May 7, 2019 Deep Dives in the Garden, Gerard van Swieten, Rochester Parks Commission, RHS Radish Trial, Henry Teuscher, Bartram’s Garden, Rabindranath Tagore, Penelope Lively, Life in the Garden, Garden Trials, and Charles Darwin

Subscribe

Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart

Support The Daily Gardener

Buy Me A Coffee 

Connect for FREE!

The Friday Newsletter |  Daily Gardener Community

Monologue

Gardeners love to fall in love with plants.

We can fall so hard that we tune out other possibilities for our gardens.

Then, in a fascinating twist, our deep dives can suddenly stop, and often, they are followed by a pivot.

I started out a shrub gardener.

Then I pivoted to annuals and ornamentals, leaving nary a shrub in my garden.

Then I was anti-annual.

Then I moved into herbs and edibles.

Now I'm a little bit of everything.

Deep dives and pivots.

Part of the process of growing a gardener.

Botanical History On This Day

1700 Gerard van Swieten, Dutch botanist and Enlightenment reformer, was born, later modernizing Austrian medicine, corresponding with Linnaeus, naming mahogany, and even dispatching superstition when sent to investigate vampires.

1888 Rochester Parks Commission held its first organizational meeting and invited Frederick Law Olmsted to design the city’s park system, earning Rochester its enduring reputation as a city in a forest.

1901 The Royal Horticultural Society completed an exacting radish trial at Chiswick, calmly cataloging sixteen varieties and reminding gardeners that even the humblest crops deserve careful observation.

1936 Henry Teuscher broke ground for the Montreal Botanical Garden, launching a lifelong vision shaped by resilience, controversy, and ultimately, horticultural triumph.

2015 Bartram’s Garden was designated an American Society for Horticultural Science Horticultural Landmark, honoring the nation’s oldest surviving botanic garden and the foresight that preserved it intact.

Unearthed Words

1861 Poet Rabindranath Tagore was born, later giving gardeners one of the most enduring lines ever written about trees and the listening heavens.

Grow That Garden Library™

Read The Daily Gardener’s review of Life in the Garden by Penelope Lively

Buy the book on Amazon:
Life in the Garden by Penelope Lively

Today's Botanic Spark

1878 A weary Charles Darwin, once defeated by feathers, fish, and sinking seeds, later confessed that he cared for nothing in the wide world except the biology of seedling plants, proof that persistence blooms after discouragement.

Thanks for listening to The Daily Gardener

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