The Daily Gardener is a weekday show.
It will air every day Monday - Friday
(I’m taking weekends off for rest, family, fun, & gardening!)
The show will debut April 1, 2019. The tagline for the show is thoughts & brevities to inspire growth.
Shows are between 5 - 10 minutes in length.
The format for the show begins with a brief monologue followed by brevities.
The Brevities segment is made up of 5 main topic areas.
1. Commemoration: Here, I dig up fascinating people, places, and events in horticulture and share them with you. This is the “On This Day” #OTD portion of the show helping you feel more grounded and versed o n the most enchanting stories from the history of gardening.
2. Unearthing Written Work: This is made up of poems, quotes, journal entries, and other inspiring works pertaining to gardening
3. Book Recommendations: These are the literary treasures that will help you build a garden library, strengthen your gardening know-how and inspire you.
4. Garden Chores: A Daily Garden To-Do; improve your garden one actionable tip at a time
5. Something Sweet: This segment is dedicated to “reviving the little botanic spark” in your heart - to paraphrase botanist Alexander Garden; to add more joy to the pursuit of gardening.
The show sign-off is: "For a happy, healthy life: garden every day"
There are a few easter eggs in the show for Still Growing listeners. I still start the show with - "Hi there, everyone" and I end the show by saying the show is "produced in lovely, Maple Grove, Minnesota”.
The music for the show is called “The Daily Gardener Theme Song” originally dubbed “Bach’s Garden". I wrote it on Garageband. It will be available as a ringtone for your smartphone through the show’s Patreon page.
If you enjoy the show, please share it with your garden friends. I would so appreciate that.
Mar 28, 2022
Subscribe
Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart
Support The Daily Gardener
Buy Me
A Coffee
Connect for FREE!
The Friday
Newsletter | Daily
Gardener Community
Historical Events
1895 Birth of Spencer Woolley Kimball,
American business, civic, and religious leader. He was the twelfth
president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS
Church). He was also a gardener and wrote,
Where you have a plot of land, however small, plant a
garden.
Staying close to the soil is good for the soul.
1906 Birth of Jean Galbraith, Australian
botanist, gardener, writer, and poet.
Jean is remembered for her books on Australian botany including
three
editions of the seminal Wildflowers of
Victoria (1950), Collins Field Guide to the Wild
Flowers of Southeast Australia, and a children's
book Grandma Honeypot (1964). Her charming
book, Garden in a Valley (1939), became an
instant garden classic when it was republished in 1985.
Born in Tyers (a little town in Gippsland, Australia), Jean spent
almost eighty years in her family home called Dunedin
("Do-NEE-din"). At Dunedin, Jean maintained an enormous garden,
which became a draw for visitors from all over Australia and the
world. The artist, Peter Cuffley, painted a fabulous representation
of Dunedin. It's one of the most iconic garden art pieces of the
past century.
Jean learned botany through letters she exchanged with the botanist
Herbert B. Williamson during the 1920s. When Jean turned 21,
Herbert sent her a microscope and it became one of her most
treasured possessions.
As a writer, Jean had a distinctive style and voice. Her writing
was more akin to John Muir's than the stiff formal writing of her
scientific peers. For 50 years she delighted the readers of the two
magazines she regularly wrote for: The Garden
Lover and the Victorian
Naturalist.
As a person, Jean lived an incredibly simple life. She did not have
a car, tv, or phone and wrote her books longhand. By all accounts,
she was one of the kindest souls to have ever walked the earth. She
wanted children to know and love nature. She was an advocate for
plant preservation - especially
wildflowers in their native habitats. Jean believed in the
spiritual and healing aspects of gardening. She believed that the
garden was a metaphor for life and for living.
In 1970, Jean was awarded the Australian Natural History Medallion.
Jean died in 1999, just before her 93rd birthday.
Jean once wrote that she knew the stories of every plant in her
garden,
There is no flower in the garden that has not its remembered
history.
And Jean loved her garden, despite its faults.
It is not a model garden, rarely, alas, is it even
orderly.
(But) in spite of its failures and mistakes and
imperfections,
its airs are sweet, its flowers love to bloom, and we are happy
in it.
1928 On this day, Margarita Grace Phipps,
wife of John S. Phipps (an heir to the Phipps family fortune),
hosted the first meeting of The Garden Club of Palm Beach at her
home, Casa Bendita. Fifteen women attended the event. Mrs.
Frederick E. Guest is credited with having the original idea for
the club
Today Casa Bendita's remaining six-acre garden has evolved into
Casa Phippsberger, the island’s most sensational private botanical
garden. And, The Garden Club of Palm Beach continues to grow. One
of the ways the club stays relevant is to have a member attend
every single town meeting to make sure the club can take advantage
of opportunities to help the community.
In 2010, the club installed a beautification and education garden
at the Southern Oasis Traffic Circle. The garden features plants
that thrive in the Palm Beach climate. That same year, the club
installed xeriscape landscaping in eight Kaleidoscope Flower Beds
on Royal Poinciana Way. In 2011, the club created a vertical garden
on the Saks Fifth Avenue store. Called the Living Wall, the project
has become an iconic element of the Worth Avenue Restoration
Project.
In 2021, the club created the four-acre Bradley Park Tidal Garden.
When the club began work on a children’s playground in Bradley
Park, members realized that frequent flooding from king tides
needed to be addressed in the plans. The solution was the
creation of a tidal garden.
King tides are bigger than normal tides and they can cause an
enormous amount of damage to the Landscapeape. The new tidal garden
was designed by SMI Landscape Architecture LLC, to withstand king
tides by incorporating sunken gardens with channels that send
water back where it belongs. The majority of the garden is designed
with native plants and natural elements like climbable cap-stone
boulders.
The next project will be the restoration of the Chinese Garden at
The Society of The Four Arts where the demonstration gardens are
maintained by the Palm Beach Garden Club. The seven demonstration
gardens illustrate different themed garden spaces and include the
Chinese Garden, the Fragrant Moonlight Garden, the Palm Garden, the
Bromeliad Garden, the Jungle Garden, the Spanish Facade Garden, the
Formal Garden, the Tropical Garden, and the Madonna Garden.
Grow That Garden Library™ Book Recommendation
Aquascaping by George Farmer
This book came out in 2020, and the subtitle is Simple
Ideas For Small Outdoor Spaces.
You can get a copy of Aquascaping by George Farmer and
support the show using the Amazon link in today's show
notes.
Botanic Spark
1961 On this day, the American poet Sylvia
Plath wrote a poem called I Am Vertical. Here's the first
verse:
I Am Vertical
But I would rather be horizontal.
I am not a tree with my root in the soil
Sucking up minerals and motherly love
So that each March I may gleam into leaf,
Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed
Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,
Unknowing I must soon unpetal.
Compared with me, a tree is immortal
And a flower-head not tall, but more startling,
And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring.
Thanks for listening to The Daily Gardener
And remember: For a happy, healthy life, garden every
day.