Secret Gardeners by Victoria Summerley

Secret Gardeners by Victoria Summerley

As Heard on The Daily Gardener Podcast: Secret Gardeners: Britain’s Creatives Reveal Their Private Sanctuaries by Victoria Summerley, with photography by Hugo Rittson-Thomas. This book offers private gardens rather than performances – spaces where public figures retreat into living, restorative landscapes. The gardens quiet the mind instead of amplifying it. In February, when energy can…

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November 08, 2024 Winter Preparation, William Copeland McCalla, Elizabeth Roberts MacDonald, A New Cottage Garden by Mark Bolton, and Margaret Mitchell

The Daily Gardener Podcast Album Cover with a pot of rosemary - the herb for remembrance - beckoning gardeners to remember to listen to the show. Updated September 2025.

Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee  Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter |  Daily Gardener Community Botanical History On This Day 1872 William Copeland McCalla, Canadian botanist and photographer, is born. McCalla would become one of Alberta’s most influential botanists, combining his passion for…

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The Cottage Garden by Claus Dalby

The Cottage Garden by Claus Dalby

As Heard on The Daily Gardener Podcast: This botanical history post was featured on The Daily Gardener podcast: Click here to see the complete show notes for this episode. The Cottage Garden by Claus Dalby This book came out on September 5, 2023, and the subtitle is simply perfect in its directness – there isn’t…

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Jim Salyards and the Silent Spring at Filoli During COVID-19

Jim Salyards

This botanical history post was featured on The Daily Gardener podcast: Click here to see the complete show notes for this episode. March 25, 2020 Dearest reader, On this day, Jim Salyards, the dedicated Director of Horticulture at the grand Filoli Center, found himself wandering a silent paradise. The famed estate and its 16-acre formal…

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Slow Down, Look Down: Chris Howell’s Celebration of Fallen Leaves

Fallen leaves on the ground.

This botanical history post was featured on The Daily Gardener podcast: Click here to see the complete show notes for this episode. October 6, 2017 Dearest readers, On this day, Chris Howell—the dedicated gardener at Birmingham Botanical Gardens—captured a moment of simple seasonal beauty, sharing a photograph of autumn leaves carpeting a garden path. In…

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James Clerk Maxwell: Science, Gardeners, and the First Color Photograph

James Clerk Maxwell

This botanical history post was featured on The Daily Gardener podcast: Click here to see the complete show notes for this episode. May 17, 1861 James Clerk Maxwell, the prodigious Scottish scientist who captured the very first color photograph on this day, unveiling a tartan ribbon to the Royal Institution in London—a modest image that…

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Peter Smithers: The Spy Who Loved Gardens

Sir Peter Smithers, a prominent figure known for his multifaceted career and passion for gardening.

A Gardener with a Camera December 9, 1913  Today is the birthday of the lawyer, politician, diplomat, scholar, photographer, award-winning gardener, writer, and spy Peter Smithers. Peter learned to love gardening as a little boy. One of his earliest memories came when he was four years old and planted mustard seeds with his nanny. He…

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Lewis Carroll’s Garden Inspirations: From Oxford to Wonderland

Lewis Carroll, the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.

Alice in Wonderland Today is the birthday of the English mathematician and writer Charles Lutwidge Dodgson also known as Lewis Carroll. Lewis had worked as a librarian at Christ Church College in Oxford. His office window had a view of the Dean’s Garden. Lewis wrote in his diary on the 25th of April in 1856…

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Louisa Boyd Yeomans King: The Fairy Godmother of American Gardening

Louisa Boyd Yeomans King thumbnail image

The Well-Considered Garden Today is the anniversary of the death of the American Gardener and Garden writer Louisa Boyd Yeomans King. At the age of 26, she married a wealthy man from Chicago by the name of Frances King, which is why her pen name was Mrs. Francis King. Louisa learned to garden from her…

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