February 25, 2026 Stephen Switzer, Josif Pančić, Thomas Moore, What Makes a Garden by Jinny Blom, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir

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Today's Show Notes

Some gardeners love order.

Straight lines.

Rules that behave.

And some gardeners love wildness.

They admire the old plant that refuses correction—the one that leans, the one that surprises, the one that moves where it wants.

After Emily Dickinson died, her sister Lavinia Dickinson took over the garden.

Emily's niece later remembered it this way:

"All [Lavinia's] flowers did as they liked:

tyrannized over her,

hopped out of their own beds and into each other's beds,

were never reproved or removed as long as they bloomed;

for a live flower to Aunt Lavinia was more than any dead horticultural principle."

Today's show celebrates that kind of garden—the one that grows with personality, persistence, and permission.

Today's Garden History

1682 Stephen Switzer was baptized in Hampshire.

An English gardener, designer, and writer, Switzer became one of the earliest voices arguing that gardens did not need to be forced into obedience.

At a time when trees were clipped into cones, spirals, and peacocks, he openly mocked the fashion, calling it a parade of "monstrous shapes of Screws, Monkeys, Giants, and the like."

Instead, he championed what he called Forest—or Rural—Gardening.

Gardens that followed the land.

Gardens that opened outward. Gardens that trusted the countryside instead of hiding behind walls.

Switzer believed beauty did not have to be wasteful. He promoted the ferme ornée—the ornamental farm—where orchards, pasture, and kitchen crops were woven directly into the designed landscape.

Profit and pleasure.

Working land made beautiful.

He helped shape estates like Castle Howard and Blenheim Palace, but he was not merely a theorist. Later in life, he ran a seed shop in Westminster, London, under the sign of The Flower-Pot.

He sold Italian broccoli, Spanish cardoons, and lucerne—alfalfa—to anyone willing to try something new.

He believed gardens should feed people, and that good ideas, like seeds, were meant to be shared.

1888 Josif Pančić died.

The Serbian physician and botanist is often called the father of Serbian botany.

For decades he walked mountains and forests across the Balkans, documenting nearly 2,500 plant species.

For twenty years he searched for a tree locals insisted existed—a strange, slender spruce spoken of almost like a legend.

When he finally found it, high in a remote Balkan valley, it proved to be something extraordinary: a living relic from deep geological time.

The Serbian spruce, Picea omorika, is an endemic relict, a survivor from ancient forests that once covered much of Europe.

At first, other botanists did not believe him.

Some claimed the tree must have come from Asia or North America. But Pančić was right.

Today, Serbian spruce is grown in gardens worldwide, beloved for its narrow, elegant form, silver-backed needles, and ability to tolerate wind, cold, and city air. Its slender, pendulous branches shed snow easily, making it one of the most recommended conifers for urban gardens.

Pančić believed plants had to be encountered alive—seen with the eyes, felt with the fingers.

He founded Serbia's first botanical garden not as a showpiece, but as a living classroom.

And when he died, his final wish was to be buried on the mountain he loved most, a reminder that his work was never about ownership, only understanding.

Unearthed Words

In today's Unearthed Words, we hear a poem from the Irish poet, singer, songwriter, and entertainer Thomas Moore, born on this day in 1779.

Moore lived and worked in Ireland and England during the early nineteenth century, when songs and poems were often carried by memory and voice.

His most famous botanical work, "The Last Rose of Summer," was written in 1805.

It begins:

'Tis the last rose of Summer,
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone;
No flower of her kindred,
No rose-bud is nigh,
To reflect back her blushes
Or give sigh for sigh!

Moore's rose stands alone, blooming in the quiet after abundance has passed.

It is a gentle meditation on endurance, on the poignancy of what remains when others have faded.

Gardeners know this feeling well—the single bloom that holds the season just a little longer.

Book Recommendation

What Makes a Garden by Jinny Blom

It's Planning & Design Week here on The Daily Gardener, which means this week's recommendations focus on imagining gardens before they're planted—the ideas, drawings, and principles that shape outdoor spaces.

In this thoughtful book, Jinny Blom brings together psychology, ecology, design history, and hands-in-the-soil experience to ask a deeper question: What is a garden actually for?

She writes about structure—paths, edges, enclosures—but insists that structure exists to support life, not suppress it.

Gardens, she reminds us, are not wilderness. They are relationships.

Here's how she puts it:

"There is a term we use in landscaping when what we are building is in a filthy, mud-splattered and semi-constructed state. If we need to tidy it up quickly, we call it 'civilising.'

But the word has stayed with me.

Isn't garden-making a considerate relationship between us and nature?

In making a garden, we are offering to borrow a small part of the wilderness—to fashion it, care for it in a stylised manner, and enjoy it."

Botanic Spark

And finally, here's something sweet to ignite the little botanic spark in your heart.

1841 Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born.

Late in life, crippled by arthritis, Renoir bought a sun-washed property in the south of France—Les Collettes—not for comfort, but to save its ancient olive trees from being cut down.
He refused to let gardeners weed the paths.

When they asked which plants should go, he replied simply,

"What weeds?"

For Renoir, the garden was not decoration.

It was an outdoor studio.

A refuge.

A place where light could move freely and life could continue, even when the body faltered.

The olives were pressed into oil.

The trees still stand.

And the garden he protected remains open today.

Final Thoughts

Not all gardens want taming.

Some ask for listening instead.

To love a plant because it is old. To keep one that leans.

To forgive the one that wanders.

To value what survives without polish.

And to make room—in our gardens and ourselves—for what grows a little wild.

Thanks for listening to The Daily Gardener.
And remember, for a happy, healthy life, garden every day.