Posts Tagged ‘William Wordsworth’
William Wordsworth Landscape Designer: A Winter Garden Made with Poetry
This botanical history post was featured on The Daily Gardener podcast: Click here to see the complete show notes for this episode. November 15, 1806 On this day, William Wordsworth received a life-changing invitation from Lady Margaret Willes Beaumont to design and build a winter garden at her estate in an old gravel quarry. This…
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A Founder of English Romanticism April 23, 1770 Today is the anniversary of the death of one of the founders of English Romanticism, the poet William Wordsworth. A lover of nature, William wrote about our relationship with the natural world. Although William is best known for his poem about Daffodils that starts, “I wandered lonely as…
Read MoreApril 7, 2021 Styling a Botanical Bookshelf, Michel Adanson, David Fairchild, William Wordsworth, Heal Thyself by Benjamin Woolley, and the Power of a Sunny Spring Day
Today we celebrate a botanist who is honored by the genus for the spectacular Baobab tree. We’ll recognize the man who became a globetrotting botanist and even a food spy and ultimately introduced more than 200,000 plants to the United States, We’ll hear some words from a poet gardener, ecologist, and naturalist, who celebrates his…
Read MoreDaffodils: the March Birth Flower, Fun Facts, and the Mother of all Daffodil Poems
“All parts of the Daffodil are toxic, and the sap is harmful to other flowers, so you must soak them separately for 24 hours before adding them to a bouquet.” The birth flower for March birthdays is the Daffodil. Daffodils are also the 10th-anniversary flower. A bouquet of Daffodils means happiness and hope, but a…
Read MoreMarch 3, 2021 Planning a Productive Veg Garden, Matthias de L’Obel, Alexander Graham Bell, Katie Vaz on Rhubarb, Find Your Mantra by Aysel Gunar, and the Birth Flower for March
Today we celebrate the man who is remembered in one of the garden’s sweetest summer annuals – the lobelia. We’ll also learn about the man who invented the telephone – he also happened to love gardening and the natural world. We hear a great memory about rhubarb from one of my favorite garden books from…
Read MoreI Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
by William Wordsworth I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They…
Read MoreHow Does the Meadow Flower its Bloom Unfold
by William Wordsworth How does the Meadow flower its bloom unfold? Because the lovely little flower is free down to its root, and in that freedom bold. As featured onThe Daily Gardener podcast: Words inspired by the garden are the sweetest, most beautiful words of all. William Wordsworth
Read MoreTo the Same Flower
by William Wordsworth Pleasures newly found are sweet When they lie about our feet: February last, my heart First at sight of thee was glad; All unheard of as thou art, Thou must needs, I think, have had, Celandine (“seh·luhn·dine”)! And long ago. Praise of which I nothing know. Note: In medieval lore, it…
Read MoreThe Plant Thief: Sir John Richardson
“There was a standing joke that Sir John, ‘never left a garden empty-handed, and that evening he carried off a plant of Forget-me-not’.” June 5, 1865 On this day, the Scottish explorer and botanist Sir John Richardson died. During his very active life, he participated in the unsuccessful search for his friend Sir John Franklin,…
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