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.
Nov 28, 2022
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Gardener Community
Historical Events
1660 On this day, the first meeting occurred
of what would become The Royal Society of London for
Improving Natural Knowledge.
The Royal Society's Latin motto, 'Nullius in verba,' translates to
"Take nobody's word for it." The motto reminded the Society's
members to verify information through experiments and not just
based on authority.
1694 Death of Matsuo Basho ("Bash=oh"),
Japanese poet.
He is remembered as the most famous poet of the Edo period and the
greatest master of haiku.
In one verse, Matsuo wrote,
The temple bell stops
But I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.
And in another poem from his book on traveling, he wrote,
Many things of the past
Are brought to my mind,
As I stand in the garden
Staring at a cherry tree.
1854 Birth of Gottlieb Haberlandt, Austrian
botanist.
His father was a pioneer in 'soybean' work, and his physiologist
son is now regarded as the grandfather of the birth control
pill.
As for Gottlieb, he grew plant cells in tissue culture and was the
first scientist to point out the possibility of the culture of
Isolated & Plant Tissues. In 1902 he shared his original idea
called totipotentiality ("to-'ti-pe-tent-chee-al-it-tee"), which
Gottlieb defined as "the theory that all plant cells can give rise
to a complete plant." Today we remember Gottlieb as the father of
plant tissue culture.
During the 1950s scientists proved Gottlieb's totipotentiality.
Indeed, any part of a plant grown in nutrient media under sterile
conditions can create a whole new plant. Today, the technique of
tissue culture is a very efficient tool for propagating improved
plants for food, hardiness, and beauty.
1881 Birth of Stefan Zweig, Austrian
writer.
During the 1920s and 1930s, at the peak of his career, Stefan was
one of the most widely translated writers in the world.
In The Post-Office Girl, Stefan
wrote,
For this quiet, unprepossessing, passive man who has no garden
in front of his subsidised flat,
books are like flowers. He loves to line them up on the shelf
in multicoloured rows: he watches
over each of them with an old-fashioned gardener's delight,
holds them like fragile objects in his
thin, bloodless hands.
Grow That Garden Library™ Book Recommendation
English Cottage by Andrew
Sankey
This book came out in 2022, and it is a master guide to
cottage-style gardening.
The chapters in this book cover: The History of the Cottage Garden,
Creating the "Cottage Garden Style, Cottage Planting Style, Cottage
Flowers, Companion Planting, Green Structure, and Traditional
Features.
In the Preface, Andrew shares a bit about his background and how he
came to master English Cottage Gardening.
My first introduction to the style of the English cottage
garden came when I was given a copy of Margery Fish's book, We Made
a Garden.
Having been enthralled with the book, I then traveled down to
Somerset to see her wonderful cottage garden at East Lambrook
Manor. Shortly after
this, Geoff Hamilton started to construct his cottage gardens
for the BBC Gardeners' World programs and it soon became apparent
that this was the style of gardening I myself wished to
adopt.
Not long after this I moved to Lincolnshire and started my own
garden design/landscaping business, and I soon realized it was
difficult to obtain the more unusual plants required for number of
my garden designs, in particular plants for dry shade positions.
This encouraged me to look for a larger garden with the potential
to run a small specialist nursery. This resulted in purchasing
Grade II listed cottage (built in 1852) with a good-sized old
cottage garden. Although the original garden (like many in
Lincolnshire) had once been an extremely long strip stretching back
to the village pond, the plot that came with the cottage was much
reduced.
Nevertheless, at almost half an acre it was more than enough
for me to manage. Luckily the garden was pretty much a blank
canvas, having a couple of large old fruit trees, a vegetable
patch, various outbuildings and a chicken hut; and this afforded me
the opportunity to make something special of the garden.
It was here that my love for cottage gardens blossomed. Over
time I re-designed the garden, I created different rooms/areas,
spring and summer borders, and began experimenting with colour
schemes and companion planting. I joined the Cottage Garden Society
and then helped form the Lincolnshire branch, eventually
becoming chairman. Within a few years I opened the garden under
the National Gardens Scheme; I then started writing articles and
lecturing on different aspects of the cottage garden.
This book is the culmination of my years working on my own
cottage gardens, designing and creating cottage gardens for
clients, experimenting with companion planting and lecturing widely
on the subject. I very much hope you enjoy it.
This book is 192 pages of cottage garden style in all its glory,
with many lovely and inspiring photographs.
You can get a copy of English Cottage by Andrew Sankey and
support the show using the Amazon link in today's show notes for
around $25.
Botanic Spark
1757 Birth of William Blake, English
poet.
During his lifetime, William wrote in relative obscurity. Today, he
is an essential poet of the Romantic Age.
He wrote,
In seed-time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
In his poem, Auguries of Innocence, he wrote,
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
In his poem, A Poison Tree, William wrote about anger as a tree
that grows as it gets tended.
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe;
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I water'd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,
And into my garden stole,
When the night had veiled the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.
Thanks for listening to The Daily Gardener
And remember: For a happy, healthy life, garden every
day.