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.
Jun 21, 2021
Today we celebrate an old account of Tripoli gardens.
We’ll remember a botanist, naturalist, and author who believed in
the power of walking.
We hear an excerpt from a book by author Susan Wiggs.
We Grow That Garden Library™ with a wonderful book about small
garden design.
And then we’ll wrap things up with a novelist who found his own
garden paradise in the Cotswolds.
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Important Events
June 21, 1535
Today is the birthday of the German physician, botanist, and
traveler Leonhard Rauwolf.
For two years, between 1573 and 1575, he made a trip through the
Near east to search for new herbal medicines. When he returned, he
published a book with new botanical descriptions for his herbarium,
and he later wrote a travel book about his adventures.
Here is an excerpt from Rauwolff's description of Tripoli in
Lebanon:
“The town of Tripoli is pretty large, full of people, and of
good account, because of the great deposition of merchandises that
are brought thither daily both by sea and land. It is situated in a
pleasant country, near the promontory of the high mountain Libanus,
in a great plain toward the sea-shore, where you may see an
abundance of vineyards, and very fine gardens, enclosed with hedges
for the most part, the hedges consisting chiefly of Rhamnus,
Paliurus, Oxyacantha, Phillyrea, Lycium, Balaustium, Rubus, and
little Palm-trees, that are low, and so sprout and spread
themselves. In these gardens, as we came in, we found all sorts of
salads and kitchen-herbs, such as Endive, Lettuce, Ruckoli,
Asparagus, Celery,... Tarragon..., Cabbages, Cauliflowers, Turnips,
Horseradishes, Carrots, of the greater sort of Fennel, Onions,
Garlic, etc. And also fruit, as Water-melons, Melons, Gourds,
Citruls, Melongena, Sesamum (by the natives called samsaim, the
seeds whereof are very much used to strew upon their bread) and
many more; but especially the Colocasia, which is very common
there, and sold all the year long.... In great plenty there are
citrons, lemons and oranges.... At Tripoli they have no want of
water, for several rivers flow down from the mountains, and run
partly through the town, and partly through the gardens, so that
they want no water neither in the gardens nor in their
houses.”
June 21, 1898
Today is the birthday of American botanist, naturalist, and author,
Donald Culross Peattie.
During his lifetime, Donald was regarded as the most read nature
writer in America. He wrote about plants and nature. His
book, Flowering Earth, was written for the layperson
- explaining concepts like chlorophyll and protoplasm and specimens
like algae and seaweeds. The Hartford Times said this about
Peattie's Flowering Earth:
"Peattie makes the story of botany and its pursuit as
fascinating to the reader as it is to him, and the reading of it a
delight."
Over time, Peattie began to focus on trees. His popular books on
North American trees include Trees You Want to
Know (1934), The Road of a
Naturalist (1941), American
Heartwood (1949), A Natural History of Trees of
Eastern and Central North America (1950), and A
Natural History of Western Trees (1953).
From his book American Heartwood, Donald wrote,
“Wood, if you stop to think of it, has been man’s best friend
in the world. It held him in his cradle, went to war as the
gunstock in his hand, was the frame of the bed he came to
rejoicing, the log upon his hearth when he was cold, and will make
him his last long home. It was the murmuring bough above his
childhood play, and the roof over the first house he called his
own. It is the page he is reading at this moment; it is the forest
where he seeks sanctuary from a stony world.”
Peattie's writing voice is friendly and lyrical. He wrote,
"I have often started off on a walk in the state called mad-mad
in the sense of sore-headed, or mad with tedium or confusion; I
have set forth dull, null and even thoroughly discouraged. But I
never came back in such a frame of mind, and I never met a human
being whose humor was not the better for a walk."
And he wrote,
"All the great naturalists have been habitual walkers, for no
laboratory, no book, car, train or plane takes the place of honest
footwork for this calling, be it amateur's or
professional's."
Unearthed Words
She pulled up to the curb in front of number 115, a boxy house with
a garden so neat that people sometimes slowed down to admire it. A
pruned hedge guarded the profusion of roses that bloomed from
spring to winter. Each of the roses had a name. Not the proper name
of its variety, but Salvatore, Roberto, Rosina- each one planted in
honor of their first communion. There were also roses that honored
relatives in Italy whom Rosa had never met, and a few for people
she didn't know - La Donna, a scarlet beauty, and a coral
floribunda whose name she couldn't remember.
The sturdy bush by the front step, covered in creamy-white blooms,
was the Celesta, of course. A few feet away was the one Rosa, a
six-year-old with a passion for Pepto-Bismol pink, had chosen for
herself. Mamma had been so proud of her that day, beaming down like
an angel from heaven. It was one of those memories Rosa cherished
because it was so clear in her heart and mind.
― Susan Wiggs, American author of historical and contemporary
romance novels, Summer
by the Sea
Grow That Garden Library
Small Garden Design by Paul Bangay
This book came out in 2019.
In this book, the Australian designer Paul Bangay known for large,
elegant gardens, is now sharing his top tips for designing gardens
in small spaces - for people who want beautiful gardens on
balconies, courtyards, lightwells, or rooftops.
As with large gardens, garden design fundamentals like —
incorporating structure and smart plant selection. Small Garden
Design focuses on tips for working with various spaces and is
gorgeously illustrated with photos by Simon Griffiths.
This book is 272 pages of small garden design loaded with practical
tips on plant choices, paving, irrigation, soil, outdoor dining,
lighting, and ideas for making small spaces appear larger.
You can get a copy of Small Garden Design by Paul Bangay
and support the show using the Amazon Link in today's Show Notes
for around $43
Today’s Botanic Spark
Reviving the little botanic spark in your heart
June 21, 1948
Today is the birthday of the Scottish novelist Ian McEwan
(“Muh-Cue-in”).
Ian has written short stories and novels for adults and a
children's novel called The
Daydreamer, which Anthony Browne illustrated.
In 2012, he and his wife, the writer Annalena McAfee, bought a
beautiful nine-acre dream property in the Cotswolds. One of their
gardens features foxgloves and iris, lady’s mantle, allium, and
meadow rue.
Ian’s best-selling 2001 novel Atonement was
made into a movie starring James McAvoy and Keira Knightley in
2007.
A passage from the book reads,
“It made no sense, she knew, arranging flowers before the water
was in — but there it was; she couldn't resist moving them around,
and not everything people did could be in a correct, logical order,
especially when they were alone.”
Thanks for listening to The Daily Gardener.
And remember:
"For a happy, healthy life, garden every day."