California Archives

July 4, 2020 Installing a Temporary Garden, Dependence Day, Henry Bewley, Mary Dedecker, Lady Joan Margaret Legge, National Meadows Day, The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng, and Calvin Coolidge’s 52nd Birthday

Today we celebrate what I’m calling Dependence Day for Gardeners. We’ll also learn about the gutta-percha pioneer – it’s a fascinating story. We celebrate the California botanist who is remembered with a plant name and the name of a Canyon – and she was a tremendous conservationist. We also celebrate a botanist who is a…

Kate Brandegee

Exploring Life The great woman botanist and Californian Kate Brandegee wrote her husband, Townshend, who she lovingly called Townie. On this day in 1908, Kate was 64, and though she and Townie often botanized together, Kate was not afraid to go explore alone. She let Townie know in this letter that: ” I am going…

July 2, 2020 An Audience of Plants, Buying Flowers in July, Marian Farquharson, Herman Hesse, Ralph Hancock, Kate Brandegee, Cordelia Stanwood, NASA’s ECOSTRESS, July Poetry, Glorious Shade by Jenny Rose Carey, and the Richard Wettstein Memorial

Today we celebrate a female botanist who fought to get recognition for women by the Linnaean Society. We’ll also learn about the German poet who loved trees. We’ll celebrate the Welsh garden-marker extraordinaire and also one of the all-time greats – a botanist from California. And, we’ll also honor the life of The Bird Woman…

Celebrating the California State Flower on Poppy Day

“In 1817, when the Rurik ended up in the San Francisco Bay area, the ship’s botanist Adelbert von Chamisso (“Sha-ME-So”) discovered the California poppy, which he named Eschscholzia californica after his friend Johanns Friedrich Von Eschscholz.” Every year since 2010, April 6th is California Poppy Day, celebrating the California State Flower. Poppy Day is celebrated…

April 6, 2020 Vegetable Seeds Are the New Toilet Paper, 2020 Garden Dreams, Albrecht Dürer, Johann Zinn, José Celestino Mutis, Spring Poems, Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew, and California Poppy Day

Today we celebrate the German artist who painted botanicals with extraordinary detail. We’ll also learn about the botanist who left his mark on the anatomy of the human eye. We celebrate the Spanish botanist who spent his life in Columbia, where, among other things, he studied the cinchona tree and used the quinine to treat…

Count Nikolay Rumyantsev

Funded the Rurik Today is the birthday of a man who was the foreign minister of Russia, Count Nikolay Rumyantsev. In 1815, he funded the round the world scientific voyage of the Rurik which included the poet and botanist Adelbert von Chamisso (“Sha-ME-So”) and a doctor/surgeon named Johann Friedrich von Eschscholtz. Two years later, in…

John Burroughs

John O’ Birds Today is the birthday of the Naturalist, poet, and philosopher John Burroughs (books by this author) was born on a dairy farm in Roxbury, outside of Boston on this date in 1837. He was sent to the local school, where his desk was next to that of Erie Railroad Robber Baron, Jay…

April 3, 2020 Gardening for Resilience, Magnifying Glass for the Garden Tote, Nikolay Rumyantsev, John Burroughs, Kate Brandegee, Graham Stuart Thomas, The Overstory by Richard Powers, and The Wake-Robin by Rebecca Salsbury Palfrey Utter

Today we celebrate the birthday of a Russian Count who funded an expedition that led to the discovery of the California poppy. We’ll also learn about one of the country’s most beloved naturalists. We celebrate the life of the second woman to be professionally employed as a botanist in the United States. She died 100…

February 6, 2020 The Aphid Alarm Pheromone, Stealing Cuttings, Prospero Alpini, Joseph Sabine, Capability Brown, Edgar Anderson, Charles Heiser, Winter World by Bernd Heinrich, Ladbrooke Soil Blocker, and Spam with Loganberry Sauce

Today we celebrate the Italian botanist who introduced coffee and bananas to Europe and the botanist who described new varieties of mums from China on this day in 1822. We’ll learn about the man who could see the capabilities of a landscape In the botanist who wrote encouraging letters to one of his students. Today’s…

January 31, 2020 Calendula Tincture, Growing Artichokes, Melvin Bergeson, the American Iris Society, Isabella Preston, Hazel Schmoll, Horace Hagedorn, Bernard Barton, Life List by Olivia Gentile, Wooden Letters, Prospect Cottage and Derek Jarman

Today we celebrate the man who found a splendid crabapple growing in his nursery and the anniversary of a society that celebrates the flower of the rainbow, We’ll learn about the “Grand Lady of Canadian Horticulture” and a Colorado State botanist who fought to protect the Columbine. Today’s Unearthed Words, we hear simple poems from…

Adelbert von Chamisso

A Romantic Poet Today is the birthday of French-German poet, naturalist, and botanist Adelbert von Chamisso (“Sha-ME-So”). Born into a French Noble family, Chamisso’s family fled to Germany after the French Revolution. Chamisso is remembered for a number of different accomplishments. His creativity was captured in a novella called Peter Schlemihl’s Wonderful History, published in…

January 30, 2020 Good Garden Decisions, African Violets, George Ehret, Adelbert von Chamisso, Yerba Buena, Louise Beebe Wilder, Asa Gray, Ann Taylor, The Seed Underground by Janisse Ray, Garden Cloche, and Elizabeth Wirt

Today we celebrate the botanical illustrator who was wrongfully fired from his first job and the French botanist who spent a month in California with a boatful of Russians. We’ll learn about the botanical name of the city where people leave their hearts, and we’ll fall in love with a classic garden writer from Bronxville,…

January 27, 2020 Butterfly Symmetry as Camouflage, The Love of Peat, Karl Wilhelm von Baden-Durlach, Samuel Palmer, Lewis Carroll, the National Geographic Society, the Humboldt Botanical Garden, Sissinghurst by Vita Sackville-West and Sarah Raven, Stylus 10 Pack, and Terramycin

Today we celebrate the King whose dream castle incorporated 1,200 varieties of tulips and the man who is regarded as the greatest channeler of the English rural landscape. We’ll learn about the mathematician who wrote a book inspired by the Oxford Botanic Garden and the relatively young Botanic Garden that was started in the 90s…

Agoston Haraszthy

Valley of the Moon Today, the Hungarian vintner, Agoston Haraszthy, brought 1,400 varieties of grapevines from Europe to California and planted the first vineyard in the Sonoma Valley in California. Haraszthy’s family was Hungarian nobility. Haraszthy had gotten hold of a book that reported the Wisconsin territory offered the finest land in America. So, in…