We Dig Plants

On today’s episode of We Dig Plants we welcome Russell Shorto, an American author, historian, and journalist best known for his book on the Dutch origins of New York City, The Island at the Center of the World. The book is currently being developed into a dramatic series for PBS with Ridley Scott and David Zucker as executive producers. Shorto and hosts Carmen Devito and Alice Marcus Krieg discuss how so much of our American identity and horticultural heritage comes from the Dutch.

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On this President’s Day edition of We Dig Plants, hosts Carmen Devito and Alice Marcus Krieg examine the roots of America’s horticultural heritage through the vision of its first families. From Washington to Lincoln, right up to the present day, American presidents and first ladies have had an undeniable influence on our nation’s horticulture. Guest Robin Selfridge joins in to discuss how this horticultural heritage has been documented in our coins and stamps. Finally, we learn a bit more about the current presidential candidates by analyzing their respective state flowers.

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In this episode of We Dig Plants, Executive Director Susan Lacerte of the Queens Botanical Garden and former Executive Director Roland “Chuck” Wade talks about how Flushing is the birthplace of the American horticultural industry. Prince Nursery was the first ever commercial catalog of plants. They came out around when the Boston Massacre was in 1737. This catalog was released when most people were still subsistence farming. Tune in to hear about how Americans saved the French wine industry and plants inspired the founding fathers.

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Today on We Dig Plants, hosts Carmen DeVito and Alice Marcus Krieg are talking trees… really big trees… and what it takes to move them! Tune in as they are joined by David Cox of Environmental Design, Inc./TreeMovers.com, the premier tree transplanting company in the world.

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This week on We Dig Plants , solo host Alice Marcus Krieg is on the line with Thomas Rainer.  Thomas is a landscape architect, teacher, and writer who lives in Arlington, Virginia. He has designed landscapes for the United States Capitol grounds, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, and the New York Botanical Garden, and recently teamed up with Claudia West to write the book, “Planting in a Post-Wild World: Designing Plant Communities for Resilient Landscapes.” These two leading voices in ecological landscape design, reveal how plants fit together in nature and how to use this knowledge to create landscapes that are resilient, beautiful, and diverse. As practical as it is inspiring, Planting in a Post-Wild World is an optimistic manifesto pointing the way to the future of planting design.

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Tune in as Alice and Carmen wrap up their series, “China: Mother of Gardens,” discussing the beautiful peony.   Dan Furman of Cricket Hill Peonies is on the line discussing the history and evolution of this flower, sharing that his focus is the Chinese tree peony (Paeonia sufferuticosa) and that they are among the most elegant, vibrantly colored flowers you will ever come across, so much so that the Chinese call them their National Flower. For over 1300 years, tree peonies have been growing in China on hillsides, coloring the landscape with their extraordinary color and infusing the air with the most invigorating scents. This is an episode not to be missed!

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How have native Chinese plants changed Western gardens? Continuing their focus on Eastern Asian plants, this week We Dig Plants takes on the Camellia.  Between the interesting factoids that link the Camellia to both the economic and ornamental realms, Carmen and Alice share the history behind the Camellia sinensis (tea plant) before getting Brienne Gluvna Arthur on the line in the second half of the show to further discuss the differences between Camellias commonly found throughout the United States today.  Did you know the Camellia was Coco Chanel’s favorite? Tune in for more on this fashionable flower.

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How have native Chinese plants changed Western gardens? Find out on a brand new episode of We Dig Plants.  Carmen & Alice are joined by Dan Hinkley. Dan is an American plantsman, garden writer, horticulturist and nurseryman. He is best known for establishing Heronswood Nursery, in Kingston, Washington; and Windcliff, on the Kitsap Peninsula near Indianola, WA; and for collecting, propagating, and naming varieties of plants new to the North American nursery trade.

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Kelly Norris is a 20-something, award-winning author and plantsman from Iowa and the first director of horticulture at the Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden, a newly revitalized 14-acre public garden in Des Moines, Iowa, and this week he joins Alice and Carmen for this season’s last show of _ We Dig Plants _. Popularly known for his book “A Guide to Bearded Irises: Cultivating the Rainbow for Beginners and Enthusiasts” and his second book, “Plants with Style,” he is also a speaker that has garnered acclaim for his high-energy, zealous presentations on the national stage, leading many to call him one of the rising stars of American horticulture. He shares with the hosts that his career infamously began at age 15 when he talked his parents into buying a nursery (Rainbow Iris Farm), and since then he’s become one of the few gurus on marketing horticulture to emerging demographics. Tune in for an inspiring show!

> #### “Horticulture is about humanity: it’s about people, plants, and passion.” [17:00]

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On two hundred acres in the Hudson Valley, Amy Goldman grows heirloom fruits and vegetables–an orchard full of apples, pears, and peaches; plots of squash, melons, cabbages, peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, and beets. Today, she joins Alice and Carmen for a brand new episode of We Dig Plants.  Talking her new book, “Heirloom Harvest: Modern Daguerreotypes of Historic Garden Treasures,” she shares her passion for preserving agricultural heritage, beautiful and unique heirlooms that truly are organic treasures.  Over fifteen years, the acclaimed photographer Jerry Spagnoli visited Amy’s gardens to preserve these cherished varieties in another way–with the historical daguerreotype process, producing ethereal images with a silvery, luminous depth and a timeless beauty, underscoring the historical continuity and value of knobby gourds, carrots pulled from the soil, and fruit picked fresh from the tree.

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