrote a book of Floriography ("FLOOR-EE-ah-grah-FEE") or the language of flowers called The Garland of Flora. Dorothea wrote, The rose is the flower and handmaiden of love – the lily, her fair associate, is the emblem of beauty and purity. 1928 Birth of Maya Angelou (books by this author), American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist. Maya once wrote, On late evenings when quiet inhabits my garden when grass sleeps and streets are only paths for silent mist I seem to remember Smiling. 1929 Birth of James A. Duke (books about this person), American botanist and writer. He's remembered for his Handbook of Medicinal Herbs and the best-selling book The Green Pharmacy (1997). He developed Dr. Duke's Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical Databases at the USDA. James once quipped regarding dandelions: If you can't beat them, eat them. 1944 On this day, English and American bombs hit the Botanical Garden in Bucharest. The garden's herbarium lost 500,000 sheets of specimens - roughly two-thirds of their collection. The origins of the garden date back to 1874. The garden found a champion in a 28-year-old Romanian botanist and naturalist named Dimitrie Brandza. Today the garden is named in his honor. Dimitri came to Bucharest to be a professor at the Department of Natural Science at the University of Bucharest. He created the botany department at the Natural Science Museum, only to see his entire plant collection destroyed by a fire two years later in 1884. But the fire ignited a new passion for Dimitri, which was the creation of the botanical garden, which opened in 1891. The garden's 42 acres are home to a museum, a greenhouse, formal gardens, wild spaces, lakes, ponds, and research buildings. The garden is a living part of the biology department at the University of Bucharest. Grow That Garden Library™ Book Recommendation The Graphic Garden by Keith Williams This very, very green-covered book came out in May of 2020, and it's the first monograph from landscape architect Keith Williams. This book features all of Keith's projects to date. Now Keith is one of the country's leading landscape architects. Keith is a partner, along with Mario Nievera, in their design firm called Nievera Williams Design, a genuinely groundbreaking landscape architecture firm Is based in South Florida. Together, Mario and Keith have been designing fantastic outdoor spaces for over two decades. One of the wonderful things about this particular book is that Keith shares with us the transformations and pictures of his gardens, showcasing his work process from the beginning of the project all the way through to the end. In this way, you can see how he looks at spaces and incorporates different elements into these monumental design projects. And there's a reason he calls it the Graphic Garden, and that's because it's so visual. Keith is very generously sharing everything— all the pictures, all of the drawings, and the details regarding his approach to designing gardens. So if you are a garden designer, this book is a must because you will learn from a true expert in garden design. Now I have to say that when I first got this book, I was so blown away. It was way more than I anticipated. The level of detail is fantastic. You will learn about layering in gardens and how each layer contributes to the garden's overall design. And the other thing that I want to mention quickly is that I shared a great video of Keith and his partner, Mario, in a video with Steele Marcoux of Veranda, and they're talking about garden design, their uniqu

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1755 Birth of Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (books by this author), French lawyer and politician. He became a famous epicure and gastronome. In The Physiology of Taste, He wrote, A man who was fond of wine was offered some grapes at dessert after dinner. 'Much obliged', said he, pushing the plate aside; 'I am not accustomed to taking my wine in pills. 1803 Birth of Miles Joseph Berkeley, English cryptogamist and clergyman. Miles is regarded as a founder of plant pathology. As a young man, Miles became passionate about lichens, and he became a recognized expert in his lifetime. Miles pursued his botanical work around his duties as a pastor. He coined the term "mycologist" to describe his work with nature. Today Websters defines a mycologist as someone who works with fungi ("fun-guy"), living organisms such as molds, yeast, and mushrooms. And while many of his fellow clergymen believed the potato famine to be a tool of the devil, Miles correctly suspected that a water mold, Phytophthora infestans, could be the source of the problem. Miles named a mushroom species Agaricus ruthae ("Ah-GARE-uh-kus Ruth-ee") after his daughter Ruth. Ruth Ellen Berkeley became a successful botanical illustrator. 1838 Birth of George Edward Post, American physician and scholar. He was a missionary, professor, and pioneering doctor in Syria, Beirut, and Lebanon. In his spare time, he botanized the countryside and wrote the first English Flora of the Middle East. George is remembered for his extensive herbarium. His students helped with his collecting efforts. George would assign two hundred herbarium sheets per student and reward those who traveled the furthest to obtain specimens. There are many incredible stories about George Post. Supposedly, he could outwork most men and fall asleep very quickly. George Post lore tells how George could also collect specimens without getting off his horse. George got good at leaning down low on the side of his saddle to grab a specimen for his study. Finally, as George lay dying, a visitor placed some wheat in his hand. The wheat was symbolic of the harvest and George's lifetime of work with plants. 1868 Birth of Edmond Rostand (books by this author), the very dapper-looking French poet and dramatist. Edmond built a villa called Arnaga in Cambo less Bains, France. The beautiful gardens cover 37 acres. Edmond planned the French garden on the east side to greet the rising sun and an English garden on the west side to enjoy the setting sun. Edmond called Arnaga "a poem of stone and greenery," and it is often referred to as the "Little Versaille" in the Basque country. Today the villa and the gardens get five-star reviews on Trip Advisor. Edmond is best known for his 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac. In the play, Edmond wrote this garden-inspired verse, My soul, be satisfied with flowers, With fruit, with weeds even; but gather them In the one garden you may call your own. Grow That Garden Library™ Book Recommendation Patina Farm by Brooke and Steve Giannetti This book came out in March of 2016 - so it's been out for six years already. This book has been on my watch list for quite some time, and use copies have finally dipped below $20, so I am thrilled to share this with you on today's show. Let me just start by saying that the cover of Patina Farm is so stunning. It's one of my favorite covers, and when I saw the cover for the first time, I could not stop thinking about it. I love the use of dried flowers and the styling on the cover. I love the cutting boards displayed over the mantle, the beautiful teal slip-covered chairs, and the natural elements that make this gorgeous cover. And then, of course, there is the incredibly inspiring story of Steve and his wife, Brooke, because they decided to leave suburbia - they were living in Santa Monica - and then they built a new life for themselves on a farm. But first, they went to Europe to find their inspiration for their farm - visiting Belgium and France - and then combined their talents to create Patina Farm, sharing what they did in this book. Now Steve is the architect. He puts together all the architectural drawings, which you can see in the book. And then Brooke is the writer. She's a beautiful writer and took over 200 photographs shared in this book. And don't I love the name of their farm: Patina Farm. The book is dedicated to their children, Charlie, Nick, and Lyla, and in the dedication, they said that their kids give their dreams meaning, which is so touching. The other thing I like about this book is how they share their journey in the titles of each chapter. So there's arriving, connecting, nourishing, creating, restoring, rejuvenating, sharing, and then farming - and then they give abundant resources at the end, too. If there's something that you're particularly

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1621 Birth of Andrew Marvell, English poet and politician. He was a friend of John Milton. In addition to writing The Garden - one of the most famous English poems of the seventeenth century - he wrote this little garden verse: I have a garden of my own But so with Roses overgrown And Lilies, that you would it guess To be a little wilderness. 1824 Birth of Dietrich Brandis, German forester and botanist. He's remembered as the Father of Forestry in India, the Father of Modern Forest Management, and the Father of Tropical Forestry. Concerned about the unregulated destruction of the forests in India, the British wanted people in India to help manage and protect the trees. In 1856, Dietrich left his botany professorship in Bonn (where his father had been a professor) for a civil service position managing the teak forests in Burma. Eight years later, Dietrich was in charge of all the forests in India. In Carl Alwin Schenck's Birth of Forestry in America, there's a fascinating story about how Deitrich inventoried the Teak trees in the forest. [He rode] an elephant, on such trails as there were, with four sticks in his left hand and a pocketknife in his right. Whenever he saw in the bamboo thickets a teak tree within two hundred feet of his trail, he cut a notch in stick number 1, 2, 3, or 4, denoting the diameter of the tree. It was impossible for European hands, dripping with moisture, to carry a notebook. At the end of the day, after traveling some twenty miles, Brandis had collected forest stand data for a sample plot four hundred feet wide and twenty miles long, containing some nineteen hundred acres. He continued his cruise for a number of months, sick with malaria in a hellish climate. Moreover, he underwent a trepanning operation (brian surgery), and for the rest of his life, he carried a small hole filled with white cotton in the front of his skull. But he emerged from the cruise with the knowledge needed for his great enterprise. Dietrich established modern "sustainable" agroforestry principles that are still followed today. For two decades, Dietrich measured, itemized, and chronicled the forests of India. He started forest management schools and created training protocols for his employees. In 1878, Deitrich founded the Forest Research Institute in the Doon Valley in Dehradun. Styled in Greco Roman architecture, the building is beautiful and is the largest purely brick structure in the world. Sir Joseph Hooker recognized Deitrich's work and named the flowering-plant genus Brandisia in his honor. 1848 Birth of William Waldorf Astor, American-British attorney, politician, businessman (hotels and newspapers), and philanthropist. In 1891, a tall, shy William Waldorf Astor moved to Britain after declaring that "America is not a fit place for a gentleman to live." After over a decade living in England, William bought a run-down double-moated Hever Castle, which was Anne Boleyn's family home four hundred years earlier. Between 1904 and 1908, William oversaw the installation of the extensive gardens designed by Frank Pearson to surround the castle. William diverted water from a nearby river to make a 35-acre lake to make his vision a reality. It is said that eight hundred men hand-dug and stomped on the clay soil to make the bottom of the lake. Mature trees were harvested from Ashdown Forest and transplanted at Hever. Two mazes were installed. Topiary chessmen were pruned for the chess garden. Thousands of roses were brought in for the rose garden. But, the most impressive Garden at Hever was and is the Italian Garden, which features colonnades, classical sculptures, antiquities dating back to Roman times, and a loggia. There's also a long pergola on one end that features cool dripping fountains the entire length. Even today, it's staggering to think the whole project was completed in four short years. 1924 Birth of Leo Buscaglia, American author, motivational speaker, and professor in the Department of Special Education at the University of Southern California. Leo believed education should be the process of helping everyone to discover his uniqueness. Leo learned to Garden from his father, and he once wrote, To this day I cannot see a bright daffodil, a proud gladiola, or a smooth eggplant without thinking of Papa. Like his plants and trees, I grew up as a part of his garden. Leo was a self-help guru who preached love so much that he became known as "Dr. Love." He once wrote, A single rose can be my garden; a single friend, my world. He also wrote, There are many miracles in the world to be celebrated and, for me, garlic is the most deserving. Grow That Garden Library™ Book Recommendation Passions by Carolyne Roehm This book came out in 2021 at the end of the year in December, and this is actually a collection of three books. All

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1568 Birth of Henry Wotton, English writer, diplomat, and politician. Henry celebrated our relationships with gardens and landscapes. He especially enjoyed gardens that made one think or offered a surprise. Henry served as an Ambassador to Venice, and during his time there, he fell in love with Italian gardens. Henry's concept of a "garden of surprise" was inspired by the gardens he saw in Italy. In his Elements of Architecture (1624), Henry discusses what it was like to walk through an Italian garden: I have seen a garden into which the first [entry point] was a high walk like a [terrace], from whence might be taken a general view of the whole plot below, but rather in a delightful confusion... From this the Beholder descending any steps, was afterwards conveyed again... to various entertainments of his [scent] and sight... every one of these diversities, was as if he had [been] magically transported to a new garden. 1844 Birth of Paul-Marie Verlaine, French poet. He's remembered for his work with the Symbolist and Decadent movements. His poem, Clair de Lune, begins with the line, "Your soul is a sealed garden," and inspired Claude Debussy ("deh·byoo·see") to write his own 'Clair de lune, the work for which he is now most famous. Paul once wrote, Here are fruits, flowers, leaves and branches, and here is my heart which beats only for you. 1853 Birth of Vincent van Gogh, Dutch post-impressionist painter. After his death, he became a top-selling figure in the history of Western art. Bold colors and brushwork characterized his work. Vincent found inspiration in the natural world, and he once said, If you truly love Nature, you will find beauty everywhere. Vincent was also a lover of flowers and gardens, and he also said, For one's health as you say, it is very necessary to work in the garden and see the flowers growing. At the end of his life, Van Gogh suffered from depression, an unsuccessful painting career, and poverty. He committed a slow and painful suicide at 37 by shooting himself in the chest. He died two days later beside a stack of his sunflower canvases. He said his last words to his brother Theo, The sadness will last forever. The legacy of Van Gogh's 2,100 pieces of art was much brighter than he ever expected. In March of 1987, his painting titled Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers was sold by Sotheby's in London for $39.85 million, more than three times the highest price ever paid at the time for a painting at auction. 2003 On this day, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram shared an article called, What's in a name? Deciding the name of every plant could take decades and require a huge effort by Stephanie Simon. The article revealed that the Missouri Botanical Garden is teaming up with botanists worldwide on a 10-year $100-million effort to standardize plant names. The article shared the forecast for finishing the project, saying the project's leaders' plans for... the database [is] "45 compiler years." One note says "52 imager years." At the bottom there's a final tally: They will need a staff of 32 for at least a decade just to compile and input the information. That's not counting the botanists who will do all the research Missouri scientists will be working in formal collaboration with the two other top botanical research centers in the world: the New York Botanical Garden and the Kew Botanical Gardens near London. Incredibly, the project was completed way ahead of schedule at the end of 2010. At the time, The Plant List included 1.25 million scientific plant names. Grow That Garden Library™ Book Recommendation Writing Wild by Kathryn Aalto This book came out in the summer of 2020, and the subtitle is Women Poets, Ramblers, and Mavericks Who Shape How We See the Natural World. This is such a good book, and I've been waiting to recommend it on the show. Kathryn herself was inspired to write this book after stumbling on a book written with all-male voices. Kathryn wanted to find the female voices and add their perspective on the natural world. In all, there are about 75 women that are talked about in Kathryn's book. Now, the goal behind curating all of these pieces was to help us deepen our connection to and understanding of the natural world. Some of these writers are some of my old favorites, like Mary Oliver, Vita Sackville West, Mary Austin, Susan Fenimore Cooper. But then there are also new voices like Helen MacDonald, Andrea Wulf, Amy Liptrot, and Elizabeth Rush. There are 25 of these women whose works are shared in full in this book. I love what Kathryn wrote in the introduction. She says, Much of this book was researched and penned outside - mountain climbing, mudlarking, canoeing, beachcombing, gardening, hiking, and birdwatching. I retraced the footsteps of those who have passed on, some of whom wrote anonymously or w

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Historical Events 1779 Birth of William Baldwin, American physician, and botanist. William is remembered as one of the first botanists to explore Georgia and Florida and parts of Latin America and the West Indies. William was brought on as the botanist for Stephen Long's 1819 expedition to find the headwaters of the Missouri River. Six months later, William Baldwin died at Franklin, Missouri, at the age of 40 and was buried on the banks of the Missouri River. Today we know about William mostly from his dear friend, the botanist William Darlington, who wrote his biography. The two men became close after William nursed Darlington back to health after an illness when the two were young men. Darlington reflected on William's death decades later when he wrote these words: His gentle spirit forsook its frail tenement, in a region far remote from his anxious family, - and the wildflowers of the West, for more than twenty years, have been blooming on his lonely grave: But the recollection of his virtues continues to be fondly cherished by every surviving friend, - and his ardor in the pursuit of his favorite Science will render his memory forever dear to the true lovers of American Botany. William Darlington learned from a colleague that floodwaters had washed away William Baldwin's grave the following year. Baldwin's milkwort (Polygala balduinii "puh-LIG-ah-lah bal-DEE-nee-eye") was named in honor of William Baldwin. Baldwin's milkwort is one of only a handful of white milkworts found in Florida. 1913 Birth of Ronald Stuart Thomas (published as R. S. Thomas), Welsh poet and Anglican priest. Here's an excerpt of his poem The Garden (1963). It is a gesture against the wild, The ungovernable sea of grass; A place to remember love in, To be lonely for a while; 1969 On this day, work was finished on a kimono-inspired garden in Japan called Yûrin no Niwa ("Yer-EEN no nee-wah") in Kyoto. The garden was initially designed to accompany the building for the Association of Kimono Manufacturers. The famous garden designer Mirei Shigemori ("Me-ray Shig-ah-mor-ee") designed the garden, which was celebrated in a ceremony the day after work was completed. But thirty years later, the area was redeveloped, and the building was set to be demolished. Iwamoto Toshio ("E-wah-mo-to To-see-oh") was a student of Shigemori's, and he decided to rescue the garden so that it could be relocated to a new home. When Shigemori's hometown built a new town hall, the garden found its new home. And so, over 80 truckloads of rock and stone were painstakingly brought to the new site, where they were reassembled to make the second incarnation of the Yûrin no Niwa garden. This second garden ended up being just a bit larger. The garden features a shallow kimono-shaped pond, and the water brings out the colors of the red and blue stones that make the strips of the noshi bundle on the kimono. The garden's name was a blending of the two names - the name of the man who developed the silk-dying process for the kimonos and the name of the painter who inspired the kimono designs: Yûrin no Niwa. 2021 On this day, as Brits were enjoying the end of their COVID lockdown, Out and Out shared an article called, five things to do to get your garden ready for March 29th. The tips included: 1. Smarten up your lawn There is something so appealing about a lush, vibrant green lawn, so make this your first job. Give your lawn a good raking to get rid of any fallen debris and shake over some grass seed if you notice any patchy areas. 2. Wash away winter ...get everything scrubbed up nicely – you don't want to take the shine off your gathering with grubby surroundings. Give your patio and decking areas a good going over with a jet wash and blast away winter's deposits. 3. Organize your seating Place garden dining furniture in a large enough area that there's space to walk all the way around and for guests to comfortably get in and out. If you have a garden lounge set or garden sofas, lay them out so you can comfortably converse with guests while enjoying the satisfying garden views. 4. Spring planting If you didn't get round to planting spring bulbs last year, you can always add instant colour by picking up some established plants at the garden centre. Shrubs such as Camellia, Japanese quince and Forsythia also look their best during the spring months. Pop some into borders and create container displays for the patio to give your garden an instant lift. 5. Finishing touches For alfresco dining, set the table with colorful crockery and beakers which will take you through to BBQ season too. For sunny weather, invest in a parasol, and for cooler days and evenings patio heaters and some chunky throws will be very welcome additions. Don't forget solar lights either, to keep the conversation going after nightfall. Grow Th