Jan 21, 2021
Today we celebrate one of my favorite botanists and his personal
story of love and love of poetry and nature.
We'll also learn about an extraordinary gardener who could grow
anything - and I mean anything.
We’ll hear Rosemary Verey’s thoughts on patterns.
We Grow That Garden Library™ with a behind-the-scenes look at the
2009 White House Garden and the modern community garden
movement.
And then we’ll wrap things up with a celebration that may drive you
nuts - but we will celebrate nonetheless.
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Important Events
January 21, 1854
Today is the birthday of the Washington DC-based USDA botanist
Erwin Frink Smith.
Erwin had attempted to solve the problem of the peach yellows - a
disease caused by a microorganism called a phytoplasma, and it was
affecting Peach Orchards. It was called the Peach Yellows disease
because the main symptom was that new leaves would have a yellowish
tint.
Now, if Erwin had solved the Peach Yellows' problem, he would have
become world-famous - but he didn't. Years later, it was actually
the botanist Louis Otto Kunkel who discovered it was a type of
leafhopper that was carrying the disease.
Although Erwin didn't solve the Peach Yellows problem, he was a
peach of a guy. In researching Erwin, I discovered a rare
combination of kindness and intellect. And Erwin was ahead of his
time. Erwin developed a reputation for hiring and promoting female
botanists as his assistants at the Bureau of Plant Industry in
Washington DC. After giving these women tasks based on their
strengths instead of their job descriptions, Erwin's team was able
to work on projects that charted new territory for female
botanists.
The happiest day in Erwin’s life was no doubt when he married the
pretty Charlotte Mae Buffet on April 13, 1893. Together, Erwin and
Charlotte shared an epic love for each other and for reading and
poetry. Tragically, after twelve years of marriage, Charlotte was
diagnosed with endocarditis. She died eight months later, on
December 28, 1906.
Erwin dealt with his grief by putting together a book of poetry,
stories, and a biography of Charlotte. The book is
called For
Her Friends and Mine: A Book of Aspirations, Dreams, and
Memories. Erwin wrote,
"This book is a cycle of my life— seven lonely years are in it.
The long ode (on page 62) is a cry of pain."
There's one passage from Erwin describing Charlotte’s fantastic
ability to attune to the natural world, and I thought you'd find it
as touching as I did when I first read it:
“Charlotte’s visual powers were remarkable. They far exceeded
my own.
Out of doors, her keen eyes were always prying into the habits
of all sorts of living things...
Had she cared for classification, which she did not, and been
willing to make careful records, she might have become an expert
naturalist.
Whether she looked into the tops of the tallest trees, or the
bottom of a stream, or the grass at her feet, she was always
finding marvels of adaptation to wonder at...
She made lists of all the birds that visited her neighborhood.
She knew most of them by their songs, and some times distinguished
individuals of the same species by little differences in their
notes...
She knew when they nested and where, how they made their nests,
and what food they brought to their young.
In studying birds, she used an opera-glass, not a
shotgun.
She was, however, a very good shot with the revolver.”
January 21, 1881
Today is the birthday of the incredible American gardener, plant
whisperer, and horticulturist Rae Selling Berry.
Almost totally deaf by the time she was an adult, Rae was an
excellent lip reader, and many suspect her deafness helped her
attune to plants.
In the early 1900s, Rae started a new hobby: gardening. Like many
gardeners, Rae began gardening with a few pots on her front
porch.
It wasn’t long before Rae was collecting and growing rare plants -
not only on her homeplace - but also on two vacant lots she rented
next door.
After subscribing to many English garden magazines, Rae ordered her
plants and seeds from the world's best nurseries. She also
subscribed to exotic plant explorations so that she could get seeds
from the top explorers like George Forrest, Frank Kingdon-Ward, and
Joseph Rock. Rae wanted the latest and greatest plants - and once
she got them, she mastered growing them.
In addition to Rhododendrons, Rae had a weakness for Primula.
During her lifetime, no one grew Primulas better than Rae Berry
Seling. And to illustrate just how much Rae loved Primulas, in
April 1932, Rae wrote an article for The National
Horticultural Magazine where she profiled the sixty-one
species she grew in her gardens - the article was understatedly
titled Primulas in My Garden.
In 1938, Rae and her husband bought a new property in Lake Oswego,
Oregon. The location of the property along a great ridge offered a
number of microclimates and growing conditions. Best of all, Rae’s
new place included water - springs and small rivers, as well as a
marsh and a wetland. Each of these features offered unique
advantages as Rae picked locations to situate her incredible rare
plants.
Now it's often said of Rae that she was in tune with the most
finicky of plants. She had an uncanny ability to understand the
needs of her various plant specimens, and she put those needs ahead
of design aesthetics. Her incredible Rhododendron collection grew
happily in simple raised frames behind her house. And in the
spring, visitors to her garden were in awe of her beds featuring
great masses of blooming rhododendrons.
In the 1950s, Rae received a single corm of the Chilean blue crocus
(Tecophilaea cyanocrocus "tee-KO-fy-LEE-ah sy-ANN-oh-cro-cus").
Native to the Andes in Chile, this blue crocus is exceptionally
rare to see in cultivation… unless you were Rae Berry. Apparently,
there was one memorable spring, when seventy-five Chilean blue
crocus bloomed in Rae's garden. Can you imagine?
It was Rae Selling Berry who said:
“You don’t tell a plant where to grow; it will tell
you.”
Unearthed Words
I enjoy patterns, man-made and natural, and as soon as I start
looking around me, they are everywhere. The countryside in winter
has tree skeletons silhouetted against the sky — trees without
leaves. One day their background is dark grey, another it is clear
blue, but there is always a natural pattern of trunk and branches,
a lesson in symmetry with variations.
As the snow slowly melts, man-made patterns, still filled with
snow, scar the fields where the wheel marks of tractors crossed the
newly sown corn last autumn, sometimes straight, sometimes
following the line of the walls or hedgerows.
— Rosemary Verey, gardener and garden writer, A
Countrywoman's Year, January
Grow That Garden Library
American Grown by Michelle Obama
This book came out in 2012, and the subtitle is The Story
of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across
America.
In this book, we are reminded of the wonderful kitchen garden that
Michelle Obama planted on the White House’s South Lawn in April of
2009.
This book takes us inside the White House Kitchen Garden - from
planning and planting to the final harvest.
You’ll learn about Michelle’s worries and joys as a new
gardener.
Best of all, you’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at the garden
along with the recipes created by White House chefs.
Finally, if you have an interest in putting together a school or
community garden, there are plenty of tips. There are many
inspiring stories of gardens from across the country, including the
Houston office workers who make the sidewalk bloom; a New York City
School that created a scented garden for the visually impaired; a
North Carolina garden that devotes its entire harvest to those in
need; and other stories of communities that are transforming the
lives and health of their citizens.
This book is 272 pages of gardening that stretches from the recent
gardening history of the White House to the great gardening going
on in communities across America.
You can get a copy of American Grown by Michelle
Obama and
support the show using the Amazon Link in today's Show Notes for
around $3
Today’s Botanic Spark
Reviving the little botanic spark in your heart
January 21, 2001
Today is National Squirrel Appreciation Day, which was founded in
2001 by Christy Hargrove, a wildlife rehabilitator in Asheville,
North Carolina. Christy created the special day to acknowledge that
food sources for squirrels are scarce in mid-winter.
Gardeners are generally of two minds when it comes to squirrels.
They either don't mind them, or they really dislike them.
Thanks to their tremendous athleticism, Squirrels are a challenging
pest in the garden. For instance, it may seem impossible, but
squirrels have a 5-foot vertical. Nowadays, their ability to leap
is well-documented on YouTube.
Squirrels are also excellent sprinters and swimmers. And they are
zigzag masters when they run - a wicked skill that helps them evade
predators.
A squirrel nest is called a drey. Squirrels make their nests with
leaves, and the mother lines the inside of the drey with grass.
Now, as squirrels bury acorns and other seeds, they either
sometimes forget or simply don't return to some of their buried
food. But, lucky for squirrels, they can smell an acorn buried in
the ground beneath a foot of snow.
As gardeners, we should remember that squirrels perform an
essential job for trees. They help the forest renew itself by
caching seeds and burying them. In fact, the job that squirrels do
in caching seeds is absolutely critical to some trees'
survival.
Thanks for listening to The Daily Gardener.
And remember:
"For a happy, healthy life, garden every day."