Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart   Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee   Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community   Historical Events 1756 Birth of the handsome and tall Swedish botanist, Pehr Loefling. Pehr met Carl Linnaeus at the University of Uppsala, where Carl was his professor. Early on, Carl dubbed Pehr his "most beloved pupil," and he started calling Pehr "the Vulture." Carl came up with the moniker after observing that Pehr had an intuitive way of finding plants and observing the most minute details of plant specimens. After graduating, Carl recommended Pehr for an opportunity in Madrid. Pehr landed the position, learned Spanish, and was soon called Pedro by his friends. In short order, Pehr joined a Royal Spanish Expedition to South America. His mission was to find and learn about an improved cinnamon species. Two years into the trip, Pehr was botanizing in Venezuela when he died of malaria on the banks of the Caroní River. He was buried beneath an orange tree. He was 27 years old. By the end of the year, over half of the expedition's men would be dead from disease compounded by hunger and fatigue. When Linnaeus heard the news about Pehr, he wrote to a friend, The great Vulture is dead.   1801 Birth of William Barnes (books about this person), English polymath, writer, and inventor. He wrote over 800 poems and had familiarity with over 70 different languages. The English writers Thomas Hardy and Edmund Gosse visited William on his deathbed. Edmund later wrote that William was dying as picturesquely as he lived... We found him in bed in his study, his face turned to the window, where the light came streaming in through flowering plants, his brown books on all sides of him save one, the wall behind him being hung with old green tapestry.   Any gardener who loves their garden has likely thought about the day they'll have to say goodbye. William wrote about that moment in a little poem called To a Garden—On Leaving It. Sweet garden! peaceful spot! no more in thee Shall I ever while away the sunny hour. Farewell each blooming shrub, and lofty tree; Farewell, the mossy path and nodding flower: I shall not hear again from yonder bower The song of birds, or humming of the bee, Nor listen to the waterfall, nor see The clouds float on behind the lofty tower. My eyes no more may see, this peaceful scene. But still, sweet spot, wherever I may be, My love-led soul will wander back to thee.   1870 Birth of Adolph G. Rosengarten, Sr., American businessman. His family pharmaceutical company would become part of Merck in the 1920s. In 1913, Adolph and his wife Christine wanted to escape the heat of Philadelphia and find a place suitable for a country home. They settled on a piece of land in Wayne, Pennsylvania, and commissioned their former friend and classmate Charles Borie to design the house and Landscape architect Thomas Sears to work on the terraces. After 1924, the family lived there year-round. Adolph named the estate Chanticleer as a tongue-in-cheek nod to "Chanticlere" in William Makepeace Thackeray's The Newcomes (1855), wherein the estate was "mortgaged up to the very castle windows." Adolph always said he sympathized with the fictional Chanticlere owner from the novel. The etymology of Chanticleer means rooster, and that's why there are so many rooster motifs at Chanticleer (books about this garden). Today the public garden at Chanticleer is among the best in the United States. The grounds occupy 35 of the 50 acres owned by the foundation. The garden opened to the public in 1993. The job of maintaining and designing Chanticleer now falls to seven full-time horticulturists who strive to preserve and improve a garden that's been called America's most romantic and creative garden.   1939 Birth of Phyllis Theroux (books by this author), American writer and journalist. She grew up in San Francisco following World War II. She once wrote, I think this is what hooks one to gardening: it is the closest one can come to being present at creation.   Grow That Garden Library™ Book Recommendation The Flower Hunter by Lucy Hunter This book came out late in 2021, and the subtitle is Seasonal flowers inspired by nature and gathered from the garden. Lucy Hunter is a floral whisperer. She knows how to create beauty - true, artistic, Raphaelian, dreamy, sumptuous beauty. For a first book, Lucy has given gardeners quite a gift. Gardeners love nothing better than chatting with other gardeners and seeing their gardens. How do you do this? Why do you grow that? What do you do with this flower? In The Flower Hunter, Lucy Hunter welcomes us to a year in her North Wales garden. And trust me; you want to see what Lucy is doing with the beauty she finds in her own backyard. Lucy is generous with her step-by-step tutorials. She inspires with her essays on working with natural elements. She’s funny, too. And Her photography is top of the top. Even if you feel no match for Lucy’s level of mastery, she manages to help connect the reader to the well of creativity, the tiny spark of inspiration that each of us possesses. As gardeners, we see the beauty in the every day. We know how to find peace in nature. Lucy extends that serenity and joy and puts it to work in creating more than just exquisite floral arrangements. She also demonstrates other projects like drying flowers for a fall wreath, making natural dyes (easier than you think), and creating your own journal (more fun than you think!). Lucy Hunter has two decades of floral, photography, and landscape design experience. She is a naturalist at heart. She is an edge-softener, an evocateur, a seasonal transition lover, a rose lover and guru, a believer in potential, and a pathfinder to your own creative voice. You’d better believe that her Instagram is amazing. You can follow her @lucytheflowerhunter. This book is 208 pages of Lucy Hunter doing what Lucy Hunter does best: florals, beauty, softness, nature, and sparks. You can get a copy of The Flower Hunter by Lucy Hunter and support the show using the Amazon link in today's show notes for $25.   Botanic Spark 1892 Birth of Edna St. Vincent Millay (books by this author), American lyrical poet and playwright. Gardeners know many of Edna's verses like: April comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers. I would blossom if I were a rose. I will be the gladdest thing under the sun! I will touch a hundred flowers and not pick one.   But there's a touching little poem of Edna's that was published posthumously. that I thought I'd end the show with today. It's a lovely spring poem called, If It Should Rain. The American actress Kathleen Chalfant once said that her friend Sloane Shelton would repeat the last three lines before going to sleep at the end of particularly hard days. If it should rain --(the sneezy moon Said: Rain)--then I shall hear it soon From shingles into gutters fall... And know of what concerns me, all: The garden will be wet till noon-- I may not walk-- my temper leans To myths and legends--through the beans Till they are dried-- lest I should spread Diseases they have never had. I hear the rain: it comes down straight. Now I can sleep, I need not wait To close the windows anywhere. Tomorrow, it may be, I might Do things to set the whole world right. There's nothing I can do tonight.   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 Buy Me A Coffee    Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter |  Daily Gardener Community   Historical Events 1564 Birth of Galileo (books about this person), Italian astronomer, physicist, engineer, mathematician, and philosopher. Galileo believed that the book of nature was "written in the language of mathematics." He recognized the complexity and the simplicity of that language when he wrote, The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.    1803 Birth of Karl Friedrich Schimper, German botanist and poet. He was born into a family of scientists. His mother was a botanist. At university, he befriended botanists, Alexander Braun and Louis Agassiz. Karl made several keen scientific observations. He proved the association between the golden angle and the Fibonacci numbers. Karl also devised a theory of phyllotaxy which explained the serial addition of new leaves on a stem appearing in a spiral. And after studying mountain landscapes, he began questioning how enormous rocks came to be positioned on the foothills of the Alps. Realizing the many-ton slabs could have only been moved by ice, he began devising a theory of an ice age - something he called an eiszeit. Karl was a poet at heart, and he revealed his theory in a  light-hearted 22-stanza  poem - an Ode to the Iceage to honor Galileo on their shared birthday. One verse says, Ice of the Past! Of an Age when frost In its stern clasp held the lands of the South Dressed with its mantle of desolate white Mountains and forests, fair valleys and lakes!   In his book Humans: from the beginning, Christopher Seddon acknowledged Karl's discovery. He wrote: 2,588 million years ago... the Earth entered an Ice Age. Cooler, arid conditions alternated with warm, wet conditions as ice sheets ebbed and flowed in higher latitudes... This alternation between a cooler and a warmer climate has continued right up to the present day... In fact the warm spells – interglacial periods – are no more than breaks in an on-going ice age... The term Eiszeit (‘ice age’) was coined in 1837 by the German botanist Karl Friedrich Schimper.   1876 Birth of Ernest Henry Wilson (books by this author), English plant collector and explorer. He introduced over 2000 plant species from Asia to the West. Of the regal lily, he wrote, Tis God’s present to our gardens...  Anybody might have found it, but —  His whisper came to me.   On his first trip to China, Ernest located the lost Dove tree, Also known as the Handkerchief Tree. He brought the tree to England in 1899. Ernest found the yellow Chinese poppy, the Regal lily, rhododendrons, roses, and primulas on his second trip. During that second trip, Ernest's leg was crushed in a landslide. His leg was splinted with his camera tripod. But before Ernest could be moved, a mule caravan came upon Ernest and his party. Ernest was forced to lie down on the narrow trail and let some 40-50 mules step over him on their way across the mountain. Ernest himself marveled at this experience, and he later said, The sure-footedness of the mule is well-known, and I realized it with gratitude as these animals one by one passed over me - and not even one frayed my clothing.   A year later, Ernest could walk without crutches, but not with a limp - something he called his lily limp. He once reflected, The regal lily was worth it and more.   Grow That Garden Library™  Book Recommendation Sanctified Landscape by David Schuyler This book came out ten years ago in 2012, and the subtitle is Writers, Artists, and the Hudson River Valley, 1820–1909. David's book, the Sanctified Landscape, is about the first iconic American landscape: the Hudson River Valley. The title references a passage written by landscape painter Thomas Cole.  In the early 1800s, the picturesque Hudson was home to writers and artists like Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, and Thomas Cole. As far as the artistic community was concerned, there was no better place on earth. But the landscape was not immune to the changes happening in the country at large. The artist community in the Hudson Valley were among America's earliest conservationists and did their best to protect their slice of Eden. The Catskill and Hudson Valley remain a beloved areas of the country. David's book adds context and images that provide a deeper appreciation for the beauty and inspiration found in this Sanctified Landscape. You can get a copy of Sanctified Landscape by David Schuyler and support the show using the Amazon link in today's show notes for $15.    Botanic Spark 1843 Birth of Russell Herman Conwell, American Baptist minister, lawyer, and founder of Temple University in Philadelphia. He once wrote, I ask not for a larger garden, but for finer seeds.   Thanks for listening to The Daily Gardener And remember: For a happy, healthy life, garden every day.

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1715 Birth of Margaret Cavendish Bentinck, Duchess of Portland, British aristocrat, naturalist, plant lover, and botanist. Her family and friends called her Maria. She and William Bentinck had five children; one of their sons became prime minister twice. When William died after their 27th anniversary, Maria threw herself into her passion: collecting.

As the wealthiest woman in England, she cultivated an enormous natural history collection. She hired two experts to personally attend each item: the naturalist Reverend John Lightfoot and the Swedish botanist Daniel Solander. There was so much activity at Maria's Buckinghamshire home; it was called the hive. Maria shared her collections in her Portland Museum. In 1800, Maria received a beautiful red rose dubbed The Portland Rose from Italy. Today, all Portland Roses are descended from the original rose gift.

1893 On this day, the territory of Oklahoma officially recognized Mistletoe as the State Flower. The decision was made fourteen years before Oklahoma officially became a state.

A symbol of Christmas, Mistletoe grows throughout southern Oklahoma and can be found growing in the tops of hardwood trees. Since it can be challenging to reach, Mistletoe is often shot out of trees with a shotgun.

Oklahoma was the first state in the country to adopt a State Flower. But over the years, Mistletoe became an increasingly controversial choice. The tiny flowers are almost invisible to the naked eye, and Mistletoe is actually a semi-parasitic subshrub. And so, after 111 years, Oklahoma selected the red Oklahoma rose, Rosa odorata, as its new State Flower in 2004.

1896 On this day, the Burlington Free Press in Vermont published an account of the winter meeting of the state botanical club.

During the Meeting, the Reverend JA Bates gave a presentation. He began his speech by telling of a boy who wrote a paper titled The Snakes of Ireland. The piece began, There are no snakes in Ireland.

As the Reverend began to speak, he bluntly pointed out the obvious: botany is not taught in schools.

In 1896, Reverend Bates said that "only one in forty students have studied botany." Then he attempted to explain why botany was not taught:

First, most of the teachers are poorly prepared for teaching botany. And second, botanists are conservative and conceal the charms of their study behind the long Latin names.

William Morris's Flowers by Rowan Bain

This book came out in 2019, and the author Rowan Bain is the senior curator at the William Morris Gallery.

Born in 1834 to a wealthy family, William was the leading figure of the Arts and Crafts Movement. As a designer, William Morris remains popular, and his designs have a timeless quality in terms of their appeal.

William grew up on the edge of Epping forest. He played and sketched in the family garden. At college, he became inspired by John Ruskin and the art and architecture of northern Europe, William ditched a plan to pursue life as a clergyman, and he started to pursue art.

As industrialization was taking hold, Morris sought to counter the smoke and grime advancement with design and art that celebrated the beauty of medieval times.

A singular talent, Morris collaborated with artisans, craftsmen, and people from many different trades. Today his carpet, fabric, and wallpaper patterns remain aesthetically captivating. The majority of Morris's work is based on nature and gardens. Trees, plants, and flowers figure prominently in his designs and patterns.

In this book, Rowan guides us through Morris's floral designs and his inspiration, which includes his own gardens at the Red House in Kent; sixteenth- and seventeenth-century herbals; illuminated medieval manuscripts; late medieval and Renaissance tapestries; and a range of decorated objects - including artifacts from the Islamic world.

This book is gorgeously illustrated with over one hundred color illustrations of Morris's centuries-old work and is sure to delight and inspire gardens still today.

You can get a copy of William Morris's Flowers by Rowan Bain and support the show using the Amazon link in today's show notes for $15.

1856 Birth of Eliza Calvert Hall (books about this person), American author, women's rights advocate, and suffragist from Bowling Green, Kentucky. In Aunt Jane of Kentucky, she wrote:

Each of us has his own way of classifying humanity.

To me, as a child, men and women fell naturally into two great divisions: those who had gardens and those who had only houses.

...The people who had gardens were happy Adams and Eves walking in a golden mist of sunshine and showers, with green leaves and blue sky overhead, and blossoms springing at their feet; while those others, dispossessed of life's springs, summers, and autumns, appeared darkly entombed in shops and parlors where the year might as well have been a perpetual winter.

And remember: For a happy, healthy life, garden every day.

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart   Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee   Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community   Historical Events 1758 On this day, Carl Linneaus (books about this person), the man known as the "father of modern taxonomy," was feeling his age, which was fifty. He was also battling another bout of depression, and his Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day was poured out in words he wrote to his former pupil and friend, Abraham Bäck: I cannot write more today;  my hand is too weary to hold a pen.  I am the child of misfortune.  Had I a rope and English courage,  I would long since have hanged myself.  I fear that my wife is again pregnant.  I am old and grey and worn out, and my house is already full of children; who is to feed them?  It was in an unhappy hour that I accepted the professorship;  if only I had remained in my lucrative practice, all would now be well.  Farewell, and may you be more fortunate.    1766 Birth of Benjamin Smith Barton (books about this person), American botanist, naturalist, and physician. Benjamin worked as a Professor of Natural History and Botany at the University of Pennsylvania, where he authored the very first textbook on American Botany. In 1803, at Thomas Jefferson's request, he tutored Meriwether Lewis in botany to get him ready for the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Benjamin was no doubt excited for Meriwether's prospects. In 1798 Benjamin encouraged his fellow man to "add luster to their names" by looking for new medicines through plant discoveries. He wrote, The volume of nature lies before you: it is hardly yet been opened: it has never been pursued... [The] man who discovers one valuable new medicine is a more important benefactor to his species than Alexander, Caesar, or a hundred other conquerors.   2018 On this day, British botanists and horticulturalists Rod and Rachel Saunders were murdered by terrorists during their work in the oNgoye Forest. The couple led extraordinary lives committed to scientific advancement and had spent decades seeking to better understand the natural world - especially the world of Gladiolus. In the 1970s, they established Silverhill Seeds in Cape Town, the result of their lifelong dedication to collecting and studying rare South African plants. At the time of their deaths, they were nearing the end of their mission to find and photograph every known species of Gladiolus in South Africa; they had only one flower left to find and photograph. In the wake of their deaths and without the help of their missing laptops and notes, a small dedicated team of people completed Rod and Rachel's project. The book Gladiolus of Southern Africa was the result. Professor Fiona Ross wrote in the forward, Rod and Rachel always intended to dedicate the book to the tortoises they saved from Road deaths. We do not know what they would have said in their dedication, but to honor their intentions, this book recalls the tortoises.  Historically gladioli symbolize courage. In contemporary floral or, they also represent perseverance and Remembrance, A fitting tribute to rod and Rachel's lives and work.   Grow That Garden Library™ Book Recommendation Fruit Trees for Every Garden by Orin Martin  This book came out late in 2019, and the subtitle is An Organic Approach to Growing Apples, Pears, Peaches, Plums, Citrus, and More. Orin is the long-time manager of the renowned Alan Chadwick Garden at the University of California, Santa Cruz. This book won the book award from the American Horticultural Society. Orin is a pragmatic plantsman, and his book is a genuinely useful resource for any budding fruit grower. The photos are beautiful, and the ease with which Orin shares his wisdom makes the reader want to plant a mini-orchard ASAP. If you have any desire to grow your own healthy, bountiful fruit trees, then Orin's book is a must-have. You can get a copy of Fruit Trees for Every Garden by Orin Martin and support the show using the Amazon link in today's show notes for $16.   Botanic Spark 1882 Birth of Winifred Mary Letts, English writer. Gardeners often quote her thoughts on spring: That God once loved a garden, we learn in Holy writ.  And seeing gardens in the Spring, I well can credit it. Winifred also wrote a poem about spring called Spring the Cheat, one of many poems she wrote about WWI. Winifred examines the season of rebirth (spring) with the never-ending season of loss that comes with war. O exquisite spring, all this — and yet — and yet — Kinder to me the bleak face of December Who gives no cheating hopes, but says — "Remember."   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 Buy Me A Coffee    Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter |  Daily Gardener Community   Historical Events 1769 Birth of Samuel Thompson (books about this person), American self-taught New Hampshire holistic doctor, and herbalist. In 1809, he was tried and acquitted for the murder of Ezra Lovett after treatment with lobelia inflata, a herb commonly called puke weed that he regarded as a key to treating disease. Despite his iconoclast approach to medicine, Samual's herbal remedies and vapor baths were popular, and his followers were known as Thompsonians. In addition to lobelia, Samuel primarily used herbs like barberry bark, red clover, and cayenne. In his New Guide to Health (1833), Samuel wrote, I have made use of Cayenne in all kinds of disease, and have given it to patients of all ages and under every circumstance that has come under my practice... It is no doubt, the most powerful stimulant known, but its power is entirely congenial to nature, being powerful only in raising and maintaining that heat on which life depends.   1830 Birth of Henry Arthur Bright (books by this author), English gardener and writer. Henry began a diary, which would become a book called A Year in a Lancashire Garden. In February 1874, Henry was doing what gardeners do this time of year: cleaning up and editing the garden for the new season, looking through garden catalogs, and mulling over unappreciated plants - like the humble spring Crocus. But all things are now telling of spring. We have finished our pruning of the wall-fruit; we have ...sown our earliest peas… We have been looking over old volumes of Curtis's Botanical Magazine and have been trying to get... old forgotten plants of beauty, and now of rarity. We have found enough, however, to add a fresh charm to our borders for June, July, and August... I sometimes think that the Crocus is less cared for than it deserves. Our modern poets rarely mention it, but in Homer, when he would make a carpet for the gods, it is of Lotus, Hyacinth, and Crocus.   1944 Birth of Alice Walker (books by this author), American novelist, short story writer, poet, and social activist. In 1982, she published The Color Purple, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. In her book, In Search of Our Mother's Garden (1983), Alice wrote, In search of my mother’s garden, I found my own.   Grow That Garden Library™  Book Recommendation The Wardian Case by Luke Keogh This book came out late in 2020, and the subtitle is How a Simple Box Moved Plants and Changed the World. When Australian Luke Keogh ("Key-oh") set out to tackle the topic of the Wardian case, he was working in Munich on an Anthropocene Exhibit and curating a piece about how goods had been moved around the globe. This topic led him to the topic of the Wardian Case. Wardian Cases are a great topic, and original Wardian cases are getting harder and harder to find. For all their miraculous functionality, Wardian cases are actually quite simple. They essentially are wood boxes with a glass top. The box could be filled with potted plants or be layered with bricks, moss, and soil and then have plants potted directly into the box. Luke's book is a look back at not only the cases but the inventor of the Wardian case and the man they were named for: Nathanial Bagshaw Ward. Nathaniel's story began in 1829 when he was struggling to grow plants. He lived close to the London docks, and there was a lot of air pollution, which wasn't suitable for plants or people. Anyway, Nathaniel was a life-long naturalist, and he decided that he wanted to create this perfect environment for a moth to grow in. So he settled on using a large bottle, and then he put the moth pupa in the bottle along with some plants. As he was waiting for the moth to hatch, he realized that he had a beautiful little fern growing in the little biosphere he created, and he was suddenly struck by how well the fern had grown in that sealed environment (as opposed to his home garden). And that was the inspiration for the Wardian case, which was essentially the precursor to the terrarium. Nathaniel experimented for years before finally creating a Wardian case that could be used on ships and long voyages and make it possible for explorers to bring back live specimens. His first case went all the way to Australia. Ward waited for seven months for the ship to return, and he was pleased to hear from the captain that his case was a grand success. In fact, halfway through the journey, the plants were doing so well that they had to prune back some of the growth during the voyage. In his book, Luke shares many fascinating stories about Ward and his cases and how they transformed plant exploration, food, and the world. For instance, Ward was passionate about having windowsill boxes in the homes of the lower class so that they could grow plants in their home. Luke's book offers wonderful insights, history, images, and maps of trade routes to help contextualize the importance of this simple and yet profound invention. You can get a copy of The Wardian Case by Luke Keogh and support the show using the Amazon link in today's show notes for $25.   Botanic Spark 1874 Birth of Amy Lawrence Lowell (books by this author), an American poet of the imagist school. In 1926, she posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for a collection that included her popular poem Lilacs. In Madonna of the Evening Flowers, Amy wrote: You tell me that the peonies need spraying, That the columbines have overrun all bounds, That the pyrus japonica should be cut back and rounded. You tell me these things.   Thanks for listening to The Daily Gardener And remember: For a happy, healthy life, garden every day.