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The Friday Newsletter |  Daily Gardener Community

Curated News

Horniman Museum's gardener Wes Shaw - Gardens Illustrated

"The last place that blew me away was GARDENS BY THE BAY in Singapore. Amazing conservatories, landscaping & planting - taking horticulture to a new level. While I was there, I saw gardeners abseiling down the side of green walls and volunteers using tweezers to pick over the beds.

Gardens should continuously change and evolve. I never see the point of keeping something looking the same as it did at some point in the past.

What’s the next big project task you’ll be tackling in the garden?

We are planning a Winter Garden for an area of the Horniman Gardens that needs a bit of a refresh.”

High Society: The Expert’s Guide To Alpines

Here's a great post from @AlysFowler featuring Richard Wilford - an alpine lover and head of design and collection support at the Royal Botanic Gardens @KewGardens.

"What Richard doesn’t know about alpines isn’t worth knowing. 'We’ve got a very tall house to grow some very small plants' he jokes. Alpines are surprisingly easy and hardy and perfect for tricky corners and small plots. As their name suggests, alpines are from areas of high elevation, so they love full sun, cool roots, and cold nights."

Check out Richard Wilford’s Five Easy Alpines:

Sempervivum: will grow on sunny rocks, cracks in walls, and stony places. Put a little compost into the niches first, then nudge them in.

Alpine pinks Dianthus alpinus: a tiny mat-forming evergreen with bright pink flowers. It likes free-draining conditions and suits pots, gravel path edges, and window boxes.

Erinus alpinus, or alpine balsam: forms neat rosettes of narrow leaves and loves crevices.

Campanula cochlearifolia (fairy thimbles or ear leaf flowers): Nodding blue flowers - Keep its feet well-drained.

Phlox douglasii: A low-growing perennial - it grows in dry woodlands. It needs a dry winter, but good drainage and a sheltered spot by a wall will work.

Botanical History On This Day

1801 Adolphe-Théodore Brongniart, French botanist known as the “Father of Paleobotany,” was born in Paris; his masterwork on fossil plants earned him the Wollaston Medal and the title “Linnaeus of Fossil Plants.”

1825 Pierre-Joseph Redouté, the legendary Belgian botanical illustrator and “Raffaele of flowers,” received the Legion of Honor from King Charles X for his exquisitely detailed paintings of lilies, roses, and Empress Joséphine’s garden at Malmaison.

1836 Henri Fantin-Latour, French painter famed (and eventually exhausted) by his still-life flower paintings, was born; though he longed to be known for portraits and imaginative works, it was his lush bouquets that paid the bills—more in England than in his native France.

1892 Walter Hood Fitch, Scottish botanical illustrator and colorist for Kew and Curtis’s Botanical Magazine, died; over a 40-year career he produced more than 12,000 plates, praised for their accuracy and lifelike simplicity.

Unearthed Words

January garden verses on the quiet-but-busy work of winter soil, roots, and seeds from Rosalie Muller Wright, Hugh Macmillan, Edward Thomas, and Edith Matilda Thomas.
January: Not So Quiet in the Garden

Grow That Garden Library™

Read The Daily Gardener review of A Garden of Marvels by Ruth Kassinger

Buy the book on Amazon: A Garden of Marvels by Ruth Kassinger

Great Gifts for Gardeners

3-Bulb Vase Plant Terrarium with Wooden Stand – a retro wooden frame with three glass bulb vases, perfect for propagating hoya, pothos, Swedish ivy, and other cuttings on a desk, kitchen counter, or sunny shelf.

Today's Botanic Spark

January’s Birth Flowers: Carnations & Snowdrops
Carnations (Dianthus caryophyllus), “flowers of the gods,” have been beloved for over 2,000 years and carry meanings from pure love (white) to deep affection (dark red), while snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis)—“milk flowers of the snow”—push up through the cold earth to signal hope, the coming of spring, and even offer compounds now used in Alzheimer’s treatments.

Thanks for listening to The Daily Gardener

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