Jul 28, 2020
Today we celebrate the botanist and writer who published the
first book about salad.
We'll also learn about the horticulturist whose life was cut short
on this day when the steamship he was on caught on fire and
sank.
We celebrate the man who helped generations of people fall in love
with ornithology.
We also hear some garden poetry that features women.
We Grow That Garden Library™ with a book about creating a
Pollinator Victory Garden by having a garden that is healthy,
diverse, and chemical-free.
And then we'll wrap things up with a glimpse into a Maine garden on
this day in 2011.
But first, let's catch up on some Greetings from Gardeners around
the world and today's curated news.
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Curated News
Thriving With Nature | Mental Health
Foundation
“There are lots of ways in which spending time in nature can be
positive for our mental health and wellbeing. New and exciting
research is happening all the time that adds to our understanding
of how our natural environment affects the health of our bodies and
minds. The reasons why time in nature has this effect on us are
complex and still being understood. The benefits are often related
to how our senses connect us to the environment around us, from the
shapes in nature we see to the scents that trees give off and the
soft fascination that nature can stimulate which helps our minds
rest.”
Alright, that's it for today's gardening news.
Now, if you'd like to check out my curated news articles
and blog posts for yourself, you're in luck, because
I share all of it with the Listener Community in the
Free Facebook Group - The Daily Gardener
Community.
There's no need to take notes or search for links - the next time
you're on Facebook, search for Daily Gardener Community and request
to join. I'd love to meet you in the group.
Important Events
1662 Today the English Gardner and
writer John Evelyn recorded in his diary that he met with the
dowager Queen Henrietta Maria.
John kept a detailed diary for 66 years, and he had a devoted
passion for gardening. As a result, his diary has been a treasure
for garden historians over the years.
And, here's a little known fact about John Evelyn: he was the first
garden author to publish a book about salads (or sallets as they
were spelled at the time).
Check out the benefits of eating salad as described by John:
"By reason of its soporiferous quality, lettuce ... still
continues [to be] the principal foundation of … Sallets, which ...
cool and refresh, [and have] beneficial influences on morals,
temperance, and chastity."
(FYI: Soporiferous means Inducing or tending to induce sleep. Here
John is referring to the fact that some lettuce secretes
lactucarium - a milky fluid found in the base of the lettuce stems.
It is known as lettuce opium because of its sedative and
pain-relieving properties. It has also been reported to promote a
mild sensation of euphoria.)
It was John Evelyn who wrote:
"The gardener’s work is never at an end, it begins with the
year and continues to the next. He prepares the ground, and then he
plants, and then he gathers the fruits."
"Gardening is a labor full of tranquility and satisfaction;
natural and instructive, and as such contributes to the most
serious contemplation, experience, health, and longevity."
And, keep in mind John's appreciation for the amount of work a
garden requires as I tell you this little story about him.
In 1698, John Evelyn had owned his estate for 40 years. Everyone
who knew it said it was magnificent - both inside and out. It was
decorated to the nines. Of all that he owned, John's garden was his
pride and joy.
That year, the Russian Czar, Peter the Great, brought an entourage
of 200 people to England to visit William III. In a gesture of
hospitality, William volunteered John Evelyn's home to host the
Czar and his people during their visit. John and his wife
graciously moved out to give the Czar his privacy.
Well, it wasn't long before John's servants began sending him
urgent messages begging him to return.
When John came home, he walked into a nightmare. The whole estate
had been trashed. Priceless paintings had served as dartboards. His
floors were ruined, windows were smashed; even the garden was
destroyed.
The servants told how the 6'8 Czar had played a game with his
friends, where they put him in one of John's wheelbarrows and then
raced him through the garden beds, crashing into walls, trees, and
hedges. It was a complete disregard for the sanctity of John's
garden. For twenty years, John had nursed along a hedge of holly
that had turned into a glorious living wall. It was ruined. The
party even managed to knock down part of the stone wall that
surrounded the garden.
It must have been a scene akin to the movie Animal House.
John immediately sent word to the king about what had happened, and
arrangements were made straight away to move the Czar to other
lodgings. King William settled with John to have his property
restored - his home needed to be gutted and rebuilt from the floors
up.
John Evelyn was 78 years old when this happened to him. I'm sure
there was no amount of restitution that could restore the years of
love he had spent in his garden. He lived for another eight years
before dying in 1706.
1815 Today is the anniversary of the
tragic death of the horticulturist and writer Andrew Jackson
Downing.
Andrew was the author of The Fruits and Fruit Trees of America,
which came out in 1845. He also served as the editor of a magazine
called The Horticulturist.
Regarded as one of the founders of American Landscape Architecture,
Andrew used his work in The Horticulturist magazine as a platform
for advancing his pet causes. It was Andrew who first came up with
the idea for a New York park. In fact, Andrew's dream became the
park we know today: Central Park. Andrew also advocated for
individual states to create schools devoted to agriculture - and
that hope became a reality as well.
In 1846, the National Mall in Washington, DC, was run down and
neglected. It fell to Andrew to devise plans to revive the
space.
When the Frenchman Pierre Charles L'Enfant designed the mall in
1791, he envisioned a grand avenue. In sharp contrast, Andrew's
vision simple. Not a fan of formal European gardens, Andrew wanted
to create what he called a public museum of living trees and
shrubs. Instead of a grand avenue, Andrew designed four separate
parks that were connected by curving walkways and featured many
different trees. Sadly, Andrew's plans were never fully funded or
carried out.
In the summer of 1852, Andrew boarded a steamship called The Henry
Clay. At some point, the steamship got into a race with another
boat called The Armenia. When The Henry Clay began to overheat, a
fire broke out in the engine room. Coincidentally, a former
girlfriend of Andrew's also happened to be on board The Henry Clay
that fateful day. As passengers escaped the flames to jump into the
water, some began to drown. When Andrew jumped in the water to save
his old flame, her panic caused them both to drown.
Now, before Andrew attempted to save his old paramour, he was one
of the men who quickly threw some deck chairs off the boat. The
thinking was that the chairs could be used as flotation devices. As
fate would have it, Andrew's wife Carolyn survived the disaster by
holding on to a deck chair. When the ordeal was all over, many
friends tried to comfort Carolyn by insinuating that she was likely
saved by one of the chairs Andrew had thrown into the water.
But this sentiment was small consolation to her, given that
she lost her husband as he was busy trying to save an old love.
Andrew Jackson Downing was just 36 years old when he died on this
day two hundred and five years ago.
1996 Today is the anniversary of the death
of Roger Tory Peterson of Peterson's Field Guide to Birds fame - he
was born in 1908.
A son of Jamestown, New York, Roger, helped new generations of
people fall in love with ornithology. Roger not only wrote the
guides, but he also illustrated them. He was the noted American
naturalist who brought the natural world to the masses in the 20th
century.
Roger admired the gumption of the common starling. He felt blue
jays had "a lot of class," and he said the house sparrow was "an
interesting darn bird."
Roger once famously described a purple finch as a "Sparrow
dipped in raspberry juice (male)."
When it came to the Audobon Oriole, Roger quipped that its song was
like "a boy learning to whistle."
What was Roger Tory Peterson's favorite bird? The King Penguin.
Here are some famous Peterson quotes:
"Few men have souls so dead that they will not bother to look
up when they hear the barking of wild Geese."
"Birds have wings; they're free; they can fly where they want
when they want. They have the kind of mobility many people
envy."
"Birds are indicators of the environment. If they are in
trouble, we know we'll soon be in trouble."
And finally, the book, The
World of Roger Tory Petersonis worth a read if you can
get hold of a copy.
Unearthed Words
Today's words feature Women and the Garden.
In January, for example, the housewife should be busy planting peas
and beans and setting young rose roots.
During March and April she will work 'from morning to night, sowing
and setting her garden or plot,' to
produce the crops of parsnip, beans, and melons which will 'winnest
the heart of a laboring man for her later in the year.
Her strawberry plants will be obtained from the best roots which
she has gathered from the woods, and these are to be set in a plot
in the garden. Berries from these plants will be harvested later
the same year, perhaps a useful back-up if the parsnips have failed
to win the man of her dreams.
July will see the good wife 'cut off ...ripe bean with a knife as
well as harvesting the hemp and flax, which it will be her
responsibility to spin later in the year.
— Thomas Tusser, English poet and farmer, Five Hundred Pointes of
Good Husbandry, 1573
You are a tulip seen today,
But (dearest) of so short a stay
That where you grew, scarce man can say.
You are a lovely July-flower,
Yet one rude wind, or milling shower.
Will force you hence, and in an hour.
You are a sparkling rose in the bud.
Yet lost ere that chaste flesh and blood
Can show where you grew or stood.
You are a full-spread fair-set vine.
And can with tendrils love entwine.
Yet dried, ere you distill your wine.
You are like balm enclosed well
In amber, or some crystal shell,
Yet lost ere you transfuse your smell.
You are a dainty violet.
Yet withered ere you can be set
Within the virgin's coronet.
You are the queen all flowers among.
But die you must, fair maid, ere long.
As he, the maker of this song.
— Robert Herrick, English poet and cleric, A Meditation for His
Mistress
Grow That Garden Library
The Pollinator Victory Garden by Kim
Eierman
This book came out in January of 2020, and the subtitle
is Win the War on Pollinator Decline with Ecological
Gardening; Attract and Support Bees, Beetles, Butterflies, Bats,
and Other Pollinators.
Peter Nelson, Director of The Pollinators film, said of this
book,
"The Pollinator Victory Garden is a book for these times.
Kim Eierman empowers readers with ideas, direction, and the
inspiration they need to create beautiful and eco-friendly habitats
for many different pollinators. Creating healthy, diverse,
and chemical-free habitats are essential steps in solving
pollinator decline, and The Pollinator Victory Garden guides you
towards creating your own lovely garden habitat."
Kim Eierman is an environmental horticulturist and landscape
designer specializing in ecological landscapes and native plants.
She is the Founder of EcoBeneficial, a horticulture consulting and
communications company in Westchester County, New York. Kim also
teaches at the New York Botanical Garden, Brooklyn Botanic Garden,
The Native Plant Center, Rutgers Home Gardeners School, and
advanced education classes for Master Gardeners.
This book is 160 pages of ideas and information to support
pollinators and help the environment.
You can get a copy of The Pollinator Victory Garden by Kim
Eierman and support the show, using the Amazon Link in today's Show
Notes for around $16.
Today's Botanic Spark
2011 In the popular gardener book The
Roots of My Obsession, the former executive director of the Coastal
Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay, Bill Cullina wrote:
“Yesterday it happened.
With everything finally planted, the weeds temporarily at bay,
and the garden refreshed by rains after a long dry stretch, I
reached that brief apogee in the arc of the season where I could
sit on the bench and just appreciate.
It is that magic time of year between the rising cacophony of
spring and the slow murmuring descent of autumn when there is
stillness in my soul.
Right now, nothing needs doing.
It has been the most frenzied spring yet at Coastal Maine
Botanical Gardens, where I work — a season stretching well into
summer. We planted just over twenty-nine thousand plants and
created four acres of new gardens. I have laid out so many plants
this year that I started seeing them in my sleep — one pot after
another plunked atop the freshly turned earth in endless triangles
stretching off to infinity.”
In 2019, Bill Cullina was named the F. Otto Haas Executive Director
of the University of Pennsylvania's Morris Arboretum. He started
his new job a year ago on July 8, succeeding Paul W. Meyer, who
served the Arboretum for 43 years, 28 years as executive director.