June 4, 2026 Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward, Walter Edward Lammerts, Robert Fulghum, Ruffage by Abra Berens, and Sarah Martha Baker

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Today's Show Notes

The British writer William Earle Johns once wrote in The New York Times Magazine:

"Queer things happen in the garden in May.

Little faces forgotten appear,

and plants thought to be dead

suddenly wave a green hand

to confound you."

The garden holds our dreams.

And it holds our disappointments.

Every gardener has a plant they quietly grieved — something that didn't come back the way they hoped, something written off over a long winter or a dry summer or just the slow accumulation of not knowing.

And then one morning, there it is.

Waving a green hand.

As if it never heard you give up on it.

Today's Garden History

1868 Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward died in St. Leonards-on-Sea, on the Sussex coast.

The English physician and botanist was seventy-seven years old.

Nathaniel grew up in London.

And Nathaniel wanted to be a sailor.

So at thirteen, Nathaniel's father put Nathaniel on a ship bound for Jamaica.

The sea cured Nathaniel of the sailor idea.

But Jamaica did something else entirely.

Nathaniel walked into the interior — the dripping, impossible green interior — and Nathaniel never fully came back.

Nathaniel returned to London to study medicine.

And Nathaniel spent the rest of his life trying to get that green back.

Nathaniel set up his practice in Wellclose Square, in the East End docks — one of the sootiest, most crowded corners of Victorian London.

Nathaniel wrote that the earliest ambition of his life was to possess "an old wall covered with ferns and mosses."

So Nathaniel built one.

Nathaniel stacked rock in the yard.

Nathaniel ran a little pipe down the top so water could trickle over the stones.

Nathaniel planted ferns, mosses, primroses, wood-sorrel.

The coal smoke killed every single one.

In 1829, Nathaniel was trying to hatch a moth chrysalis.

Nathaniel buried it in damp soil inside a sealed glass bottle and set it on the windowsill.

Nathaniel forgot about it for a while.

When Nathaniel looked again, there was no moth — but there was a fern.

And a blade of grass.

Growing inside the sealed bottle.

Alive.

Watering themselves from the moisture on the glass.

A tiny microclimate contained in glass.

Nathaniel didn't open it.

Nathaniel watched it for four years.

Nathaniel's sealed glass cases — Wardian cases — made it possible to ship living plants across oceans for the first time.

Tea from China to India.

Rubber from Brazil to Malaysia.

Medicinal plants from the Andes to everywhere.

Nathaniel never patented any of it.

Nathaniel gave the design away freely — to any carpenter, any nursery, any hospital that asked.

On Christmas Day, 1866, two years before Nathaniel died, Nathaniel wrote to his friend, the American botanist Asa Gray.

Nathaniel admitted that in thirty-three years, Nathaniel had never received "the slightest acknowledgement or thanks from any public body" in England.

And then Nathaniel wrote:

"But were my time to come over again, I should do precisely as I have done — considering that my life, though one of constant labour, has been one of great delight."

Nathaniel died the following June.

And by Nathaniel's own request, was buried in an unmarked grave.

A genus of African mosses bears Nathaniel's name: Wardia.

And all the terrariums sitting on windowsills — every sealed little world made of fern and moss and damp stone — is a nod to Nathaniel's humble offering to anyone trying to keep something green alive.

1996 Walter Edward Lammerts died in California.

The American horticulturist was ninety-one years old.

Walter grew up in the sagebrush town of Kennewick, in eastern Washington, the son of a farmer.

As a boy, Walter watched his father press a branch from one tree into the rootstock of another — watched the graft take hold — and understood that a plant was not fixed.

It could be guided.

Rebuilt.

Made into something it had never been before.

That understanding took Walter to Berkeley, where Walter earned his doctorate in genetics in 1930.

By 1935, Walter was at Armstrong Nurseries in Ontario, California, building their rose breeding program from scratch.

Walter's first great rose won an All-America award in 1940.

Walter named it Charlotte Armstrong — after the owner's wife.

Then came Descanso Gardens in La Cañada, California.

And the camellias.

In 1948, Walter learned that Yunnan Province in China held camellia varieties no one in the Western world had ever grown.

Walter arranged a shipment — twenty rare plants — just as China's civil war was closing the country off for good.

When the shipment arrived in California, the plants were infested.

USDA inspectors ordered them destroyed.

Walter refused.

Walter argued, negotiated, pushed — and won a high-risk fumigation as an alternative to incineration.

Five plants died in the treatment.

Fifteen survived.

Walter grafted every survivor onto hardy rootstock before anything else could go wrong.

Those fifteen plants are still at Descanso today.

But Walter's crowning moment came in 1954.

Walter crossed his Charlotte Armstrong rose — a Hybrid Tea — with a Floribunda called Floradora.

What Walter got was something awkward.

Too tall for a Floribunda.

Too cluster-blooming for a Hybrid Tea.

The American Rose Society had no category for it.

So they invented one.

They called it the Grandiflora.

They named the rose Queen Elizabeth, in honor of the new British monarch.

A rose so distinct it forced the classification system to make room for itself.

Walter lived forty-two more years after that — a man of faith in a world of labs, a man of science in a world of creeds.

Walter never fully belonged to either side.

Walter died in 1996.

But at Descanso Gardens, the camellias Walter wrestled from the inspectors still bloom every winter — proving they were worth all the fuss.

Unearthed Words

In today's Unearthed Words, we hear a passage from It Was on Fire When I Lay Down on It by the American essayist Robert Fulghum, born on this day in 1937.

Robert spent years as a Unitarian minister.

Robert stood in front of people week after week, trying to find the right words for how to live.

Later, Robert became a writer.

Robert wrote All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.

And then Robert wrote this.

Robert wrote,

"The grass is not, in fact, always greener on the other side of the fence.

No, not at all.

Fences have nothing to do with it.

The grass is greenest where it is watered.

When crossing over fences, carry water with you and tend the grass wherever you may be."

Robert understood a brown thumb.

Robert had probably had one himself.

But Robert could not understand standing by and watching something wither when the answer was right there in your hand.

For Robert, love was not something you waited for.

It was something you did.

Every day.

Even when the ground was hard.

Even when the results were slow.

Even when you were not sure it was working.

You showed up anyway.

You watered anyway.

That was the whole sermon.

Book Recommendation

Ruffage by Abra Berens

It's time to Grow That Garden Library, with today's book: Ruffage by Abra Berens.

This book is part of Garden Cookbooks Week, which means all this week's book recommendations celebrate the connection between the garden and the table.

Abra Berens was a farmer before she was a chef.

And that changed everything about the way she cooks.

Here's Abra Berens:

"Plants are sensible creatures.

Their whole goal is to create seed, protect that seed, and ensure germination the next season — thus continuing the plant's existence.

Even the most rudimentary understanding of what a plant does has made me a better cook — because I am playing to the strengths of the vegetable instead of trying to conform it to my desires.

It is true, you are in charge — not the cauliflower.

It is also true that by playing to the inherent strengths of a particular ingredient, you can coax out the most delight with the least amount of fight."

Ruffage covers twenty-nine vegetables, from asparagus to zucchini, with more than a hundred recipes and three variations on each one.

A James Beard Award nominee.

Named a best cookbook by The New York Times and Bon Appétit.

Ruffage by Abra Berens — the book that will make you stop fighting with your vegetables.

Botanic Spark

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

1887 Sarah Martha Baker was born in London.

The English botanist was the only daughter of a Quaker family.

As a girl, Sarah had two loves:

Art.

And the living world outside the window.

Sarah's first plan was to become a medical missionary — to sail to the South Sea Islands and serve.

Sarah's parents said no.

So Sarah turned to science.

Sarah studied art at the Slade School in London.

Then chemistry and botany at University College London, where Sarah took her degree with First Class Honours.

But the real classroom was Sarah's family's cottage on Mersea Island in Essex — where the tide moved in and out across the salt marsh, and the brown seaweeds clung to the rocks in their distinct bands.

Sarah wanted to know why.

Why did certain seaweeds grow only at certain tidal depths?

Why didn't they trade places?

Sarah discovered that each species could survive only within its own narrow band — defined by how much drying, sunlight, and immersion it could bear.

Sarah spent years finding out — wading into the marsh, taking measurements, running experiments back in her lab.

Sarah often sang while she worked.

Sarah's colleagues remembered it for years.

On June 4, 1914 Sarah's twenty-seventh birthday, she was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society.

A new lectureship was being created for Sarah at University College.

Sarah died on May 29, 1917 — five days before her thirtieth birthday.

Sarah had been working without ceasing — her research, her teaching, her wartime volunteer work — until her body gave out.

Sarah had told her Sunday school children:

"The universe is always singing, and we must learn to listen, so that our heart may join the universal chorus."

Sarah heard it in the seaweeds, in the tide moving over Mersea Island.

Sarah heard it in her lab, where she sang while she worked.

Still listening — right up to the end.

Final Thoughts

The garden has a longer memory than your disappointment does.

It held the thing you wrote off.

And then, when the conditions were right — not when you were ready, but on the garden's own schedule — it handed it back.

So this spring, don't be too quick to decide what's gone.

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