The Daily Gardener - November 28, 2022 The Royal Society of London, Matsuo Basho, Gottlieb Haberlandt, Stefan Zweig, English Cottage by Andrew Sankey, and William Blake

November 28, 2022 The Royal Society of London, Matsuo Basho, Gottlieb Haberlandt, Stefan Zweig, English Cottage by Andrew Sankey, and William Blake

11/28/22 • 19 min

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 1660 On this day, the first meeting occurred of what would become The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge. The Royal Society's Latin motto, 'Nullius in verba,' translates to "Take nobody's word for it." The motto reminded the Society's members to verify information through experiments and not just based on authority. 1694 Death of Matsuo Basho ("Bash=oh"), Japanese poet. He is remembered as the most famous poet of the Edo period and the greatest master of haiku. In one verse, Matsuo wrote, The temple bell stops But I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers. And in another poem from his book on traveling, he wrote, Many things of the past Are brought to my mind, As I stand in the garden Staring at a cherry tree. 1854 Birth of Gottlieb Haberlandt, Austrian botanist. His father was a pioneer in 'soybean' work, and his physiologist son is now regarded as the grandfather of the birth control pill. As for Gottlieb, he grew plant cells in tissue culture and was the first scientist to point out the possibility of the culture of Isolated & Plant Tissues. In 1902 he shared his original idea called totipotentiality ("to-'ti-pe-tent-chee-al-it-tee"), which Gottlieb defined as "the theory that all plant cells can give rise to a complete plant." Today we remember Gottlieb as the father of plant tissue culture. During the 1950s scientists proved Gottlieb's totipotentiality. Indeed, any part of a plant grown in nutrient media under sterile conditions can create a whole new plant. Today, the technique of tissue culture is a very efficient tool for propagating improved plants for food, hardiness, and beauty. 1881 Birth of Stefan Zweig, Austrian writer. During the 1920s and 1930s, at the peak of his career, Stefan was one of the most widely translated writers in the world. In The Post-Office Girl, Stefan wrote, For this quiet, unprepossessing, passive man who has no garden in front of his subsidised flat, books are like flowers. He loves to line them up on the shelf in multicoloured rows: he watches over each of them with an old-fashioned gardener's delight, holds them like fragile objects in his thin, bloodless hands. Grow That Garden LibraryTM Book Recommendation English Cottage by Andrew Sankey This book came out in 2022, and it is a master guide to cottage-style gardening. The chapters in this book cover: The History of the Cottage Garden, Creating the "Cottage Garden Style, Cottage Planting Style, Cottage Flowers, Companion Planting, Green Structure, and Traditional Features. In the Preface, Andrew shares a bit about his background and how he came to master English Cottage Gardening. My first introduction to the style of the English cottage garden came when I was given a copy of Margery Fish's book, We Made a Garden. Having been enthralled with the book, I then traveled down to Somerset to see her wonderful cottage garden at East Lambrook Manor. Shortly after this, Geoff Hamilton started to construct his cottage gardens for the BBC Gardeners' World programs and it soon became apparent that this was the style of gardening I myself wished to adopt. Not long after this I moved to Lincolnshire and started my own garden design/landscaping business, and I soon realized it was difficult to obtain the more unusual plants required for number of my garden designs, in particular plants for dry shade positions. This encouraged me to look for a larger garden with the potential to run a small specialist nursery. This resulted in purchasing Grade II listed cottage (built in 1852) with a good-sized old cottage garden. Although the original garde...

Previous Episode

undefined - November 18, 2022 William Shenstone, Leo Lesquereux, Asa Gray, Margaret Atwood, We Took to the Woods by Louise Dickinson Rich, and November Garden Work Inspires

November 18, 2022 William Shenstone, Leo Lesquereux, Asa Gray, Margaret Atwood, We Took to the Woods by Louise Dickinson Rich, and November Garden Work Inspires

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 1714 Birth of William Shenstone, English poet, and landscape gardener. In the early 1740s, Shenstone inherited his family's dairy farm, which he transformed into the Leasowes (pronounced 'lezzoes'). The transfer of ownership lit a fire under Shenstone, and he immediately started changing the land into a wild landscape - something he referred to as an ornamented farm. Shenstone wisely bucked the trend of his time, which called for formal garden design (he didn't have the money to do that anyway.) Yet, what Shenstone accomplished was quite extraordinary. His picturesque natural landscape included water features like cascades and pools and structures like temples and ruins. What I love most about Shenstone is that he was a consummate host. He considered the garden's comfort and perspective from his visitors' standpoint. When he created a walk around his estate, Shenstone wanted to control the experience. So, Shenstone added seating every so often along the path to cause folks to stop and admire the views that Shenstone found it most appealing. Then, he incorporated signage with beautiful classical verses and poems, even adding some of his own - which elevated the Leasowes experience for his guests. After his death, his garden, the Leasowes, became a popular destination - attracting the likes of William Pitt, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin. It was William Shenstone who said, Grandeur and beauty are so very opposite, that you often diminish the one as you increase the other. Variety is most akin to the latter, simplicity to the former. 1806 Birth of Charles Leo Lesquereux, Swiss botanist. Leo was born with a naturalist's heart. A self-described dreamer, Leo loved going out into the forest, collecting all kinds of flowers and specimens for his mother. Sadly, when Leo was seven years old, he fell off the top of a mountain. He was carried back to his home completely unconscious, with multiple injuries to his body and head trauma. He remained motionless and unconscious for two weeks. His survival was a miracle, yet the fall resulted in hearing loss that would eventually leave Leo utterly deaf by the time he was a young man. Despite the fall, nature still ruled Leo's heart. As Leo matured, he tried to provide for his family as a watchmaker. But, he found himself returning again and again to the outdoors. Eventually, Leo began to focus his efforts on peat bogs, and his early work protecting peat bogs attracted the attention of Louis Agassiz of Harvard, who invited Leo to bring his family to America. When he arrived, Leo classified the plants that Agassiz had discovered on his expedition to Lake Superior. Then, on Christmas Eve, 1848, Asa Gray summoned Leo to help William Starling Sullivant. Asa predicted the collaboration would be successful, and he wrote to his friend and fellow botanist John Torrey: They will do up bryology at a great rate. Lesquereux says that the collection and library of Sullivant in muscology are magnifique, superbe,and the best he ever saw. So, Leo packed up his family, traveled to Columbus, Ohio, and settled near the bryologist, William Starling Sullivant. Bryology is the study of mosses. The root, bryos, is a Greek verb meaning to swell and is the etymology of the word embryo. Bryology will be easier to remember if you think of the ability of moss to expand as it takes on water. Mosses suited Leo and Sullivant's strengths. They require patience and close observation, scrupulous accuracy, and discrimination. Together, Leo and Sullivant wrote the book on American mosses. Sullivant funded the endeavor and generously allowed Leo to share in the proceeds. In 1873, Sullivant contracted pneumonia - ironically, an illness where your lungs fill or swell with fluid - and died on April 30, 1873. Leo lived for another 16 years before dying at the age of 83. It was Leo Lesquereux who said, My deafness cut me off from everything that lay outside of science. I have lived with Nature, the rocks, ...

Next Episode

November 29, 2022 John Ray, Amos Bronson Alcott, Louisa May Alcott, Flower Flash by Lewis Miller, Edward Hummel, and Gertrude Jekyll

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 1627 Birth of John Ray, English naturalist and writer. In 1660, he published a catalog of Cambridge plants. John developed his own system for classifying plants based on their observed similarities and differences. So he was clearly thinking about ways to distinguish one plant from another. And in his book, History of Plants, John was the first scientist to use the terms petal and pollen. John also wrote a Collection of English Proverbs. In one for summer, John wrote: If the first of July be rainy weather, It will rain, more or less, for four weeks together. 1799 Birth of Amos Bronson Alcott, American teacher, writer, Transcendentalist and reformer. In most aspects of his life, Amos was ahead of his time. He was also an abolitionist and an advocate for women's rights. He also advocated a plant-based diet. Amos once wrote, Who loves a garden still his Eden keeps, Perennial pleasures, plants, and wholesome harvest reaps. In 1830, Amos married pretty Abigail May, and together they had four daughters; the second-oldest was Louisa May, born on this day in 1832. 1832 Birth of Louisa May Alcott, American writer, and poet. She grew up in the company of her parents' friends and fellow Transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow In 1868, she wrote Little Women. In it, she wrote, Jo had learned that hearts, like flowers, cannot be rudely handled, but must open naturally... Louisa could be witty. She once wrote, Money is the root of all evil, and yet it is such a useful root that we cannot get on without it any more than we can without potatoes. 1978 Death of Edward C. Hummel, American plantsman and hybridizer. Edward and his wife Minnie ran Hummel's Exotic Gardens of southern California for 43 years. They specialized in cacti, succulents, bromeliads ("brow·mee·lee·ads"), and orchids. In 1935, Edward and Minnie were featured in a Quaker State Motor Oil advertisement. The young Hummel family is in their home cactus garden. Edward is examining a cactus specimen while his daughter Marquetta and son Edward gather around. Mother Minnie is standing behind them, looking on. The ad garnered plenty of attention, and soon Edward was fielding requests from American gardeners for more information about his cactus garden. The letters gave Edward and Minnie the idea to start a mail-order business for their plants. In 1943, during WWII, Edward published Hummel's Victory Picture Book. The cover featured a photo of two 6-foot-tall Barrel cacti at the base, leaning away from each other at the top in a perfect V formation for victory. The book was a smash hit, and subsequent editions were quickly put together. In the first edition, Edward wrote a note to his customers in the forward. Perhaps you will wonder at receiving this free picture book which contains no prices of plants. If you enjoy a few minutes of interest and relaxation in looking it over, it will have fulfilled its obvious purpose. If your interest and curiosity are stirred to the point that you write us for further information, it will have fulfilled its hidden purpose. After the War, the fumes from LAX drove the Hummels to find a new home for their nursery. They settled in Carlsbad and purchased an existing nursery after the founder Dr. Robert W. Poindexter, died unexpectedly. The nursery was a perfect fit. Robert Poindexter shared the Hummel's passion for cacti and succulents. Robert's son John finalized the sale. Edward was especially interested in propagating and selling drought-resistant plants in his nursery. He won many awards for his plants and was primarily known for his work with Bromeliads ("brow·mee·lee·ads"). Grow That Garden LibraryTM Book Recommendation