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Curated News

Winter Gardens | Flower Magazine

The article features a beautiful, quiet winter garden with Charlotte Moss. A photo shows an urn standing like a sentry in the after-the-snowfall stillness of New York’s Gramercy Park.

“Reduced to a skeletal state, a garden in winter gives our imaginations an opportunity to explore those possibilities. It allows our eyes the chance to be a paintbrush, devising new color schemes and filling in borders.

On the other hand, we may enjoy the bones of the pleached hedge, the peeling bark of the crape myrtle, the remnants of bittersweet, and viburnum berries. Early morning walks reveal piles of oak leaves silver-plated with frost and holly trees standing boastful and defiant in a blaze of color.”

'Forgotten' elm tree set to make a comeback - BBC News

Good news for Elm trees. Karen Russell says,

"With the right people in the right place and the funding, we can put elm back in the landscape.

Mature specimens have been identified that are hundreds of years old and have mysteriously escaped the epidemic. And a new generation of elm seedlings is being bred, which appear to be resistant to the disease."

More than 20 million trees died during the 1960s and 1970s from Dutch elm disease.

In the aftermath, the elm was largely forgotten, except among a handful of enthusiasts who have been breeding elite elms that can withstand attack."

Elm Facts:

• • Known for its beauty, the elm has been depicted in paintings by the likes of John Constable, while Henry VIII's warship, lost in 1545, was partly built from elm.
  • Signs of Dutch elm disease include dead leaves on the tree, yellowing or other discoloration in autumn or spring, and wilting leaves and young shoots
  • Dutch elm disease is caused by a fungus spread by a bark beetle.

Botanical History On This Day

1654 Nicholas Culpeper, English physician, botanist, herbalist, and champion of the people, died; his wildly popular English Physician—later The Complete Herbal—translated elite Latin medical texts into English and shared practical herbal remedies for nearly 400 plants.

1839 Indian Tea & Robert Fortune
Indian tea officially became available to the British public, thanks to plant hunter Robert Fortune’s audacious “corporate espionage” in China—smuggling plants, seed, and skilled tea makers—Britain gained control of its own cheaper tea supply and changed the global tea map forever.

1839 Henry Winthrop Sargent & Wodenethe
American horticulturist and landscape gardener Henry Winthrop Sargent married Caroline Olmsted; soon after, he created Wodenethe, a Hudson River estate celebrated for its masterful vistas, inspired and mentored by his friend Andrew Jackson Downing.

1903 Barbara Hepworth, British sculptor, was born; at her magical Trewyn Studio in St Ives, she fused art and landscape, later preserved as the Barbara Hepworth Museum & Sculpture Garden—an oasis where her abstract forms nestle among coastal plantings and Cornish light.

Unearthed Words

Henry David Thoreau
On this day in 1856, Henry David Thoreau recorded a brutally cold January morning in his journal—frosted sheets, frozen wash water, blackened houseplants, and his thoughts turning compassionately to poor families shivering under snow-laden roofs.
Read Thoreau’s January 10th winter diary entry

Grow That Garden Library™

Read The Daily Gardener review of Emily Dickinson's Gardens by Marta McDowell

Buy the book on Amazon: Emily Dickinson's Gardens by Marta McDowell

Great Gifts for Gardeners

Back to the Roots Organic Mushroom Farm Grow Kit – a countertop box that lets you harvest gourmet oyster mushrooms in about ten days; just mist, watch them double in size, and then toss your homegrown crop onto pizza, tacos, soups, or winter salads.

Today's Botanic Spark

January’s Wolf Moon
Today’s first full moon of the year is the Wolf Moon, named for the hungry, howling wolves of midwinter; this year it rises with a subtle penumbral eclipse—reminding gardeners that even in the cold and dark, the sky is busy writing the next chapter of the growing season.

Thanks for listening to The Daily Gardener

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