Michael Keens Archives

Michael Keens

The Complete Strawberry On this day, Michael Keens, a market gardener from Isleworth, exhibited the first large-scale cultivated strawberry at the Royal Horticultural Society. Now when it came to strawberries, Michael combined two important variables: flavor and appearance. It’s hard to imagine, but large garden strawberries as we know them today didn’t exist before the…

July 3, 2020 Being More Water-efficient, Dog Days, Gilbert Laing Meason, Michael Keens, Lambertus Bobbink, William Henry Davies, The Reason for Flowers by Stephen Buchmann, and Calvin R. Sperling

Today we officially welcome the Dog Days – they start on this day and last for the next 40 days. We’ll also learn about the Landscape Architect who invented the term “landscape architecture.” We celebrate the market gardener from Isleworth who exhibited the first large-scale cultivated strawberry at the Royal Horticultural Society on this day…

The Spy Who Loved Strawberries: Michael Keens’s Revolutionary Berry

This botanical history post was featured on The Daily Gardener podcast: Click here to see the complete show notes for this episode. July 3, 1859 On this day in horticultural history, The Preston Chronicle and Lancashire Advertiser bestowed upon eager gardeners a morsel of wisdom regarding the cultivation of what was then the most coveted…

July 3, 2019 Clearance Plants, Gilbert Laing Meason, Michael Keens, Lambertus Bobbink, William Henry Davies, Grow in the Dark by Lisa Eldred Steinkopf, Hakonechloa All Gold, Richard Evans Schultes, and Calvin Sperling

Sometimes the plant gods smile on you with a clearance sale featuring something genuinely spectacular like Japanese Forest Grass or, in this case, Hakonechloa ‘All Gold.’ My local Lowes was clearancing them for $3 a pop – and it was just what the plant doctor ordered to dress up our cabin up north. In 2009,…