Hi there and welcome to The Daily Gardener, and thank you for listening. I'm your host, Jennifer Eblin. It's February 19th, and today there are 29 days left until spring. So we've cracked the 20s.
It's Friday. What a great way to head into the weekend. Today we'll look back at a story that inspired the book The Orchid Thief. We'll also learn about the incredible true story of a Madagascar explorer.
We'll hear words about the incredible Algerian Iris. And we grow that garden library today with a memoir from a gardener who pulls back the row cover on the remarkable story of her magnificent garden, a place she called Duck Hill. And then we'll wrap things up with the story of an incredible naturalist and botanist who had some very eccentric habits concerning preserving and utilizing specimens. But first let's kick things off by reminding you to head on over to the website for the show.
That's the Daily Gardener dot o-r-g. And once you're there, you can sign up for the free Friday newsletter. It's coming out today. And if you sign up real quick before 4 p.m., you'll probably make the cut off to get today's newsletter.
I try to make the newsletter like you're getting a little note from a garden friend. I share botanical history and literature to tide you over the weekend, as well as some reminders and shopping finds in addition to what's going on in my own home and garden. So head on over to the Daily Gardener dot o-r-g, where you can sign up and get the newsletter in your inbox today. Here's today's curated news.
Today's curated news is a post that was featured in Gardens Illustrated. And I fell in love with this post immediately because it features a wild style spring plant display for the container garden. Now what's really great about this particular article over at Gardens Illustrated is that they share all of the tips that designer Christy Rommage used in creating this magnificent planter. And she began by using a reclaimed cast iron bowl.
And then she filled it with mascara, anemone, and pulmonary. And all of these were in varying shades of purple. Now the show stealer in this creation is Lunaria Anua Corfu Blue. It's the same blue as some of the beautiful blue lubelia.
It's positively cobalt. And these beautiful spike flowers rise above the low growing carpeting flowers that make up the bulk of this container. And as a result, your eye is drawn to these magnificent Corfu Blue flowers. Now when you're thinking about putting together your own spring containers, remember to keep in mind some of the style secrets from designers like Christy.
I'm a huge fan of recycling old containers or repurposing things. And there's never been a better time to do that, especially now during the pandemic. And I also like the idea of keeping our containers simple. You know, when you go to the garden center this year, you may notice that you just don't have the selection that you've had in previous years.
And so simple is probably a word we need to keep in mind for the upcoming garden season. But that doesn't mean that our containers are going to be boring or that they will lack color. So check out this post by Christy and then maybe even save it in your Facebook folder. You can create a folder called spring ideas or container ideas and then tuck Christy's post away for when you're looking for spring inspiration later in the season.
Now the keyword for finding this post in the Facebook group for the show is the word container. Just search for that and Christy's post will pop right up. And if you're not in the Facebook group for the show, don't worry. It's very easy to join.
All you need to do is go on up to the search bar the next time you're in Facebook and type in the words daily gardener community where you'd search for a friend. I'd love to meet you in the group. Here's today's brevity for February 19th. Today is the birthday of the American horticulturist John LaRoche who was born on this day February 19th in 1962.
Before John was arrested for poaching wild ghost orchids, he was a typical horticulturist. In the late 1980s, he was active in the bromeliad society of Broward County and he was giving lectures on topics like growing bromeliads from seeds and new techniques in bromeliad culture. By the early 1990s, John's attention turned to orchids and this passion would end up becoming a story fit for a book. One of the first newspapers to share the story was the Indiana Gazette on June 14th, 1993.
Here's what it said. Susan Orleans, the orchid thief, tells the tale of John LaRoche. In a fascination with orchids overtook him, he conceived a scheme that would benefit the Seminoles, the world, and himself. Using the Seminoles' exemption from laws against picking orchids in the wild, John helped himself to rare specimens growing in a Florida swamp called the Faca-Hatchy Strand State Preserve.
John's plan was to clone the orchids by the millions, making them available to fanciers everywhere, and thus save them in their wild state by obviating the need to pick them. But incidentally, he would make a fortune for the Seminoles and himself. But the law did not agree, and John was arrested and convicted for poaching. Attracted by an article on John's arrest, Susan Orlean, a reporter for the New Yorker, traveled to Florida, befriended John and got him to introduce her to his world.
Near the opening of the orchid thief, Susan describes how she approaches her subjects. She said, I read lots of local newspapers, and particularly the shortest articles in them, and most particularly any articles that are full of words and combinations that are arresting. In the case of the orchid story, I was interested to see the words swamp and orchids and Seminoles and cloning and criminal together in one short piece. Today it's estimated that only 2,000 ghost orchids remain in Florida.
And it was on this day, February 19th, in 1932, that the Shreveport Journal shared a story about the botanist Charles Swingle and his quest to find the Euphorbia Intusae. Charles Swingle was the first American botanist to set foot on the island of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. He was on the trail of a peculiar rubber plant called Intusae, which government scientists thought might be grown in our own southwest. When this young American arrived in Madagascar, he found he was just 15 minutes too late to catch a little coast-wise boat heading to the south.
The natives simply couldn't understand his disappointment. They said, oh sir, another boat will arrive in 6 weeks. In the meantime, there is rice for all, so there is nothing to worry about. In the native Malagash language, there is no word for time.
They spend a few days a year planting, transplanting, and harvesting rice, and there's enough food for all. Don't the natives ever get tired of rice? I asked Dr. Swingle.
Not at all, he explained. If they get tired of white rice, they can change to red rice or blue rice or brown. As many as 64 varieties grow in Madagascar. And then there are special delicacies to go with it.
Delicacies that are for those who like dried grasshoppers and locusts. Dr. Swingle made daily trips to the village markets to get peanuts, bananas, pineapples, guavas, mangoes, or papayas to add to the hotel diet of rice. On the 16th day of his March into the southern brush, Dr.
Swingle cited the first Intusae plants. The most famous bulbous roots were filled with water, the best they had had for many a day. And the milky latex, which oozed from its trunk, was found to be pure rubber. The Euphorbia Intusae is a large succulent tree growing up to almost 25 feet tall.
Thanks to Charles Swingle, the plant was experimentally cultivated in the American Southwest. In Unearth words, today's words are by Vida Sackville West, the English author and garden designer from her book, In Your Garden. This is from her section on Algerian Iris. Kindliness, so far as the Algerian Iris is concerned, consists in starving it.
Rich cultivation makes it run to leaf rather than to flower. What it really enjoys is being grown in a miserably poor soil, mostly composed of old lime and mortar rubble, and even gravel, a gritty mixture at the foot of a sunny wall, the grittier and the sunnier, the better. Sun and poverty are the two things it likes. You should search your clumps of the grass-like leaves every day for possible buds and pull the promising bud while it still looks like a tiny, tightly rolled umbrella, and then bring it indoors and watch it open up under a lamp.
If you have the patience to watch for long enough, you will see this miracle happen. If you have not yet got this iris in your garden and want to acquire it, you can plant it in March or April, but September is the best time for transplanting. It does not much like being split up and moved, so wherever you require it, do make sure that it does not get too dry until it has had time to establish itself. After that, it will give you no trouble.
It's time to grow that garden library with today's book, Embryter to Ground, by Paige Dickey. This book came out in 2012, and the subtitle is Revisiting the Garden. In this book, Paige recounts her journey as she created her magnificent garden, Duck Hill, in Upstate New York. Here's something sweet to revive the little botanic spark in your heart.
It was on this day, February 19th, in 1974, that the journal Herald out of Dayton, Ohio published a little snippet about the naturalist Eliza Brightwin and her unusual needlepoint methods. Here's what it said. If you are tired of the same cruel and needlepoint your friends are making, you might try a different type of embroidered picture. About 1880, Mrs.
Brightwin, a famous botanist, began making embroidery pictures using the bones from the heads of fish, such as hatock, whiting, or cod. The bones were cleaned, boiled, and dried, and they were used as the wings for embroidered insects or leaves for flowers. The design was usually embroidered on black velvet. The tiny fish bones were sewn into place in a pattern that was embellished with original embroidery.
And this is not as odd as it may seem. If you look today at the modern collages made with large animal bones, nuts, bolts, prune pits, and other ordinary materials. Thanks for listening to The Daily Gardener. And remember, for a happy, healthy life, garden every day.
Hey, thanks for spending another week with The Daily Gardener. If you worry you'll miss your daily dose of botanical brevities. Just head on over to the Daily Gardener dot o-r-g. That's where you can find all the stories and books that I share on the show.
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I'm your host, Jennifer Eblin, and as always, have a great day in the garden and we'll see you on Monday.