The Daily Gardener

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Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Patreon Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Today's Show Notes One of my favorite garden books is A Year at Brandywine Cottage by David L. Culp. And tucked inside it is the most magnificent recipe for strawberry rhubarb upside-down cake. This is the week I'm usually making it for the third time. And I'm already on the hunt for the next good rhubarb recipe to try. I've put David's recipe in the Facebook group for the show. And I'd love to know what you're making with rhubarb right now. Everyone has a favorite. They are all worth trying. Today's Garden History 1656 Joseph Pitton de Tournefort was born in Aix-en-Provence, France. The French botanist grew up under a plan his father had carefully arranged. The Church. A priest's life. A certain future. At the Jesuit college in Aix, Joseph followed the plan — visibly. His prayer books had botanical texts tucked inside them. Before dawn, he slipped out to climb the limestone hills, returning with dried flowers pressed inside his coat. He never fought the rules. He used them as cover. When his father died in 1677, Joseph was twenty-one. He walked out of the seminary and went straight to the mountains — the Pyrenees, the hills of Savoie. In the Pyrenees, bandits stopped him on the trail. They took his horse, his coat, and his money pouch. They left him with his shirt and his walking shoes. What they couldn't see was that Joseph had anticipated this. He had sewn gold coins into the soles of his boots. He kept walking — standing on his father's money, moving toward a life his father never imagined for him. By 1683, Joseph was appointed professor at the Jardin du Roi — the King's Garden in Paris. Louis XIV wanted medicines, trade crops, imperial glory. Joseph said: of course. And then, quietly, reorganized the garden beds according to his own classification system — grouping plants by the shape of their flowers, their corolla. The King thought he was growing medicines. Joseph was building the world's first genus garden. He didn't announce a revolution. He just tended it, bed by bed, until it was done. Before Joseph, plant names were long Latin sentences nobody could carry in their head. Joseph wanted a gardener to look at a flower and know its name from ten feet away. His masterwork, Institutiones rei herbariae, organized nearly seven hundred genera for the first time in history. In December of 1708, Joseph was walking home through a narrow Paris street, carrying a heavy bundle of botanical proofs — the printed pages of his latest work. The pole of a passing carriage struck him in the chest. He lingered for weeks in his apartments at the Jardin du Roi, surrounded by nearly seven thousand dried specimens, each one pressed by his own hands. Joseph spent those final days making sure every page was in order. Every genus correctly named. He bequeathed his entire collection to the King — so the garden he had quietly built inside the royal pharmacy would outlast them both. Joseph died on December 28, 1708. He was fifty-two years old. Carl Linnaeus, the man who would eventually replace Joseph's system with his own, admitted that before Joseph, botany was chaos. To honor the man he dethroned, Linnaeus named a genus after him. Tournefortia. It still blooms. 1805 Anna Maria Hussey was born in Leckhampstead, Buckinghamshire, England. The British mycologist grew up in a rectory garden — the daughter of a clergyman, one of seven children, educated well beyond what most girls received, and curious about everything that grew in the overlooked corners of the world. When she married the Reverend Thomas Hussey in 1831, she married a man who shared her hunger. Thomas was an astronomer. He built a thirteen-foot copper-domed observatory in the garden of their rectory in Hayes, Kent. For a while, they looked at the sky together. Then in 1839, Thomas sold the telescopes. He went quiet. The observatory became a schoolroom. The shared horizon closed. Anna Maria walked into the woods. Not the manicured gardens. The dark ones. The damp shady lanes where the sun never penetrated, where the moss was deep and the air was heavy with the scent of earth. Most Victorian women who studied plants chose flowers at their peak — upright, colorful, hopeful. Anna Maria chose fungi. The organisms that live on dead things. That fruit from rot. That need no light. On the forest floor, she found her mirror. She had buried four of her six children. She was living alongside a man who had sold his wonder and kept his silence. She was writing anonymous romantic fiction for magazines just to pay the bills — telling her mentor, the mycologist Reverend Berkeley, that the fiction paid well. "Much better than Mycology." And yet, every morning, Anna Maria went back to the woods. Back to the things that thrive in the dark. Back to the brief, strange, honest kingdom no one else wanted to look at. She brought specimens home and painted them at the dining table long after the house went quiet. She painted the rot alongside the beauty. She put flies in the corner of the plate. She refused to make nature prettier than it was. She once wrote that she loved the rain that drove everyone else indoors — because it was the rain that brought out the mycologist's jewels. Anna Maria's great work, Illustrations of British Mycology, took years and cost nearly everything. She fought her publishers for the finest paper. She insisted on Royal Quarto size — heavy, authoritative volumes that announced she was a scientist, not a hobbyist. Her sister Frances walked every shady lane beside her, co-illustrating every plate. Together they produced 140 hand-colored lithographs so precise that botanists still use them today. Her mentor Berkeley named a genus after her — Husseia, later reclassified as Calostoma. Beautiful mouth. A shouting thing rising from the dirt. Anna Maria died in August of 1853. She was forty-eight years old. The second volume of her masterwork was unfinished on her desk. Frances picked up the brush and finished it. She made sure the world saw the science and not the shattering. The plates went to Kew. The watercolors went to Chicago. The names went into the taxonomy — where they remain. Anna Maria had once written that the study of nature offered, "a source of pure and exhaustless pleasure that the world cannot give, nor take away." She was right. Thomas could go quiet. The parish could whisper. The bills could mount. The dark could come. But the forest floor was always full of life. And Anna Maria always knew where to look. Unearthed Words In today's Unearthed Words, we hear an excerpt from a letter by the English writer and gardening enthusiast Benington Marsh, written on this day in 1971. Benington's letter appeared in The Guardian. It was later collected in Ruth Petri's book Notes from the Garden: A Collection of the Best Garden Writing from the Guardian. Benington titled the letter Trees Putting Elbows on the Lawn. Benington wrote, "We should alas sympathise with boys and girls who put their elbows on the table at meals: it shows they understand what tables are for. But how many gardeners are alive to the charms of trees that put their elbows on the lawn?" Benington had a name for this. Gardening tolerance. The willingness to let living things pursue their wayward impulses without let or hindrance. Benington wrote, "They reveal lavender leaning unashamedly upon close-mown grass, St John's wort overhanging a path, and a lusty oak threatening to enter bedroom windows." Benington ended the letter with a yew tree. The tree grows in Whittingham, in East Lothian, in Scotland. Benington wrote, "A remarkable 700-year-old yew rests a host of gnarled limbs upon the ground in a grand circle — it was under this canopy, we are told, that the plot to murder Lord Darnley, husband of Mary Queen of Scots, was hatched in 1567." Benington wrote that and then moved quietly to the next paragraph. I think about that oak reaching for the bedroom window. I think about what we tidy away without ever asking why. Book Recommendation Ottolenghi Simple by Yotam Ottolenghi It's time to Grow That Garden Library, with today's book: Ottolenghi Simple by Yotam Ottolenghi. This book is part of Garden Cookbooks Week, which means all this week's book recommendations celebrate the connection between the garden and the table. Yotam Ottolenghi has spent his career making vegetables the most exciting thing on the table. Ottolenghi Simple is his argument that bold flavor doesn't have to mean complicated cooking — just thirty minutes, or ten ingredients, or one pot, or something already in your pantry. Here's a recipe that proves it: hot, charred cherry tomatoes with cold yogurt. "One of the beauties of this dish lies in the exciting contrast between the hot, juicy tomatoes and fridge-cold yogurt — so make sure the tomatoes are straight out of the oven and the yogurt is straight out of the fridge. The heat of the tomatoes will make the cold yogurt melt, invitingly — so plenty of crusty sourdough or focaccia to mop it all up is a must alongside." That's the whole Ottolenghi philosophy in three sentences. Ottolenghi Simple by Yotam Ottolenghi — the book that belongs on the counter, not the shelf. Botanic Spark And finally, here's something sweet to ignite the little botanic spark in your heart. 1804 Robert Hermann Schomburgk was born in Freyburg, Saxony. The German-born explorer had lost everything twice by the time he was twenty-seven — a tobacco business in Virginia, and then every possession he owned in a fire on the island of St. Thomas. Broke and without a path, he taught himself to survey and walked into the jungle. On New Year's Day in 1837, paddling up the Berbice River in British Guiana, he rounded a bend and stopped. Leaves the size of tables floated on the surface. Each one rimmed in crimson. Each one holding its shape against the current without a ripple. The giant water lily — Victoria amazonica. Robert wrote: "All calamities were forgotten. I felt as a botanist, and felt myself rewarded." He sent his sketches back to England. Among them — the underside of the leaf. Not the flower. The ribs. A web of ridges radiating out from the center like the bones of a cathedral — a design that held six feet of leaf flat on the water and could bear the weight of a child. Joseph Paxton, the head gardener at Chatsworth, studied those ribs. He placed his daughter Annie on a lily pad to prove they held. And when he was asked to design a building for the Great Exhibition of 1851, he drew the Crystal Palace from the lily's own logic — iron ribs, glass panels, light pouring through. Robert was in the Caribbean when the Crystal Palace opened. He never stood inside it. He just sent the sketches. And the lily did the rest. Final Thoughts Rhubarb doesn't wait. It comes in fast and bright and tart and then it's gone. If you've been meaning to make something with it, this is the week. David's recipe is in the Facebook group. And if you have one you love — share it. That's what the group is for. Thanks for listening to The Daily Gardener. And remember, for a happy, healthy life, garden every day.

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Patreon Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Today's Show Notes How does Annette Wynne's poem go? Why was June made? Can you guess? June was made for happiness! Even the trees Know this, and the breeze That loves to play Outside all day, And never is too bold or rough, Like March's wind, but just a tiny blow's enough; June was made for happiness. I believe that. And June was also made for garden-adjacent chores — the ones that don't add to the gardening to-do list, but make the garden more worth being in. String up those cafe lights. Clean the outdoor fixtures. Add a cushion to that chair you keep meaning to sit in. The garden is already doing its part. This week, do yours. Today's Garden History 1953 Katherine Bashford died at her home in Pasadena, California. The American landscape architect was sixty-seven years old. Her grandfather Levi came around the Horn to California on the Argonaut in 1849. Her father Coles built the family into one of the most prominent households in Los Angeles. And Katherine, born in 1885, grew up knowing that the West was still being made — and someone would have to decide what it would look like. She graduated from the Marlborough School for Girls and then did what the women of her era with the means to do it did: Katherine went to Europe. She spent a summer moving through the famous gardens of Italy, Spain, France, and England — not as a tourist, but as a student. She came home a landscape architect. There were no formal programs for women in the West at the time. So in 1921, she apprenticed under Florence Yoch — the most formidable woman in Southern California landscape design. Two years later, she opened her own firm in Pasadena. The architect Myron Hunt, who watched her work for years, said Katherine had an "inborn interest" in the planting and yearly renewal of the annuals and perennials whose blending colors make the jewels of the garden. But she was not a romantic. Rather, she was an engineer of atmosphere. Katherine believed a garden should contain only plants that could grow freely in the place where they were planted — that no plant flourishes in unnatural localities. She carried clinker bricks in her purse — the ugly, over-fired cast-offs nobody wanted — so she could thump one on a linen tablecloth and show a client how its burnt-umber color matched the bark of a Sycamore. At a 1929 dinner honoring young architects, the Los Angeles Times noted Katherine's presence — "the lone exhibitor of her sex in the profession." There were two hundred men in the room. And Katherine Bashford. She designed terraced rock gardens and sandstone fountains for the grand estates of the wealthy. She designed the grounds of the Palm Springs Woman's Club — desert verbena and bougainvillea and rows of manzanita and olive trees. Katherine worked with Wallace Neff and with the architects who built the showplaces of Southern California's golden age. And she designed Ramona Gardens — the first public housing project completed in Los Angeles, finished in 1941. The same eye. The same standards. Whether the client was a millionaire or a family in Boyle Heights. By 1943, Katherine's health forced her into early retirement. She spent her final decade at home on Virginia Road in Pasadena, with her sister beside her. She never married. She wrote no book. But she left behind many terraced stone gardens, and courtyards built to last, in a city that she filled with gardens that looked like they had always belonged there. Katherine's obituary in the Los Angeles Times ran just four lines: A Fellow of the Landscape Architects Society. Who designed many Southland gardens. Survived by a sister. And the places Katherine created still stand. 1953 Patrick Blanc was born in the suburbs of Paris. The French botanist was around ten years old when his mother took him to a large flower exhibition in Paris. Most children looked at the colors. Patrick looked at the rocks. Beside the exhibition waterfalls, orchids and ferns were growing straight out of wet stone — no soil, no one tending them, just clinging and alive. Patrick said later, "Nobody was taking care of the plants growing on the waterfalls. I was impressed by this freedom." At twelve, Patrick had an aquarium in his bedroom. Patrick fixed a board above it, rigged a small pump to carry water up from the tank, and trained plants to grow along the wall. The roots dangled into the water. The plants thrived. Patrick had built his first vertical garden in his childhood bedroom before he had a name for it. In 1972, at nineteen, Patrick traveled to Thailand and Malaysia and found the same thing he had seen at the flower show — but wild, and vast, and everywhere. Ferns and orchids covering cliff faces and waterfalls. The earth, irrelevant. Patrick spent the next decade at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, perfecting a system — a metal frame, a layer of PVC, a polyamide felt that wicked water to the roots the way moss holds rain on a cliff. Patrick patented it in 1988. In 1986, Patrick installed his first public wall at the Cité des Sciences in Paris. Engineers had said the roots would rot the masonry. The wall thrived. That same year, Patrick and his partner Pascal Héni decided to dye their hair. Pascal chose blue. Patrick chose green. Pascal lasted one week. Patrick has never changed it back. Patrick covered the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris — hundreds of species at once, ferns and mosses and epiphytes clinging to felt the way they once clung to stone. Patrick once called his walls "a kind of redemption — a way of going back to Eden." In the Philippines, Patrick found a tiny dark-leaved plant on a wet rock face in Palawan. It was a new species. In 2011, botanists named it Begonia blancii in Patrick's honor. Patrick still works. At seventy-two, Patrick still travels the world half the year — looking for plants that grow where they're not supposed to. Patrick still wakes each morning in his home in Ivry-sur-Seine, where the floor is glass and beneath it, twenty-one thousand liters of water, fish, and the dangling roots of his indoor jungle. Patrick looks down before he starts his day and sees exactly what he saw at ten years old: Plants that don't need the earth to keep themselves alive. Unearthed Words In today's Unearthed Words, we hear a passage about plants and sunlight from the Russian plant physiologist Kliment Timiryazev, born on this day in 1843. Kliment's mother, Adelaide, was English. Adelaide taught him at home. In her language. Adelaide gave Kliment — he would say later — his boundless love for truth. Kliment spent decades studying the green leaf. What happened when sunlight touched it. What the leaf was actually doing in all that light. Kliment visited Darwin at Down House. Kliment defended Darwin's ideas in Russia for years. And Kliment never stopped going back to the leaf. In 1903, Kliment stood before the Royal Society of London. Thirty-five years into his work. Kliment gave the lecture in Adelaide's language. Kliment said, "A plant is a mediator between heaven and earth. It is the true Prometheus, who stole fire from heaven." Near the end of his life, Kliment wrote his final book dedication. His hand was trembling. Kliment sent the book to Lenin. But Kliment dedicated it to his mother. Adelaide had given him, Kliment wrote, his boundless love for truth. The book went to Lenin. The dedication went to Adelaide. Kliment knew the difference. Book Recommendation Seed to Table by Luay Ghafari It's time to Grow That Garden Library, with today's book: Seed to Table by Luay Ghafari. This book is part of Garden Cookbooks Week, which means all this week's book recommendations celebrate the connection between the garden and the table. Luay Ghafari is an urban gardener in Toronto who has spent more than a decade figuring out how to grow abundant food in small spaces — and how to cook it the moment it comes out of the ground. Here's Luay Ghafari: "Garden-to-table borrows from the farm-to-table movement and shrinks that radius down to one's own backyard. You are the chef, the farmer, and the consumer. You are invested in every step of the process." And this: "Ask any gardener and they will tell you, without a shadow of a doubt, that a vine-ripened tomato is the stuff dreams are made of. There is simply no comparison to store-bought. Seasonality matters." And this: "Walking into my garden with a basket in hand and harvesting homegrown fruits and vegetables at peak ripeness — that is what I love about having a garden. Taking what my garden provides and creating seasonal recipes is what garden-to-table living is all about." Seed to Table by Luay Ghafari — for everyone who has ever wanted to close the distance between the ground and the plate. Botanic Spark And finally, here's something sweet to ignite the little botanic spark in your heart. 1809 Margaret Gatty was born in Burnham, Essex. The English writer and naturalist married a Yorkshire vicar and settled into a quiet life in a country parsonage. Margaret had children — eventually ten of them. And somewhere in the middle of all that, Margaret's body began to fail her. By 1848, after the birth of her seventh child, Margaret was sent to the seaside town of Hastings to recover. Margaret was thirty-nine years old, and she had seven months ahead of her with almost nothing to do. So Margaret looked down. At the shore, where the tide pulled back, Margaret found what she would later call the unseen flowers of the sea — seaweeds, clinging to rocks, delicate and strange and completely ignored by everyone walking past. Margaret was smitten. Margaret spent those seven months collecting, pressing, studying. And when Margaret came home to Yorkshire, she didn't stop. Margaret kept going for fourteen years. By then, Margaret's illness had crept into her arms. Eventually Margaret could no longer hold a pen. So Margaret dictated her scientific notes to her daughters while they wrote. Margaret called seaweed collecting her "consolation of consolations." In 1863, Margaret published British Sea-weeds — a book that stayed in use for nearly a century. Margaret died on October 4, 1873. She was sixty-four years old. After Margaret was gone, a memorial tablet was placed in her church. It wasn't funded by a scientific institution. It was funded by more than a thousand children from across the country — children who had read Margaret's stories and her nature parables — who each sent in small coins. A thousand small offerings for the woman who had taught them to look down. Final Thoughts June was made for happiness. Not the dramatic kind. The quiet kind. The kind that lives in a garden chair with a cushion on it, under a string of lights you finally hung. The garden has been working all spring. It's June now. Go enjoy what it made. Thanks for listening to The Daily Gardener. And remember, for a happy, healthy life, garden every day.

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Patreon Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Today's Show Notes Let's talk about rhubarb — one of the spring garden's greatest gifts. I grew up with a big rhubarb patch right by the back fence. Those enormous, celery-like stalks just took over that corner of the yard. My mom would cut them and mix them with strawberries for the most delightful crumble. She'd dish it up and serve it with Schwan's vanilla ice cream. I still make it. Rhubarb is one of those plants that keeps coming back no matter what. It dies back at the end of the season, disappears completely, and then — right when you've almost given up — there it is again. That's a good thing to remember on the first day of June. Some of the garden's best gifts keep coming back. Today's Garden History 1792 Johann Sebastian Müller died in Lambeth, London. The German-born botanical illustrator was seventy-seven years old. Johann was born in 1715 in Nuremberg, Germany, the son of a Kunstgärtner — a professional art-gardener who tended the private gardens of the noble Stromer family. That's how Johann knew plants so well. Because he lived beside them day after day. But while Johann loved plants, he didn't want a spade to work the land. Instead, he wanted to capture it — artistically, with engraving tools and paintbrushes. And so in 1744, after apprenticing for nearly a decade, Johann packed his portfolio and crossed the Channel with his brother Tobias, headed for London. Somewhere in that crossing, Johann Sebastian Müller became John Miller. Not a lie. Just a way to make his name legible in a city that would not have met him halfway. John settled in Westminster. And whenever he needed a specimen, he walked three miles down to the Chelsea Physic Garden. He refused to draw from dried herbarium sheets. Instead, John found his inspiration exclusively among living plants, where he took a very matter-of-fact approach and didn't hide what was right before him. He painted not only the beautiful blossoms, but also the stamens and the pistils — the husbands and the wives, as Linnaeus called them — classifying plants by their reproductive parts. Critics called all of that material lewd and morally suspect. But John just kept working. Over the course of seven years, he self-published his masterwork — the Illustratio Systematis Sexualis Linnaei, An Illustration of the Sexual System of Linnaeus — in twenty installments. Eighty-five subscribers supported him, including a fellow transplant from Germany and garden lover, Queen Charlotte, who ordered two copies. In July of 1775, a letter arrived from Carl Linnaeus himself. It was about John's engraving of the sunflower — a plate so precise it showed the flower from every angle, its seeds, its stem, its reproductive parts — nothing omitted, nothing softened. Linnaeus wrote that it was "more beautiful and more accurate than any seen since the beginning of the world." The father of modern botany had looked at John Miller's sunflower and said: no one has ever seen a plant more clearly. John worked until the very end. He fathered twenty-seven children and trained two of his sons, John Frederick and James, to follow in his footsteps. They both went on to illustrate the voyages of Captain Cook. John died on this day in 1792 and was buried at St. Mary's Church in Lambeth — which, as it turns out, was the most fitting place imaginable, because that church is now the Garden Museum. And John is still there — under the floor, beneath a building devoted entirely to the history of gardening. John Miller gave the living world its most precise, most honest portraits of plants — no apologies, no prettifying, and no hiding what was actually there. 1902 William Bull died in Chelsea, London. The English nurseryman and plant collector was seventy-four years old. William was born in Winchester, England, and lost his father young. He was raised by his grandfather in Shirley, near Southampton — a comfortably off household that expected him to do something sensible with his life. At fourteen, he chose gardening. And to their credit, his family supported his choice. William spent the rest of his life proving it wasn't a mistake. He apprenticed first in Winchester, then made his way to London to join Henderson's nursery in St. John's Wood — one of the finest establishments in the city. By twenty, William was traveling the country as a representative, carrying delicate plant specimens to private estates, walking the last miles himself so nothing shifted in transit. When a later employer refused him a partnership, William took over the nursery of John Weeks on King's Road in Chelsea — a world-class establishment with state-of-the-art glasshouses and a seventy-foot winter garden. William was thirty-three years old and couldn't afford the purchase price, so he negotiated an annuity instead — three hundred pounds a year — and spent the next thirteen years building his dream on borrowed ground. William called his establishment Bull's Establishment for New and Rare Plants. His peers called it something else. Fellow nurseryman Benjamin Williams declared that Bull's nursery was "Horticulture in Excelsis" — horticulture at its absolute highest. As the business grew, William paid to send plant hunters to Colombia, Liberia, Panama, and the Eastern Archipelago — the most dangerous corners of the globe — to bring back species no European greenhouse had ever held. Some of those men didn't come home. Richard Pearce, one of the finest plant collectors of his generation, died of yellow fever in Panama at thirty-three years old, looking for orchids for William's collection. Beginning in 1883, William held annual orchid exhibitions at his King's Road nursery. For fifteen years, it was one of the great sights of the London season — visited by the King of Siam, the Prince of Wales, and what felt like every duke and earl in England. The Morning Post declared it "a sight that could be seen nowhere else in the world." 1878 A disease called coffee rust swept through the plantations of Ceylon — modern-day Sri Lanka — and wiped out the coffee crop entirely. An entire island's economy collapsed overnight. William had been quietly growing a Liberian coffee variety that was immune to the blight. He called the ruined planters his "suffering brethren of the soil," and he sent them everything he had — thousands of seedlings, packed into his specially patented plant cases, germinated to exactly the right height to survive the journey. The plantations recovered. The island found its footing again. In 1897, the Royal Horticultural Society named William one of the first sixty recipients of the Victoria Medal of Honour — the highest honor the botanical world could offer. The following year, William sold some of his grounds and stepped back from the grand exhibitions. But still, he kept working — with a smaller operation, and thirteen employees — until a short illness took him in the spring of 1902. William died on this day and was buried at Brompton Cemetery in London. His sons carried William Bull & Sons fourteen more years after he was gone. And somewhere in a botanical garden today, beside a plant that arrived in England because a young man walked into a jungle and didn't come back — a label still reads W. Bull. Unearthed Words In today's Unearthed Words, we hear a passage from The Outermost House by the American writer Henry Beston, born on this day in 1888. In 1926, Henry went to Cape Cod for a two-week vacation — at a small cottage he had built on the sand dunes near Nauset Beach. He never left. Instead, he stayed a full year — alone with the tides, the shorebirds, the winter storms, and his journal. That year became The Outermost House — one of the great works of American nature writing. In it, he wrote about gardens. Henry wrote, "A garden is the mirror of a mind. It is a place of life, a mystery of green moving to the pulse of the year, and pressing on and pausing the whole to its own inherent rhythms." Henry stayed with me after I read that. I think about it every time I walk into the garden for just a few minutes — and stay until my husband comes to get me. Book Recommendation The Salad Garden by Joy Larkcom It's time to Grow That Garden Library, with today's book: The Salad Garden by Joy Larkcom. This book is part of Garden Cookbooks Week, which means all this week's book recommendations celebrate the connection between the garden and the table. There is a quote on the cover of this book by Alys Fowler, and it says everything: "The minute I finished reading this book, I went outside and sowed some lettuce." That is exactly what Joy Larkcom does to you. Joy spent years traveling through Europe in a caravan with her husband and two young children, collecting the seeds of local vegetable varieties that were quietly vanishing from the world. Here she is, from the introduction: "Finding these plants and learning how to grow them has been a long and wonderful voyage of discovery. Its first leg was what we fondly call our grand vegetable tour. In August of 1976, my husband Don Pollard and I, with our children Brendan and Kirsten, who were then seven and five years old, left Montrose Farm for a year to travel around Europe in a caravan. Our main purpose was to learn about traditional and modern methods of vegetable growing — and to collect the seed of local varieties of vegetables which, as a handful of far-sighted people had begun to appreciate, were an invaluable genetic heritage that was vanishing fast." And this is what she did with everything she learned: "To get height — a key element in potagers — I train tomatoes up an attractive spiral steel support, sometimes intermingling them with ornamental climbers. I always leave a few clumps of chicory to run to seed in their second season. They grow over seven feet high and produce fresh flushes of sky blue edible flowers every morning over many weeks. The giant winter radishes will do the same, making glorious pink or white flowered clumps in their second spring and seemingly endless crops of delectable edible seed pods. To make the most impact with colorful plants, I almost always plant in groups at equidistant spacing rather than in traditional rows. Bull blood beetroot is a favorite with its scarlet leaves — red cabbage, ornamental cabbages and kales — and for textured effects, I add the ground-hugging ice plant, glossy-leaved purslanes, dill, and fennel. And every year I succumb to the temptation to make patterns with the many salad plants grown as cut-and-come-again seedlings." The Salad Garden by Joy Larkcom — the book that will send you straight outside the minute you finish it. Botanic Spark And finally, here's something sweet to ignite the little botanic spark in your heart. 1964 Mary Beal died in Daggett, California. The American botanist and painter was eighty-five years old. In 1910, Mary was working as a librarian in Riverside, California, when pneumonia stopped her cold. Her friend — the naturalist John Burroughs — knew someone who might help. John Muir's daughter Helen had moved to a ranch in the Mojave Desert for her own health, and Muir arranged for Mary to come and stay. That's why she pitched a tent on the Van Dyke Ranch in Daggett. And although she planned to stay a year or two, she ended up staying fifty-four years. Friends would stop on train layovers and bring her flowers and their sympathy. They called it a desolate place. But Mary looked at the sand and saw a universe. She taught herself botany from Jepson's manual. Each morning, she mounted her horse, Dolly Varden, and rode out into the canyons with a camera and a notebook and a pocketful of chia seeds for lunch. Mary's friend Harold Weight described her this way: "If you should come upon a small active woman in some isolated corner of the Mojave, wrapped about with photographic equipment and clinging to the canyon wall with fingers and toes — it will be quite safe to say: Hello, Mary Beal." For years, Mary searched for a flower called the Samija — the stick-leaf — that she had photographed once on Ord Mountain and never found again. A decade passed. The memory grew hazy. And Mary began to doubt her own eyes. Mary wrote: "If it had not been for the photograph I had taken of that Ord mountain specimen, I would have doubted my memory of finding it." Then one spring, a small box of tagged flowers arrived to be identified. Number one was Mary's elusive Samija. Two days later, she rode out to the Bullion Mountains. Mary wrote: "One small winding canyon held treasure-trove beyond my most wishful dreams. Even today I have a vivid memory of one gorgeous specimen that was truly the queen of the desert garden." Mary Beal arrived in the Mojave to survive. She stayed to learn every plant by name, paint them by hand, and send their scent to botanists who had never seen them. Mary died on this day in the desert she had chosen. And a trail at Mojave National Preserve still carries her name. Final Thoughts If you have a rhubarb plant, go easy on it. Never take more than a third of the stalks at once. Leave the rest and let it grow back. Then come back in a couple of weeks and it will have more for you. And if your rhubarb hasn't been quite right — fewer stalks than usual, a little sluggish — try a handful of lime worked into the soil around the base. Sometimes that will do the trick. Rhubarb is generous. And it's a great gardener gift. Divide it every so often and give some to a friend. That's how the best things travel: one gardener to the next, roots and all. Thanks for listening to The Daily Gardener. And remember, for a happy, healthy life, garden every day.

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Patreon Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Today's Show Notes In her 1968 memoir Plant Dreaming Deep, the Belgian-American writer May Sarton wrote: "From May on, I can hardly wait to get up to see what has happened overnight, for one of the pleasures of a garden is that something is always happening; it is not static, even for a day. I go out by six-thirty and sometimes earlier, still in my pajamas and a wrapper, to take a look around before breakfast." There is something about a garden that makes us feel comfortable enough to come to it like that — in our pajamas, without makeup, without shoes, before the day has made any demands. We do not get ready for the garden. We just go. And the garden never seems to mind. Today's Garden History 1919 The governor of New Hampshire, John H. Bartlett, signed his name to a law declaring the purple lilac the official state flower. The law said the lilac was more than a flower. It was a symbol of the hardy character of the men and women of the Granite State. But John was not naming something new. He was acknowledging something that had already endured. In 1750, an Englishman named Benning Wentworth — the colony's first royal governor — planted lilacs at his home near Portsmouth. When he left England, Benning carried them across the ocean — small roots tucked in with other trees and shrubs, brought from England to a new and colder place. They took. Over time, they grew tall beside the house. And they flowered each May, lavender against timber and stone. Fast forward nearly two centuries later. In April of 1939, another governor, Francis P. Murphy, stood on the Capitol grounds with six root cuttings taken from those original Wentworth lilacs. Just before pressing them into the earth, he said: "Six roots were taken from the famous lilac trees in the garden of the first colonial governor of New Hampshire. So today, we are placing root cuttings in the earth of the Capitol grounds from the very first lilacs ever to come to America. We are very proud of this little flower, which is uniquely ours, and as I plant these roots today, I ask you to join with me in the hope that they may thrive and, over time, grow into full beauty." Those roots were not ornamental. They were continuation. And here is something else — the lilacs planted at Mount Vernon, at the home of George Washington, are believed to be slips taken from the Wentworth estate. They were a passing of wood, beauty, and will. Today, in some of the oldest parts of New England, there are lilacs blooming in places where houses no longer stand. And one of the reasons they are still there is simple — like peonies, lilacs can live for over a century. For generations, people have planted lilacs close enough to smell from the front porch or their kitchen window. They have been used to mark the edges of properties, to hide a clothesline pole, and to provide a backdrop for family photos. And on this May morning in 1919, John signed his name to the lilac — giving the Granite State something fragrant, something beautiful and soft, and something that returns reliably year after year. 1847 The English clergyman and botanist William Herbert died. He was seventy-one. For most of his life, William moved between two kinds of rooms. On Sundays, he stood in a stone church among his parishioners. On weekdays, he worked alone in a greenhouse, where the glass caught the light and the soil stayed damp underfoot. William devoted himself to the amaryllis family, Amaryllidaceae. And at a time when many naturalists dismissed hybrids as mistakes, as unstable, and even improper, William saw something different. In the natural world, bees carry pollen from one plant to another without hesitation. But when a person did the same, it raised a question — whether such crossings overstepped what nature, or even God, intended. William did not turn away from that question. As a clergyman, he knew the Bible and the language of creation intimately. Yet he understood plants not as something fixed, but as a living gift — something that could be tended, worked, and even, carefully, joined for man's enjoyment. He understood plant breeding as participation, not disruption. Hand-pollination moves slowly. It requires closeness, repetition, and the willingness to begin again the following season. So he gathered pollen and lifted it carefully, sometimes with a camel-hair brush. He crossed one bloom with another, and then he waited. William recorded what happened when species met. Some crosses failed. Some faltered. But others opened into colors no one had seen before. William saw deeper crimsons, unexpected striping, and petals thick as velvet. And when morning light struck certain blooms, their surfaces shimmered, as though the flower had been brushed by frost. Gardeners later called this the diamond dust effect — light caught in the cells of the petal, scattering into brightness. William lived among it. He saw it again and again in the greenhouse light, and he kept working to bring it forward. He kept crossing amaryllis plants until his death on this day in 1847. After he was gone, the church grew quiet. But the greenhouse stayed warm, a different kind of parish, still opening into color, light, and that fine, sparkling diamond dust. Unearthed Words In today's Unearthed Words, we hear a poem from the American poet May Swenson, born on this day in 1913 in Logan, Utah. May grew up with mountains on the horizon and a big sky overhead. She carried that sky with her everywhere she went. Here is an excerpt from May's poem Strawberrying. "We're picking near the shore, the morning sunny, a slight wind moving rough-veined leaves our hands rumple among. Fingers find by feel the ready fruit in clusters. Here and there, their squishy wounds . . . . Flesh was perfect yesterday . . . . June was for gorging . . . . sweet hearts young and firm before decay. 'Take only the biggest, and not too ripe,' a mother calls to her girl and boy, barefoot in the furrows. 'Don't step on any. Don't change rows. Don't eat too many.' Mesmerized by the largesse, the children squat and pull and pick handfuls of rich scarlets, half for the baskets, half for avid mouths. Soon, whole faces are stained. When, hidden away in a damp hollow under moldy leaves, I come upon a clump of heart-shapes once red, now spiderspit-gray, intact but empty, still attached to their dead stems— families smothered as at Pompeii — I rise and stretch. I eat one more big ripe lopped head. Red-handed, I leave the field." May and her ten siblings grew up listening to their Swedish mother read stories aloud to them every evening. And when I read May's poetry, in my mind it sounds exactly like something she heard her mother read to her right before she fell asleep when she was just a little girl. Book Recommendation The Apothecaries' Garden by Sue Minter This book is part of Specialty Gardens Week, which means all this week's book recommendations focus on a particular plant or a particular practice. In 1673, the Society of Apothecaries founded a garden in Chelsea to research and classify the plants that healed people. For more than three hundred years, the Chelsea Physic Garden led the world in that work. Here's Sue Minter: "At the dawn of the new millennium, the Chelsea Physic Garden remains the only botanic garden to retain physic in its title — after the old name for the healing arts. At a time when there is great interest in both health and in garden history, no doubt this re-establishment of its role will continue." And from the postscript: "Despite these approximately four acres having been continually cultivated from 1673 until 2000, there has always been a level of interest and influence beyond the walls. The degree has varied. Sometimes the garden has been a veritable conduit of influence between Britain and the rest of the world — and vice versa. Certainly in terms of the introduction of species to British horticulture, these four acres have probably been more influential than any other. Inventions popularized from here, such as the Wardian case — the portable glass terrarium that made it possible to transport living plants across oceans — have dominated some countries' economies, making some and ruining others. Agricultural cropping techniques have been revolutionized partly as a result of research work done here in the twentieth century." Four acres. Three hundred years. One wall between it and everything that changed because of it. The Apothecaries' Garden by Sue Minter — The Hidden History of the Chelsea Physic Garden. Botanic Spark And finally, here's something sweet to ignite the little botanic spark in your heart. 1912 The Australian novelist Patrick White was born in London. Patrick grew up in Australia, but his childhood was shaped by severe asthma. Even between attacks, he could never quite get enough air. When he turned thirteen, his mother sent him to England hoping that the climate might help his breathing. But it did not save him. It only uprooted him. And so he spent years between two worlds, never quite belonging to either one. It's part of the reason why Patrick once described himself as an unplanted tree, bearing roots from another soil and bent by a harsh sun. In 1948, Patrick and his partner, Manoly Lascaris, bought six acres at Castle Hill, outside Sydney. The first thing they did was plant four dogwood trees — and they named their farm after them: Dogwoods. At Dogwoods, Patrick rose at six each morning to weed. Then he would milk the cows and haul produce to market. And though he often called himself a slave to the garden, he said he never felt happier than he did on that small piece of land. But then, in 1951, during a rainstorm, Patrick slipped in the mud and fell face-first into the earth. He picked himself up, went inside, and began writing The Tree of Man. In the novel, Patrick follows a man carving a life in the Australian bush — planting, building, and staying. While Patrick wrote, he planted his own rose at Dogwoods — a pale pink climbing rose called Cécile Brunner, the same rose he gave his character. Patrick wrote of that rose: "The rose that they would plant was already taking root outside the window of the plain house, its full flowers falling to the floor, scenting the room with its scent of crushed tobacco." Years later, Patrick wrote about what he had been searching for in the novel, in the mud, and in the farm itself: "I felt the life was, on the surface, so dreary, ugly, monotonous, there must be a poetry hidden in it to give it a purpose — and so I set out to discover that secret core, and The Tree of Man emerged." The Tree of Man ends with an aged Stan Parker dying on his garden path as suburbia inches toward his land. The last line belongs to his grandson — a budding poet — who writes: "So that, in the end, there was no end." When Patrick accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature, he credited his asthma for everything — the reading, the writing, the work. When Patrick died in 1990, his ashes were scattered in Centennial Park, where he had walked every day for twenty-six years. He once wrote about the hollow where he lived — about the fine pollen from the paspalum grass, a common Australian grass that drifts and settles over everything. It was always, he said, threatening to engulf them. And in the end, it did — softly, completely — as he returned to the same ground he had spent a lifetime trying to understand. I keep thinking about that fall. Face-first into the dark earth. Most falls ruin lives. His was a great clarifier. Final Thoughts We are often our own harshest critic in the garden. We see the bare spots. We see what's been left behind. We see what we should have done two weeks ago and didn't. The garden sees none of that. It sees you. In your pajamas, at six-thirty, showing up. And it just keeps blooming. The critic is ours. The welcome is the garden's. And the garden always wins. Thanks for listening to The Daily Gardener. And remember, for a happy, healthy life, garden every day.

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Patreon Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Today's Show Notes The nighttime temperatures are finally holding. Another garden season is opening wide before us. This is when I buy the biggest Boston ferns I can find for the front porch. The morning glory seeds go in by the trellis. And the terracotta pots get a good once-over. It's officially checklist season. Every day in the garden there are boxes to tick. And new ones get added. It will be like this until the last fall tasks get done. Or not. It's funny how when spring finally arrives, those leftovers from autumn don't seem so important anymore. It's all relative. How can you compare putting away tools to harvesting the first radish? Or that first stalk of rhubarb? Check away. Today's Garden History 1863 Orra White Hitchcock died in Amherst, Massachusetts. She was sixty-seven years old. Orra was born in 1796. And unusually for the time, her father believed a daughter should study as seriously as a son. So she learned Latin. Greek. Higher mathematics. And she also learned to draw. In her early twenties, Orra became a teacher at Deerfield Academy. There, a young minister named Edward Hitchcock was falling in love with geology. And then fell in love with her. In 1821, Orra and Edward married. She was twenty-five. Edward was twenty-eight. After their marriage, they moved to Conway, Massachusetts, where Edward served as a pastor. In Conway, they lost a baby. The grief was real. And it stayed with her. Years later, traveling in Europe, Orra would stop in front of funerary sculptures of young mothers who died in childbirth. And she could not look away. In the winter of 1825, Orra and Edward moved to Amherst. This is where her work quietly transformed how science was taught. Edward needed images to make geology intelligible. The college had no funds for teaching charts. So she made them. Enormous classroom illustrations. Large enough for students to see from the back of the room. Geology. Botany. Zoology. Anatomy. Most dramatically, one reconstruction of an Iguanodon stretched seventy feet across linen Orra had painted herself. For decades, whenever Edward needed a visual, she stopped what she was doing. And picked up her pencil. Throughout all of this, Orra also raised six children. And kept a house that welcomed students and scholars. In the dedication of his book The Religion of Geology, Edward wrote to her: "While I have described scientific facts with the pen only, how much more vividly have they been portrayed by your pencil." In 1850, Orra and Edward visited Europe. She was fifty-four. And she had never left the country. In a small plain notebook, she wrote everything down. At the Botanic Garden at Regent's Park in London, she found her way to the greenhouse of American plants. Rhododendrons. Kalmias. Azaleas. And she wrote: "I really would never have imagined such a beautiful sight. I am sure I can never forget it." Then she thought of her daughter Mary, back in Amherst. And wrote: "If Mary could have seen what we have today, it seems to me she would throw all her plants in the street. No, she would not — her perseverance, [she would apply] the same unceasing care as ever, and feel the same delight in seeing them grow, and now and then put forth a bud, and then a flower." In Switzerland, as Orra watched women labor in the fields, she wrote: "Women doing the hard work such as holding plow, carrying heavy burdens on their heads, indeed all sorts of men's work. Cows harnessed in carts. Shame for cows and women to be thus treated." In the spring of 1863, pneumonia confined Orra to bed. Back in her home in Amherst. For a short time, she seemed to rally. But then her strength faded. Orra was anxious to see all her children before she died. When the last one arrived, she said: "All is right." She died around six in the evening. Long after her death, Orra's classroom drawings remained. Thousands of square feet of painted science that students learned from for decades. And in a small notebook, written in her own hand, her voice remained too. 1863 William Jackson Bean was born in Leavening, North Yorkshire, England. His family called him Bill. From the beginning, soil was already in him. His father was a nurseryman. His grandfather was a nurseryman. His great-grandfather was a nurseryman. Bill was meant to be next. But when Bill was six years old, his father died. That's when his mother, Lydia, took over the nursery and seed trade to keep the family afloat. At sixteen, with the business barely holding, Bill left Yorkshire. And took an apprenticeship at Belvoir Castle. Working in someone else's garden. Learning the trade. Earning his living. At twenty, he arrived at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. And stayed. There, Bill began as a trainee gardener and worked his way up until he became Curator. Responsible for the living collection. Those were the years when new woody plants were arriving in waves from China and the Himalayas. Crates of seeds. Unfamiliar saplings. Labels written in distant hands. They had to be planted. Watched. Tested against frost. Bill understood hardy things. He knew how to spot a plant that could take a winter. Carry time. And ask for very little. In 1914, he published Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles. Quietly, Bill wrote most of it at night. After full days in the gardens. In time, the book was so useful. So exact. So steady in its judgment. That gardeners stopped using the title. And simply called it: Bean. Not the man. The book. Though by then, the two were nearly the same. Above all, Bill had strong opinions. Quietly delivered. Of the variegated plants flooding the market, Bill wrote: "Perhaps more rubbish is foisted on purchasers of trees and shrubs in the shape of variegated sorts than of anything else." Bill wasn't trying to wound anyone. He was defending the gardener. Defending the promise that a plant you carry home will be worth the years you give it. Bill retired in 1929. And moved to a house on the edge of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. And kept walking the paths. In his final years, Bill spent his time correcting proofs for a new edition of his book. Fittingly, he was still working when he died in April of 1947. He was eighty-three. And at Kew, the trees Bill raised from seed are still growing. Unearthed Words In today's Unearthed Words, we hear an excerpt from a 1979 Guardian essay by the Polish-British art critic Waldemar Januszczak, featured in Ruth Petri's book Notes from the Garden: A Collection of the Best Garden Writing from the Guardian. The piece was published on this day. Waldemar called it The Artistry of Calling a Spade a Spade. Here's how he begins: "One of the Earls of Pembroke was described by a contemporary in 1623 as 'a true Adamist, toiling and tilling in his garden?' By 1923, PG Wodehouse had built several stories around fervent Adamists, befuddled old earls in corduroy trousers who would have sprayed their own grandmothers to death if they found them clinging to the underside of a rose-leaf. Gardens change but gardeners do not. To call gardening a leisure activity is to forget five centuries of warfare; real gardeners are not enthusiasts, they are madmen." There's something bracing about that line. Gardens change. But gardeners do not. You can almost hear the rake on gravel. Waldemar refused the idea of gardening as leisure. He called it warfare. Madness. Obsession. Which, if you've ever tried to outwit slugs in May, feels fair. He goes on: "The entrance to the exhibition is crowned by a monumental pediment made up of rakes, shears, hoes and a pair of old gardening boots, painted white to resemble marble…" What a scene. Boots painted to look like marble. Tools turned into monuments. There's a kind of mischief in bringing the garden indoors. And a kind of longing too. As if the museum needed to be softened. As if scholarship needed soil. And then Waldemar turns backward in time. Showing how each era remade the garden in its own image. Each century arranging its anxieties in beds and borders. And somehow, that feels comforting. Whatever we're carrying right now. The garden already knows what to do with it. Book Recommendation Orchid: A Cultural History by Jim Endersby This book is part of Specialty Gardens Week. Which means all this week's book recommendations focus on a particular plant. Or a particular practice. Today's plant is the orchid. And this book asks a question that turns out to be surprisingly hard to answer. Why have humans been so utterly obsessed with them? Jim Endersby follows the orchid through science. Empire. Romance. And death. From ancient Greece. To Charles Darwin's notebooks. To a James Bond villain whose plan for world domination involves a fictional South American orchid called Orchidae Nigra. He writes: "Orchids have often been thought of as floral aristocrats, rarefied and elite…" And in that idea. There's a kind of kinship. Between collectors. Between scientists. Between anyone who has ever brought one home. Knowing full well. They might not keep it alive. Botanic Spark And finally, here's something sweet to ignite the little botanic spark in your heart. 1982 Felicity Bryan published an essay in The Guardian called The Female Garden. Felicity spent her life championing other people's writing. But on this day, she asked her own question: Do women make better gardeners than men? To make her case, she started with two neighbors. Same county. Same era. Completely different gardens. She wrote: "Above all, Phyllis gardened like a man," said Marjory Fish of her neighbour and friend Phyllis Reiss… Meanwhile… Marjory Fish was perfecting a cottage garden… "The scale is human and intimate. The garden is very much an extension of the house." As she kept asking. And listening. The answers came back in the same language. Penelope Hobhouse said: "I'm sure that men feel much more strongly about straight lines. With women it's much more like embroidery — interweaving colours and textures." Eve Molesworth agreed: "Women prefer to interpret nature and go along with the rhythm of a garden which is so wonderful." And then Felicity wrote: "Gardening… is essentially a domestic, uncompetitive and solitary art which can be pursued at home." She didn't offer a final answer. She ended with a wondering. In 2020, Felicity Bryan died. Thirty-eight years after asking the question. But the gardens that last. The ones people return to. The ones that outlive their makers. They don't reveal a gender. They reveal something else. A devotion. Final Thoughts The checklist will never be finished. There will always be one more pot to scrub. One more tool to hang. One more thing you meant to do. But the first radish doesn't wait for tidy. The rhubarb doesn't care if the shed is organized. Spring has its own priorities. So tick what you can. Let the rest slide. And step back long enough to taste what's ready. Thanks for listening to The Daily Gardener. And remember, for a happy, healthy life, garden every day.

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Patreon Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Today's Show Notes May is National Salad Month. And if you've never grown a salad garden, this is the perfect time to begin. An honest salad garden starts smaller than you might think. Soft bib lettuce. Red and green. Mustard greens. Arugula. Spinach. And Swiss chard that just keeps coming in all those glorious colors. And don't forget the herbs. Dill. Flat-leaf parsley. Cilantro. And mint — which will take over a bit. And you should let it. Along with chives. And chervil. And then, of course, the radishes. For the weeks before the heat sets in. And then — don't forget the edible flowers. Nasturtiums are worth growing for two reasons. First, they're peppery. And beautiful. Second, they're a trap crop. Plant them near whatever the aphids love. And the aphids will find the nasturtiums first. Other edibles include calendula. And pansies. Both are hardy. Both are beautiful. And both are right at home in a salad bowl. Or a summer drink. And if you don't know where to start, don't worry. We'll come back to that. Today's Garden History 1828 José Jerónimo Triana was born in Bogotá. He grew up in a country of steep contrasts. River valleys below. And high, wind-swept uplands above. Colombians call those uplands páramos. Treeless alpine moorlands near the top of the Andes. From an early age, José understood that plants belong to place. Altitude matters. Climate matters. Survival shapes form. José's father was a schoolteacher. And he learned the way good teachers teach. Through the senses. Through touch. Through naming the living things growing just outside the door. As a young man, José joined the Chorographic Commission. A government expedition sent across Colombia to map the land. And catalog its natural resources. It was during this work that José focused on quinine. In the nineteenth century, quinine was the most reliable treatment for malaria. It comes from the bark of the cinchona tree. José studied cinchona closely. Learning to distinguish species. To identify potency. To understand which trees truly held the medicine the world needed. That work mattered deeply to him. And it mattered to Europe. In 1856, the Colombian government commissioned José to go to Paris. To promote Colombian plants of economic value. Especially cinchona. Two weeks after marrying Mercedes Umaña, the couple left for France. Paris was one of the great centers of nineteenth-century science. Alive with botanical gardens. Scholars. And exchange. José entered that world fully. Over more than three decades, José and Mercedes built their family in Paris. Their children were born there. Paris became home. All the while, he continued his botanical work. And served as Colombia's Consul General. José also used his plant knowledge in practical ways. Developing plant-based remedies for everyday ailments. Corn plasters for sore feet. Tooth powders. And a popular cough remedy known as Triana Syrup. He was versatile. Attuned to the needs of the moment. Comfortable working at the intersection of science and daily life. At the end of his life, his family endured a dark chapter. He had been struck by a horse-drawn carriage. And never fully recovered. José died on October 31, 1890. And just days later, his twenty-six-year-old daughter, Liboria, died in childbirth. Two funerals in one week. Today, José is buried in Paris. At Père Lachaise Cemetery. But his name lives on. Inside Colombia's national flower. Cattleya trianae. 2021 Cornelia Hahn Oberlander died in Vancouver. She was ninety-nine years old. Cornelia was born in 1921 in Germany. In an industrial city along the Ruhr River. Three moments shaped her life. The first came when she was five. Her mother, a horticulturist, gave her a small section of the family garden to tend. Cornelia planted peas. And her mother said: You are going to be a landscape architect. Seven years later, her father died in an avalanche. Her mother raised the family alone. Then, in 1938, Cornelia survived Kristallnacht. She and her family fled Germany. Eventually settling in New England. At twenty-six, she became one of the first women admitted to Harvard's Graduate School of Design. There, she met and married the urban planner Peter Oberlander. The couple made their home in Vancouver. A coastal city between the Pacific Ocean and the Coast Mountains. Over the next seventy years, Cornelia helped shape Vancouver into a city rooted in nature. She wrote: I work with a concept driven by the idea that people want to be surrounded by nature — it's in our genes. She designed more than seventy playgrounds. And helped shape landmarks like Robson Square and the Museum of Anthropology. "There's no froufrou here," she once said. Pragmatic. Clearheaded. Her philosophy was simple. Everyone deserves access to green space. After her husband died, she kept working. Continuing the projects that defined her life. She described her work as invisible mending. Restoring native plants so seamlessly they seemed to have always belonged. Vine maple. Douglas fir. Wild ginger. Still visible all over the Pacific Northwest. Just four days before her death, the city awarded her its highest civic honor. She died on this day in 2021. And fittingly, she is buried in a cemetery she designed. In the shade of a cedar grove she had planned decades earlier. Unearthed Words In today's Unearthed Words, we revisit a newspaper feature from May 22, 1937. It appeared in The Hutchinson News. The headline read: Woman Mixes Fun And Work! Dr. Florence E. Meier Is Expert On Algae. The article begins: "It's a dark day when the elevator refuses to run to the office of Dr. Florence E. Meier of the Smithsonian Institution staff. She has a little hexagonal room on the top floor of the flag tower, which makes it the highest office in Washington." That line was a nod to the Smithsonian Castle. Built in 1855. With towers and turrets rising like something out of a storybook. Florence worked in the tallest one. The Flag Tower. Getting there was no small thing. "But sometimes the asthmatic elevator rebels, and then Dr. Meier… has to trip lightly up 11 floors on an iron ladder…" Eleven floors. Inside a stone tower. Up an iron ladder. Through a trapdoor. Often carrying trays of specimens. Up in that tower, Florence studied algae. Microscopic plants gathering in green films along the edges of ponds. The article praised her as a "pure scientist." Someone free to follow her curiosity wherever it led. She wrote letters to colleagues in Hungary, France, and Japan. Debating her findings. Building knowledge. And she believed in balance. Scientists can become very dull if they don't arrange a well-balanced life. The reporter visited her apartment. Tennis rackets by the door. Schubert on the piano. Books stacked beside her chair. But later that same year, something changed. While giving visitors a tour, Florence demonstrated the ladder. As the elevator carried her guests downward, she stepped backward. Waving goodbye. Forgetting the trapdoor had been left open. She fell through. And broke her back. She survived. At the hospital, she was treated by Dr. William Wiley Chase. Two years later, they married. The tower that nearly ended her career. Became the beginning of her marriage. Florence continued her work. Raised a family. And lived a long life in science. She died in 1978. At seventy-five. Book Recommendation Bella Donna by Jill Johnson This book is part of Garden Mysteries Week. Which means all this week's book recommendations feature tales of intrigue, plants, and poison straight from the garden. Professor Eustacia Rose is done with murder cases. She has a partner. Matilde. She has her university work. She is ready, finally, for a normal life. But then a murder victim turns up poisoned with hemlock. One of the plants stolen from Eustacia's own illegal garden. Bella Donna is the second book in Jill Johnson's series. And by now, Eustacia feels like someone you already know. Brilliant. Difficult. And completely unable to leave a poisonous mystery alone. Botanic Spark And finally, here's something sweet to ignite the little botanic spark in your heart. 1909 Margaret Mee was born in Chesham, England. Her earliest memory of flowers came from walking the Chiltern Hills with her father. He taught her how to truly see wildflowers. By 1945, Margaret was thirty-six. Divorced. And searching for her purpose. She found her footing in night classes at St. Martin's School of Art. There, she met Greville Mee. A fellow artist. And her lifelong companion. In 1952, they traveled to São Paulo, Brazil. What was meant to be a short stay became a lifetime. About every other year, Margaret traveled into the Amazon. Painting plants where they grew. She called the rarest ones "botanical dodos." Plants she feared would vanish. For nearly thirty years, one flower eluded her. The Amazon Moonflower. She saw it in bud once. But lost it in the dark. By morning, it had bloomed and faded. Gone. The flower blooms for just one night. Open for twelve hours. Then collapses at dawn. In May of 1988, on her final expedition, she found one again. This time, still in bud. Margaret was seventy-nine. She didn't let it out of her sight. When darkness fell, she used a flashlight. Watching the petals move. She wrote: The first petal began to move… I was spellbound… by dawn, the flower was limp and dying. She painted through the night. Later that year, her book was published. And days later, she was gone. Killed in a car accident. Margaret left behind more than four hundred paintings. And a record of plants that may no longer exist. Final Thoughts I promised you a place to start. Here it is. One red bib lettuce. One green bib lettuce. That's your foundation. Add one herb you'll actually use. Parsley. Chives. Or mint in a pot. Then one edible flower. Nasturtiums are easy. They spill. They bloom all summer. And you can tuck them into salads. Or float them in lemonade. Start there. Because a garden doesn't begin big. It begins with one thing in the ground. And the decision to keep watering it. Thanks for listening to The Daily Gardener. And remember, for a happy, healthy life, garden every day.

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Patreon Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Today's Show Notes I've been thinking about where we go to do our best thinking. A lot of people put their desk by a window that overlooks the garden. Or they carry a notebook outside and sit in a shady spot and let the ideas come. There's a long tradition of this — the garden shed. The garden hut. The bench at the end of a path where nobody interrupts. Two summers ago, I put two reclined wingbacks in my garden shed. It was one of the best things I ever did. They're a great place to sit and admire the garden. But really, they're a place to rest and reflect. And I think that's what the garden does for us when we let it. It doesn't make us more creative by trying. It just gives us a place to be still — and the ideas find their own way in. If you're in a creative slump, maybe give that a try this year. Go outside. Sit near something growing. See what happens. Today's Garden History 1862 Mabel Keyes Babcock was born in Somerville, Massachusetts. And since her father was a botanist, Mabel spent her childhood growing up in a garden. After high school, Mabel earned her undergraduate degree from Northwestern. Twenty years later, at forty-six years old, she became the first woman to earn a master's in landscape architecture from MIT. After graduation, Mabel went on to teach horticulture and landscape architecture at Wellesley — all while running a solo design practice on the side. In 1916, MIT asked Mabel to design the Great Court at the center of the new campus in Cambridge. As an alumna, she saw it clearly. And she wrote all of her notes in purple ink. Since her vision would follow the French style, there would be more gravel. And not grass. And the pièce de résistance would be an enormous reflecting pond beneath the Great Dome. For plantings, Mabel added groupings of maples with conifers and magnolias to soften the bare outlines of stone. She also placed a border of rhododendrons to brighten the base of buildings with greenery — and a dash of brilliant color when they bloomed. During the First World War, Mabel directed agricultural courses at the Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture for Women in Groton, Massachusetts. She also taught food conservation as a way to support the country — a precursor to Victory Gardens. But then in 1928, Mabel's vision for MIT came to an end. The university wanted something different. No more gravel. Instead, they wanted lawns meandering throughout the campus. Although Mabel had lived long enough to see her vision built, she also lived to watch it dismantled and taken apart. And as the steam shovels dug it all up — even the reflecting pond which was her quiet formal oasis — it all disappeared forever to live on only as part of the school's history. Three years later, Mabel Keyes Babcock died on December 3rd, 1931, in Boston. She was sixty-nine. Yet every spring, the rhododendrons she planted still bloom at MIT — just in time for graduation. Mabel's dash of brilliant color still masks the stone at the base of the buildings, doing exactly what she intended. 1902 Horatio Hollis Hunnewell died at his home in Wellesley, Massachusetts. He was ninety-one. Since he never liked his first name — Horatio — everyone called him Hollis. A man of the 1800s, Hollis was born in 1810. By his forties, he had made a fortune in the railroads — all twelve of them — and successfully steered through panics and collapses that ruined many of his friends. Because his wife's last name was Wells, he named many things in her honor. Including their estate, Wellesley, which rested on the shores of Lake Waban in Massachusetts. Eventually, thanks to his generosity, both the town and the college followed suit. Which is why the Wellesley name is so ingrained in the town. With his passion for gardening and his generous spirit, Hollis loved sharing his garden with others. Throughout his life, his garden was open to the public every afternoon. In his Italian Garden, Hollis created the first topiary garden in America — using native white pine and Eastern arborvitae along seven terraces that rose seventy-five feet above the water. On any given afternoon, guests could arrive by an authentic Italian gondola with a gondolier in traditional dress — gliding across the lake toward the terraces. Visitors said that by moonlight, with the fountain splashing and the statues along the balustrades, the whole scene felt like Lake Como. In his pursuit of new plants, Hollis became the first to try many new garden plants and techniques. For instance, he was the first to bring rhododendrons to New England. And he displayed them proudly in full bloom on the Boston Common in 1855. He also installed a pinetum — filled with rare Japanese and European conifers. Through trial and error, he quickly learned which could survive a Massachusetts winter. Late in life, Hollis reflected: "No Vanderbilt, with all his great wealth, can possess one of these for the next fifty years — for it could not be grown in less time than that." Ever the pragmatist, Hollis knew that even infinite money can't rush a tree. In the end, Hollis outlived his beloved wife Isabella by fourteen years. He also, sadly, outlived several of his nine children. It's fitting that he was buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge — the first garden cemetery in the United States. Hollis rests near the Iris Path. And is surrounded by the kind of trees he spent his whole life planting. For sixty years, Hollis Hunnewell worked on a garden he knew he would never see finished. Yet that was exactly the point. Unearthed Words In today's Unearthed Words, we hear a passage from a novel by the Norwegian writer Sigrid Undset, born on this day in 1882. She wrote her great medieval trilogy at a place called Bjerkebæk in Lillehammer, Norway — on a rocky plot she cleared herself, stone by stone. She loved fruit trees. Herbs. And roses. Here's an excerpt from The Bridal Wreath, the first volume of her trilogy about a young noblewoman named Kristin Lavransdatter: "Groves and hill-sward smelt sweet; and as soon as the sun was down there streamed out all around the strong, cool, sourish breath of sap and growing things — it was as though the earth gave out a long, lightened sigh." And later: "Through the great darkness that would come, she saw the gleam of another, gentler sun, and she sensed the fragrance of the herbs in the garden at world's end." Sigrid wrote those words while living alone on that rocky hillside she had cleared herself. She was a woman who had left her marriage and raised her children in a cold house and a garden she built from what the ground gave her. Somehow, Sigrid wasn't reaching for poetry. She was simply writing what she already knew from kneeling in the dirt. Book Recommendation The Woman in the Garden by Jill Johnson This book is part of Garden Mysteries Week, which means all this week's book recommendations feature tales of intrigue, plants, and poison straight from the garden. Professor Eustacia Rose is a botanical toxicologist who lives alone with her collection of poisonous specimens. Her life is quiet. Her schedule never changes. Her closest companions are her plants. She does have one other habit, though — watching her neighbors through a telescope. Taking careful notes on their lives. For what she calls research. When she hears a scream one evening, she cannot look away. The Woman in the Garden is about obsession — the particular kind that only someone who has ever lost themselves completely in a garden will recognize. Botanic Spark And finally, here's something sweet to ignite the little botanic spark in your heart. 1804 A parcel of seeds arrived in England. That's the whole story, really. A little envelope of seeds. But let's back up. In the late 1700s, a woman named Elizabeth Fox — also called Lady Holland — was a renowned English political and literary hostess. And a woman who had paid dearly for the life she chose. As a young woman, Elizabeth endured a scandalous divorce and had her children taken from her. And for many years, drawing room doors in London would close quietly whenever she approached. But through it all, Elizabeth turned her home — called Holland House — into the most brilliant salon in the city. She could be sharp-tongued and imperious. But underneath it all, she was someone who knew exactly what it felt like to be shut out. In the spring of 1804, Elizabeth visited the Royal Botanic Gardens in Madrid. Where she met a botanist named Antonio José Cavanilles. There, Cavanilles gave her a small packet of seeds no one in England had been able to grow. Dahlia seeds. Later, the librarian at Holland House — a man named Mr. Buonaiuti — recorded, in his precise handwriting: "On the 20th of May, 1804, the Right Honorable Lady Holland sent home from Spain a parcel of seeds." That very summer, the dahlias flowered. And within twenty years, the dahlia was touted as the most fashionable flower in England. In a loving gesture, Elizabeth's husband, Lord Holland, penned an adoring note to mark her accomplishment. Surprisingly, he was not, by reputation, a sentimental man. But Lord Holland still felt moved to write her these words: "The dahlia you brought to our isle your praises for ever shall speak; mid gardens as sweet as your smile, and in colour as bright as your cheek." Final Thoughts If you need a place to think clearly, you already have one. It's right outside your door. Your garden doesn't need a fancy shed. Or a proper writing studio. Just a chair. And a patch of shade. With something blooming nearby. That's enough. When it comes to creativity, the garden has always been the place where the next good idea finds you — not the other way around. Thanks for listening to The Daily Gardener. And remember, for a happy, healthy life, garden every day.

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Patreon Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Today's Show Notes Mid-May mornings in Minnesota come early now. The light is already there when you walk out. The soil is warm enough to hold what you give it. And if you're lucky, there's someone beside you — handing you a flat, holding the stake, pulling the same weeds you were about to pull. The garden does most of the talking. I gardened with my friend Judy for a few summers, and what I remember most isn't any single plant we put in — it's those early mornings. She'd show up with something in a pot. I'd send her home with something in a bag. After a while we joked that our gardens were becoming one. Many hands, light work. And something else, too — many hands, more noticing. You catch things you'd miss alone. There's no shortcut to that. You just have to show up on the same morning, with dirt on both sets of hands, and let the garden be the thing between you. Today's Garden History 1824 Wilhelm Hofmeister was born in Leipzig. Wilhelm never finished formal schooling. He worked in his father's shop — selling sheet music, stacking books, and greeting customers. But every morning, before the shop opened, he would sit studying plant specimens with his face mere inches from the leaves. Wilhelm was severely nearsighted, but he refused to wear glasses. So anything beyond six inches was a blur. But up close, his vision was quite vivid. While other botanists squinted through clunky brass microscopes, Wilhelm could just bring a moss, a fern, a sliver of cone right up to his eyes and see plainly what most people would miss. Somehow he could dissect what others needed lenses to see — if they could see it at all. At just twenty-seven, Wilhelm had published a monograph showing something no one had pieced together. In it, he showed that a fern doesn't simply make more ferns. It drops spores that grow into something else entirely — a tiny, flat, heart-shaped thing you'd step right over and never notice. And that tiny thing is what produces the next fern. Parent and child, looking nothing alike — taking turns. He found the same pattern in mosses, in pines, and in every plant he studied. He called the phenomenon alternation of generations. In 1847, he married Agnes Lurgenstein. Together, they had nine children. Agnes held the household steady while Wilhelm focused on his work. Soon, the universities came calling. Heidelberg offered a professorship and oversight of the Botanical Garden — despite the fact that Wilhelm had no degree. Yet he had earned it at his kitchen table, before dawn, with his face two inches from a leaf or petal or stem. But then there was profound loss. Over a brutal five-year period, Wilhelm buried his darling Agnes. Then his youngest daughter. Then both surviving sons. Then his half-brother. Seven of his nine children gone before him. His student Karl von Goebel later wrote that he succumbed to the weight of his own grief. On his birthday, Wilhelm suffered the first of several strokes. Seven months later, he died in Lindenau, near Leipzig — near where his story began. Wilhelm was fifty-two. What lingers is the image of a nearsighted man in a dark kitchen at four in the morning, his face so close to a fern it seemed ridiculous. The man who literally couldn't see far saw the smallest thing — and it changed how we understand every plant alive. 1930 Wolfgang Oehme was born in Chemnitz, Germany. Wolfgang started growing plants at five in a corner of his parents' community garden. He was nine when WWII started. By the time it ended, the cities he knew were rubble. At seventeen, Wolfgang apprenticed at a nursery in Bitterfeld. He learned Latin names and propagation. And he also learned that a plant doesn't care who's in charge of the government. It was there that he discovered the work of Karl Foerster — the famous German plantsman who believed gardens should move, should catch the wind, like the grass named in his honor. Foerster called grasses the hair of the earth. He never forgot that. After Wolfgang fled East Germany, he ended up in Baltimore. He looked around and saw lawns with clipped hedges and foundation evergreens, and impatiens in rows. Wolfgang later said, "When I came to Baltimore, it was like a desert. I went on a crusade." When American nurseries didn't carry the plants Wolfgang needed — he smuggled seeds into the country through hollowed-out books. He found a partner in James van Sweden — a polished architect who could charm clients into ripping up their lawns. Wolfgang was the opposite. Short. Thick German accent. More at home with a shovel than with people. Together, James and Wolfgang invented what became known as the New American Garden — sweeping drifts of ornamental grasses, black-eyed Susans, Russian sage, coneflowers — planted not in dots but in waves, hundreds at a time, so that when the wind came, the whole garden moved like water. As a result, their firm, OVS, designed gardens for the Federal Reserve, Reagan National Airport, and the National World War II Memorial. Wolfgang never stopped being possessive. If someone had planted impatiens where his grasses had been, he would stop the car, get out, and start pulling them up. In a heat of passion, he once told a client, "This is my garden, not yours." But in a clearer moment, Wolfgang also said, "Human beings need nature; nature does not need human beings." And then followed quickly with, "I like it wild." After thirty years of landscapes, the friction between Wolfgang and James van Sweden finally cracked. In the end, he spent his final years in a small apartment, far from the grand terraces of movement made by his hands. He died at eighty-one, on December 15th, 2011, in Towson, Maryland. But he did not want a funeral. Just before he died, Wolfgang had returned to Bitterfeld in East Germany — the town where he had apprenticed as a teenager in the rubble — taking pictures of the many thousands of grasses and perennials on old industrial land. Somehow, after all the garden making, the photos of that earlier work were what Wolfgang clung to in the end. Unearthed Words In today's Unearthed Words, we hear an excerpt from a poem by the English novelist and poet George Meredith, who died on this day in 1909. George spent his final decades at Flint Cottage, at the foot of Box Hill in Surrey. Even when illness confined George to a bath-chair, he insisted on being taken up the hill. He believed a person had to keep walking into the landscape to understand it. His book of poems was published in 1851. In it, he wrote one of his most enchanting and lyrical poems called Love in the Valley. It was said that after Tennyson read it, he could not stop thinking about it. The poem offers vivid imagery of a young country woman and George's unrequited love for her. George describes a farmhouse, an orchard, and a bubbling wellspring and wrote that the young lady is as "Shy as the squirrel and wayward as the swallow, And swift as the swallow along the river's light." By the end of the poem, he compares her to heaven. Here's the last verse: Could I find a place to be alone with heaven, I would speak my heart out: heaven is my need. Every woodland tree is flushing like the dog-wood, Flashing like the whitebeam, swaying like the reed. Flushing like the dog-wood crimson in October; Streaming like the flag-reed South-West blown; Flashing as in gusts the sudden-lighted white beam: All seem to know what is for heaven alone. George could barely walk by the time he wrote those words. He was a man being pushed up a hill outside in a chair. And yet the poem is all motion — branches swaying, leaves turning, and light flashing on trees in the sun. And I often think of that moment. George writing from inside a landscape he could no longer enter on his own. Book Recommendation The Blue Rose by Anthony Eglin This fiction book selection is part of Garden Mysteries Week, which means all this week's book recommendations feature tales of intrigue, plants, and poison straight from the garden. Alex and Kate Sheppard have found their dream home — a Wiltshire parsonage with a two-acre walled garden. And in that garden, they find something impossible: A blue rose. No blue rose exists in nature. None has ever been grown. And yet there it is. What follows is a thriller about coded journals, genetic experiments, and what happens when the world finds out you have something everyone wants. Anthony Eglin is a member of the American Rose Society. And it shows — the roses in this book are as real as the danger. Botanic Spark And finally, here's something sweet to ignite the little botanic spark in your heart. 1872 Bertrand Russell was born at Pembroke Lodge in Richmond Park, England — a grand house set inside a sweeping garden overlooking the Thames Valley. Bertrand was orphaned at three, and raised by a grandmother who was strict and Victorian and not given to softness. Over the course of his childhood, he spent a lot of time alone in that garden, watching sunsets, and staying quiet. Bertrand spent decades writing about logic, mathematics, peace, and the question he never stopped asking — how does a person find happiness? And then Bertrand wrote this: Every time I talk to a savant, I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I'm convinced of the opposite. To think of Bertrand searching for a happy person only to find the answer lay in his gardener — the man who came each day and waged quiet war against the rabbits — steady but purposeful and entirely at peace. Bertrand also told a story about a parson who had terrified his congregation by announcing that the second coming was imminent — and very imminent indeed. The congregation was frightened until someone noticed that the parson who had foretold a tale of doom was seen out in his own garden planting trees. Bertrand loved that image. Apparently, even a man who believed the end was near couldn't help but put something in the ground and wait for it to grow. Bertrand died at ninety-seven. He never stopped believing that the world was full of what he called magical things — patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. Maybe that's what the garden is. A little magic. And a lot of waiting. Final Thoughts If there's someone you garden alongside — even loosely, even just a few times a season — that's not a small thing. It's not about efficiency, though the work does go faster. It's the fact that someone else saw your garden on a Tuesday in May, when the light was a certain way and the peonies hadn't opened yet. That's a kind of knowing that doesn't get recorded anywhere. It just lives between you. And if you don't have that person right now — you might be that person for someone else and not even know it. The one who shows up with a division wrapped in wet newspaper. The one who says, "That looks good there." May is still making itself. There's time. Thanks for listening to The Daily Gardener. And remember, for a happy, healthy life, garden every day.

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Patreon Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Today's Show Notes Here's an exercise to try. Take a minute today and write a letter that describes your garden. What do you love about it? What do you enjoy doing there? What are your favorite flowers? What areas give you trouble? Be honest. Be specific. Write it the way you'd tell a friend who's never seen your garden. Then clip a few flowers from the beds. Tuck them into the envelope. Seal it. Date it. And put it away. Now imagine doing this every year. A stack of letters. A record of seasons. A portrait of the gardener you were in May of 2026. And how different that gardener will be in May of 2036. What a gift for a future you. What a gift for your grandchildren. Today's Garden History 1752 Albrecht Daniel Thaer was born in Celle, Germany. Before Albrecht was a man of the soil, he was a man of the sickbed. At the University of Göttingen, he trained as a physician. And later served as a court doctor for royalty. He was very good at his job. But eighteenth-century medicine was still primitive. He often watched patients die from things he couldn't fix. And it wore on him. But then came the garden. Attached to his house, Albrecht had a small plot. Nothing grand. Just a place to grow flowers in his spare hours. What started as an amusement quickly became an obsession. He treated the garden like a science class. Experimenting with carnations and auriculas. After his marriage, he expanded. Obtaining four hectares outside the city gates as a wedding gift for his wife. The garden became both ornamental. And productive. From the start, Albrecht kept records. Every input. Every output. Every change in the soil. And he used what he learned to teach others. In 1804, he moved to Brandenburg. And purchased an estate. Gut Möglin. Two years later, he founded the Möglin Agricultural Institute. The first agricultural college in Prussia. Often called the cradle of scientific agriculture. Before Albrecht's work, farming was guided by feel. By folklore. By instinct. Albrecht made it a science. With textbooks. Lectures. And data. His masterwork, Principles of Rational Agriculture, became the standard across Europe. Earning him the title: Father of Modern Scientific Agriculture. After years of observation, Albrecht championed crop rotation. Never grow the same thing in the same place twice. The soil, like the body, needed variety. And rest. At the center of his thinking was humus. That dark, crumbly, living layer of soil. He believed plants fed on it. He was wrong. A tree doesn't eat the earth. It builds itself from the sky. From carbon dioxide. From light. But here's the thing. Albrecht's advice still worked. Because compost feeds the microbes. And microbes build healthy soil. Healthy soil grows strong plants. He was wrong about the chemistry. But right about the care. Today, regenerative gardeners are circling back to everything he taught. Feed the soil. Not the plant. Build the humus. Close the loop. Albrecht died at seventy-six. On his beloved estate. His eyesight had failed him the year before. The great observer left in the dark. In his final years, he asked to be buried in his garden. On the shore of a clear pond. Surrounded by trees he had planted himself. He called those trees his children. Over his grave, they placed a pyramid of flowers. Not marble. Not bronze. Just petals. One tribute said it best: "The ornaments of nature's rich temple mourn for their departed friend." 1905 Federico Delpino died in Naples. He was seventy-one years old. Federico was born in 1833. A fragile child. Thin. Prone to illness. His mother's remedy was the garden. She kept him outside for hours every day. Not because she knew the science. But because she knew her son. And to her, Federico needed the garden. It worked both ways. The garden needed watching. And Federico watched. Ants climbing stems. Bees disappearing into flowers. Emerging dusted in yellow. Years later, Federico would say that as a child, he had already begun to think about studying plants. Life had other plans. When his father died, Federico left school. Took a job at a customs house. Counting crates. Stamping documents. Supporting his family. For fourteen years, he worked there. But never left the garden behind. In his free time, he studied nature. No university. No lab. No mentor. Just his eyes. And his patience. In 1867, he published Thoughts on Plant Biology. And changed botany forever. Stop naming the parts. Start watching what the plant does. Federico saw plant life as negotiation. A night-blooming flower? That's for moths. A deep tube of nectar? That's for butterflies. Nectar, he said, was a wage. Plants hire help. They advertise with petals. They pay with sugar. And when the bee arrives, it carries pollen forward. Work complete. He also saw plants hiring bodyguards. Acacias with hollow thorns. Housing ants. Feeding them. And in return, the ants protected the tree. He called this relationship myrmecophily. Mutual benefit between ants and plants. Federico wrote to Charles Darwin. Darwin was fascinated. And frustrated. Because he couldn't read Italian. Federico later became director of the Naples Botanic Garden. A long way from the customs desk. He once wrote: "The plant is not a simple machine. It is an individual that acts with a purpose." He died on this day in 1905. Buried in Naples. Among the Illustrious. All because his mother sent a fragile boy outside. And told him to stay. Unearthed Words In today's Unearthed Words, we hear from the American poet Georgia Douglas Johnson, who died on this day in 1966. Georgia was a central voice of the Harlem Renaissance. By day, she worked a government job in Washington, D.C. By night, she wrote. After the house was quiet. After the dishes were done. She called herself a "writer by night." As her reputation grew, her home became a gathering place. Young Black poets. Langston Hughes. Countee Cullen. Finding their voices. But when her own heart grew heavy, Georgia turned to nature. Here is her poem Hope: The oak tarries long in the depth of the seed, While the sharp blades of clover rise and fall, And the plants of the garden fulfill their need, But the oak is silent and makes no call. It fuses the strength of the sun and the soil, In the secret dark of the silent years, It weaves a garment of patient toil, And drinks of the rain of the valley's tears. Till a hundred years are gone and past, And the bough is great and the trunk is vast! Clover rises quickly. Falls quickly. But the oak waits. Some days we are the clover. Quick. Useful. And gone. And some days we are the oak. Doing our work quietly. In our own time. Book Recommendation The Regenerative Landscaper by Erik Ohlsen It's time to Grow That Garden Library, with today's book: The Regenerative Landscaper by Erik Ohlsen. This book is part of Mother's Day Week here on The Daily Gardener. And that means all of this week's Book Recommendations feature garden stories about care, inheritance, teaching, and the quiet ways gardening is passed from one generation to the next. Erik opens his book with a scene. You step out your back door. Birdsong everywhere. A basket on your arm. And within ten minutes, it's full. Vegetables. Herbs. Eggs. Fruit. And a bundle of flowers resting on top. This is what Erik calls "a landscape of real abundance." Not a fantasy. But something to build. Erik is a permaculture designer. And his book is a field guide to creating landscapes that produce. Not through force. But through relationship. He writes about soil health. Water stewardship. Biodiversity. And resilience. But what holds the book together is the work. Years of building soil. Planting trees whose fruit you may never see. Designing water systems that slow rain. And let it soak. He asks a simple question: What are you leaving behind? Because healthy soil is not built in a season. It is layered. Fed. Protected. Observed. And passed on. Botanic Spark And finally, here's something sweet to ignite the little botanic spark in your heart. 1865 Edward Augustus Bowles was born in Enfield, England. His friends called him Gussie. He was the youngest of four children. And once planned to become a priest. But tragedy changed everything. His sister Cornelia died at nineteen. Then his brother John died at twenty-seven. The same year. Half the children in the house gone. Before New Year's. Gussie returned home. To his parents. And to the garden. He never went back to Cambridge. Never became a priest. At some point that year, he pressed his initials into the brick wall of the kitchen garden. E.A.B. 1887. Not perfect. Not polished. Just a mark. A young man saying: I am still here. Gussie spent the next sixty-seven years in that garden. And those initials remain. In the brick. Near the gateway to the pond. Still legible today. Final Thoughts Mid-May has a strange quality. Everything is moving. And yet nothing has quite arrived. The whole season still ahead. It asks a different kind of patience. Not the endurance of winter. But the patience of watching something begin. To come to life. In its own way. Maybe not the way you expected. And that's the work of May. To watch. And to wait. Thanks for listening to The Daily Gardener. And remember, for a happy, healthy life, garden every day.

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Patreon Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Today's Show Notes For the past week, I've been working on dividing plants. Redesigning and refreshing my cottage garden. Little by little. Anyway, I potted up extras. And set them on the curb with a "free" sign. They were all gone by noon. And I kept thinking about that afterward. Not the plants. Although I'm sure they've found good homes. But how easy it was. How little it cost me to share them. And how the very thing that made me feel most like a gardener this week wasn't anything I planted. It was something I gave away. Today's Garden History 1924 William James Beal died peacefully in his sleep. He was ninety-one years old. William studied at Michigan and Harvard under Asa Gray before landing a professorship at Michigan State. He taught botany for nearly four decades. William was wiry and energetic. And he was most famous for his long white beard. And the broad-brimmed hat he always wore. Whether he was in the garden or not. True to form, William was not a small-talk man. But if you handed him a glass of punch at a party, he would have probably handed you back a magnifying glass. And pointed to a weed. Asking, "What do you see?" And he wouldn't have let you leave until you actually looked. And told him. William called his hands-on approach the New Botany. In his approach, he threw out the textbooks. And handed students living plants. Their job was to observe them. Not to memorize the Latin name for them. And that simple idea—learning by doing, learning by experience—is still how most of us learn to garden. When William was forty, he founded the W.J. Beal Botanic Garden on the Michigan State campus. On the north bank of the Red Cedar River. It is the oldest continuously operating university botanical garden in the country. And visitors can still enter through the ornate metal gates. But William did something else in 1879. Something that is still going on today. He filled twenty narrow-necked glass bottles. Like pint jars. With moist sand. And fifty seeds each from twenty-one species. Mostly common weeds from any Michigan field. Then he buried them in a secret spot on campus. About twenty inches deep. Upside down. And slanting. So water wouldn't pool. Every twenty years, a small group of Michigan State plant biologists are given a map. To find a single bottle. And dig it up. In the middle of the night. For secrecy. And to keep the seeds from being exposed to sunlight. Then, back at the lab, they empty out the seeds. Plant them. And see if they still grow. Remarkably, many do. With Verbascum, or mullein, proving the most resilient. The next bottle is scheduled to be unearthed in 2040. With the final one uncovered in the year 2100. William was forty-six when he buried those bottles. And he knew he would not live to see them all opened. But that was the point. It was a message written in seeds. To young scientists he would never meet. 1935 William Robinson died peacefully at his home in Sussex, England. He was ninety-six years old. As a young man, he arrived in London totally penniless. But what William did have was opinions. And when it came to Victorian gardens, he disliked them. Very much. The rigid rows. The geometric beds. And the thousands of identical greenhouse flowers. All ripped out at the end of every season. William called it a mutilation. Instead, he believed plants should be allowed to grow according to their nature. If a flower thrives in a woodland, it should be planted under a tree. If it loves wet feet, it should be planted by a pond. Right plant. Right place. In 1870, William published his thoughts in a book called The Wild Garden. And it shook English horticulture. In it, William pushed back against the rage for exotic plants that needed hothouses. And the constant cycle of bedding out. Where flowers were replaced three to four times each season just to keep the look fresh. To William, the entire approach was wasteful. And soulless. To name what he preferred, William coined the term wild garden. His notion of growing hardy perennials. Plants that come back year after year. Three years later, William wrote another book. The English Flower Garden. And it was so popular and timeless that it has never gone out of print. In midlife, William used the money from his writing to buy a crumbling Elizabethan home. Gravetye Manor. Nestled on a sandstone ridge about thirty miles south of London. Once he got to work, he treated it as a giant canvas. Planting thousands of wildflowers and spring-flowering bulbs. Daffodils. Scilla. Anemones. And giving the meadows around Gravetye the wild, unstyled beauty he had chased his whole life. When William was seventy, he was paralyzed from the waist down after a serious fall on his way to church. After the accident, he made Gravetye accessible for his wheelchair. Including a little path system from inside his house. And out to his beloved elliptical kitchen garden. Undaunted, he gardened almost every day with the help of his staff. For another twenty-six years. Despite his spinal injury. And he somehow managed to scatter bluebell seed until his final days. In the end, William left Gravetye. And all of its thousand acres. To the people of England. Unearthed Words In today's Unearthed Words, we hear from the American poet Amy Lowell, who died on this day in 1925. Amy lived her entire life at Sevenels. Her family's estate in Brookline, Massachusetts. The home sat on ten acres of land. With formal garden beds. Long borders. And plenty of lilacs planted deep into the New England soil. Amy was a leader of the Imagist movement. A school of poetry that was clear, precise, and rooted in the imagination. Here's an excerpt from Amy Lowell's poem Lilacs: "Lilacs, False blue, White, Purple, Color of lilac, Your great puffs of flowers Are everywhere in this my New England. Among your heart-shaped leaves Orange orioles hop like music-box birds and sing their little weak soft songs;In the crooks of your branches You are everywhere. You were everywhere. You tapped the window when the preacher preached his sermon, And ran along the road beside the boy going to school. Maine knows you, Has for years and years; New Hampshire knows you, And Massachusetts and Vermont. Cape Cod starts you along the beaches to Rhode Island; Connecticut takes you from a river to the sea. You are brighter than apples, Sweeter than tulips, You are the smell of all Summers, Lilac in me because I am New England, Because my roots are in it, Because my leaves are of it, Because my flowers are for it, Because it is my country And I speak to it of itself And sing of it with my own voice Since certainly it is mine." Amy never wanted to stray far from Brookline. The estate and its lilac-bordered gardens weren't just scenery for her. They were who she was. Amy was awarded the Pulitzer Prize the year she died. For a collection she humorously called What's O'Clock, which includes her poem Lilacs. Yet she never knew she'd won. She died before anyone could tell her. But I think she would have shrugged. The lilacs were already enough. Book Recommendation The Glory of Roses by Allen Lacy It's time to Grow That Garden Library, with today's book: The Glory of Roses by Allen Lacy. It's Mother's Day Week here on The Daily Gardener. And that means all of this week's Book Recommendations are devoted to garden stories about care, inheritance, teaching, and the quiet ways gardening is passed from one generation to the next. Allen Lacy was a garden writer who thought slowly. And wrote carefully. The kind of writer who could spend a whole chapter on one rose and make you feel like you'd spent an afternoon beside him. In The Glory of Roses, Allen turns his gaze to a flower often burdened with symbolism. But he doesn't reduce roses to romance. Instead, he writes about the discipline roses require from gardeners. The pruning. The feeding. And the patience. In the book, Allen quotes Candace Wheeler, who wrote in 1902: "[The rose has] a mysterious something in its nature — an inner fascination, a subtle witchery, a hidden charm which it has and other flowers have not — ensnares and holds the love of the world." That's the rose, isn't it? All of it together. The fragrance. The thorn. And the beauty. A kind of magic that other flowers just don't carry. If someone in your life grows roses in their garden, or simply loves them as their favorite flower, this is the book to hand to them. Botanic Spark And finally, here's something sweet to ignite the little botanic spark in your heart. 1812 Edward Lear was born in London. The English artist and nonsense poet was the twentieth of twenty-one children. And when his family ran out of money and couldn't care for him, his eldest sister Ann raised him. Ann taught Edward to draw. And drawing became his way forward. By his early twenties, he was producing scientific illustrations for the Zoological Society in London. Alongside that work came taxonomy. The Latin names. The rigid classifications. The serious business of labeling everything properly. Edward could take the drawing seriously. But the naming struck him as a little absurd. So he invented his own botanical Latin. And illustrated his creations. He drew people dangling upside down from a plant stem like bleeding hearts. And called it Manypeeplia Upsidownia. He drew a lily where tigers became the petals. And called it Tigerlillia Terribilis. And he drew a flower with a large, grumpy face. And called it Phattfacia Stupenda. Edward's creations were an immediate success. The popularity of his nonsense books exceeded his serious art. But he never complained about his work. Or his chronic poor health. Edward suffered from epilepsy. Which he called "the Demons." And from depression. Which he called "the Morbids." He moved repeatedly. Searching for warmer climates. From London to Rome. To San Remo on the Italian coast. Where he eventually settled. And named his home Villa Emily. At Villa Emily, Edward finally had a garden of his own. With a fat tabby cat named Foss. Who inspired his beloved poem The Owl and the Pussy-cat, which begins: "The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea In a beautiful pea-green boat, They took some honey, and plenty of money, Wrapped up in a five-pound note." When the end came, his friends could not be with him. Dear old Foss had died the summer before. Edward Lear died alone in San Remo in 1888. He was seventy-five years old. And was buried beneath a fig tree. Final Thoughts The garden gives you more than you can hold. And you don't have to keep it all to yourself. Nobody's keeping score. Nobody's checking to see if you gave away your best division. Or your scrappiest one. The giving is the thing. Most of us don't keep it all. Most of us end up at the fence. Or in a neighbor's yard. Saying, "Here — take some." It's part of gardening. And it's what the best gardeners are known for. Generosity. Thanks for listening to The Daily Gardener. And remember, for a happy, healthy life, garden every day.

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Patreon Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community Today's Show Notes Mother's Day is this Sunday. And if you're a gardener, you've probably had the experience of someone you love showing up with a plant you don't love. It happens every year. The intention is beautiful. The plant is not what you'd choose. So years ago, I started doing something different with my kids. Before Mother's Day, I'd send them to the garden center with an assignment. I'd say, bring me back two things that are green. One that's a vine or a creeper. And one that's spiky. Or I'd tell them, just buy herbs. You can never go wrong with herbs. And when it came to flowers—because kids are always drawn to whatever's blooming—I'd give them a color palette. This year I'm looking for purple, white, and pink. Or this year, I only want blue flowers. And when Mother's Day arrived, I got exactly what I wanted in the garden. No gaudy surprises. Just plants I actually loved. And here's the thing. It taught my kids to see plants through my lens. It made the whole experience something we shared. Instead of something I had to pretend about. So if someone in your life wants to give you a plant this weekend, tell them what you like. Be specific. Say, get me something green. Something that doesn't flower. Like lady's mantle. Or something aromatic. Like lavender or thyme. Givers want to get it right. They just need us to say what right looks like. Today's Garden History 1698 Henry Baker was born. The English naturalist never planned to become a scientist. As a young man, he was apprenticed to a bookseller in London. But at twenty-two, Henry went to visit relatives for a few weeks. And stayed for nine years. What kept him was a child. The family's eight-year-old daughter, Jane Forster, had been born deaf. Henry became fascinated. Not with her limitation. But with the possibility of reaching her. Incredibly, Henry figured out how to teach Jane to speak. To read lips. And to move through the hearing world. Then he taught her two younger siblings. It worked so well that word spread. And the work became his career. Henry spent years teaching the deaf children of the British aristocracy. Charging high fees. And guarding his methods behind legal bonds. Every family sworn to secrecy. It made him wealthy. And it made Henry one of the most unusual scientists of his century. Once the teaching made him secure, Henry turned to the microscope. For a new challenge. And everything changed again. In 1742, Henry wrote The Microscope Made Easy. The first practical guide to help ordinary people use a microscope at home. But he didn't write it for professors. Henry wrote it for the curious. And he believed the microscope gave humans a "new sense" to add to the other five. A way of seeing into another world. One day, Henry studied pond water and discovered that the sparkling light in the sea at night was caused by tiny living creatures. Another time, he watched a hydra get cut in half. And grow back whole. Suddenly, everything seemed new under the lens. And so everything was up for grabs. That is why Henry also examined pollen. Crystals. And the invisible architecture of seeds. And through his connections at the Royal Society, he helped introduce the Alpine strawberry and rhubarb to England. Plants that crossed borders because Henry built relationships around them. For his work, Henry won the Copley Medal. He also helped found the Society of Arts. And when Henry died, he left money to the Royal Society to fund an annual lecture. The Bakerian Lecture. Still delivered every year. Henry once wrote: "The works of nature are the only source of true knowledge." And in his poem The Universe, he asked us to remember how small we really are: "And what is Man? A crawling worm! An insect of a day!" I reflect on Henry whenever life gets too big. I imagine him at his microscope. Using his sixth sense to really look at things. A grain of pollen. A drop of water. Tiny things that held the whole universe. And against the whole universe, our troubles seem small. Henry Baker knew that. 1842 Emil Christian Hansen was born. The Danish botanist grew up very poor. His father was a French Foreign Legion soldier turned alcoholic drifter. And his mother was a laundress. By thirteen, even though Emil was the brightest student in his class, he had to leave school to help feed his family. Later, in his twenties, Emil finished high school. And found a mentor in a local botanist named Peter Nielsen. Who showed him the world under a microscope. And through that lens, Emil fell in love with fungi. By thirty-four, he won a university gold medal for an essay on Danish mushrooms. And in 1879, he was appointed to the Carlsberg Laboratory in Copenhagen. A position Emil would hold for the rest of his life. In the 1800s, brewing beer was a gamble. Entire batches would go bitter or oily without warning. They called it "beer sickness." And nobody could explain it. Emil looked at the yeast under a microscope. And saw the problem immediately. It wasn't one organism. It was a crowd. Like a garden bed full of weeds and wheat all tangled together. Wild yeasts. Uninvited. Invisible. Contaminating every batch. Emil found a single cell. Just one perfect cell. And he isolated it. Then he put it in its own clean jar of sugar water. And let it multiply. One became two. Two became millions. And because they all descended from that one pure original cell, they were identical. No weeds. No contamination. Just pure. Emil called it Saccharomyces carlsbergensis. Named for the brewery that gave him a chance. It was 1883. And Emil and Carlsberg did not patent it. They gave it away. Free. To every brewer in the world. The man who grew up with nothing made the most generous discovery of his career. And simply handed it out over the fence. Unearthed Words In today's Unearthed Words, we hear from the French novelist Gustave Flaubert, who died on this day in 1880. Gustave spent most of his life at his family estate in Croisset. Along the Seine in Normandy. He was known as the Hermit of Croisset. Gustave was a large, booming man. With a walrus mustache. And a temperament that swung between thunder and silence. When he paced the lime-tree walk in his garden—his allée de tilleuls—Gustave shouted his sentences aloud to test their rhythm. As a gardener and a writer, he believed that if a flower was going to be written into a story, it had better be seasonally correct. In Madame Bovary, Gustave used gardens to mirror the inner life of his characters. Like when Emma's early hopes begin to wither in the overgrown garden at Tostes. He wrote: "The garden, longer than it was wide, ran between two mud walls … the espaliers were dying, the boxwood was growing wild, and a few lilacs, choked by the nettles, were losing their leaves." Gustave once wrote that anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough. Which explains why he walked that same lime-tree path every day of his adult life. The same trees. The same worn stones. And every morning he went back. Because it was interesting. And because he kept showing up. And somewhere in the dailiness, he fell in love with it. Book Recommendation The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng It's time to Grow That Garden Library, with today's book: The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng. It's Mother's Day Week here on The Daily Gardener. And that means all of this week's Book Recommendations are devoted to garden stories about care, inheritance, teaching, and the quiet ways gardening is passed from one generation to the next. Set in post-war Malaya, the story centers around a Japanese garden built in the Cameron Highlands. It follows a woman who returns to the mountains years after the war. To study under a former gardener to the Emperor of Japan. The garden Tan builds in this novel is shaped by the principles of Zen design. Moss. Stone. Water. And deliberate emptiness. Every rock placement carries intention. And every clipped branch is restraint made visible. The garden becomes a vessel for silence. And for memory. Tan's novel reminds us that gardens are not always decorative. Sometimes they are containers for sorrow. And sometimes they are the place where healing begins. Botanic Spark And finally, here's something sweet to ignite the little botanic spark in your heart. 2012 Maurice Sendak died. The American author and illustrator spent his later decades in Ridgefield, Connecticut. In a quiet house with old maples outside his studio window. He walked his dogs. And gardened. Near the end of his life, he called the world "beautiful, beautiful". And said it was "a blessing to grow old." He was in love with life. All of it. And that love had started early. Maurice grew up in Brooklyn. The son of Polish Jewish immigrants. Shadowed by stories of relatives lost in the Holocaust. Mortality arrived early in his imagination. So did trees. In Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice gave us a bedroom that becomes a forest. A small boy is sent to bed without supper. And the walls of his room "became the world all around." Vines hung from the ceiling. The floor softened into earth. And a private loneliness grew leaves. The transformation was not loud. It happened slowly. A room thickening with green. A child's anger given teeth and claws. And a kingdom to rule. Maurice understood that children do not need protection from their feelings. They need somewhere to let those feelings loose. In the studio, he drew trees with quiet devotion. Cross-hatched trunks. Heavy canopies. Branches that feel older than the page. When Maurice died on this day in 2012, spring was well underway in Connecticut. Leaves were widening. And the light filtered green through the glass windows of his room. Final Thoughts If someone wants to give you a garden gift this Mother's Day, let them. But feel free to tell them what you see when you imagine your garden at its best. Give them a color. And a direction. Something green and aromatic. Or something that climbs. It's not about control. It's about invitation. When you share what you love, you teach the people around you to see your garden the way you see it. And that gift—telling someone what you love and watching them bring it home—is one of the best things a gardener can do. Thanks for listening to The Daily Gardener. And remember, for a happy, healthy life, garden every day.