{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"May 11, 2026 Moses Ashley Curtis, Frances Stackhouse Acton, William Trevor, My Gardening Life by Mary Berry, and Henri Correvon","description":"Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Support The Daily Gardener Patreon Buy Me A Coffee Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter |  Daily Gardener Community Today\u2019s Show Notes If you got plants from your kids this Mother\u2019s Day, here\u2019s a thought. Don\u2019t plant them all at once with everyone together. Plant them with one kid at a time. I called it YAMA time. You And Me Alone time. And it gave each of my four kids their own quiet garden moment with me. Because something happens when you\u2019re working side by side with just one child. It\u2019s quiet. Your hands are busy. And their little thoughts and curiosities start to bubble up to the surface. And little comments come out. Little questions. Little moments. And those were more precious to me than the plants themselves. I\u2019m not saying I made four gardeners. I highly doubt I did. But I do know that each one of them has their own memory of gardening with me. And that, I think, they will remember. Today\u2019s Garden History 1808 Moses Ashley Curtis was born in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Moses came from a long tradition of clergymen-botanists. Men whose parish rounds made plants as familiar as congregants. On missionary journeys through the pine barrens and the damp coastal lowlands of North Carolina, Moses brought back a full portfolio of plants from every trip. Ferns pressed between the pages. Fungi sketched by lamplight. And orchids dried and labeled and sent north to Harvard. When his academic peers started acknowledging his expertise, Moses remarked: \u201cNothing surprised me more than to be called a botanist at first. Although I had accomplished the survey of the [flowering] plants of the State, I still felt that I was comparatively not a botanist.\u201d Yet Moses enjoyed many botanical firsts. Including the thrill of being the first person to describe a Venus flytrap catching its prey. It was a little bit of being in the right place at the right time. Because it just so happens that most of the world\u2019s wild Venus flytraps grow within seventy-five miles of Wilmington, North Carolina. In an 1834 paper about these carnivorous plants, Moses noted the function of the hairs, the digestive properties of the leaf, and the mucilaginous fluid that seemed to dissolve insects. He wrote: \u201cIt is very aptly compared to two upper eyelids joined at their bases. Each side of the leaf is a little concave on the inner side, where are placed three delicate, hair-like organs in such an order that an insect can hardly traverse it without interfering with one of them, when the two sides suddenly collapse and enclose the prey with a force surpassing an insect\u2019s efforts to escape. The fringe or hairs of the opposite sides of the leaf interlace, like the fingers of the two hands clasped together.\u201d \u201cThe little prisoner is not crushed and suddenly destroyed, as is sometimes supposed, for I have often liberated captive flies and spiders which sped away as fast as fear or joy could hasten them. At other times I have found them enveloped in a fluid of a mucilaginous consistence, which seems to act as a solvent, the insects being more or less consumed in it. It is not to be supposed, however, that such food is necessary to the existence of the plant, but like compost may increase its growth and vigor.\u201d During his lifetime, Moses also became the foremost authority on North American fungi. A field most botanists wouldn\u2019t touch. Fungi were unglamorous. And widely feared. Yet Moses walked straight into that fear. And made it his life\u2019s work. Once, when someone asked about his ambitions, he wrote back: \u201cAll I expect, and I may say, all I desire, is to settle down with the mediocrity.\u201d But Moses was not mediocre. He was sturdy in a field that killed its collectors young. And it wasn\u2019t because he played it safe. Moses hiked mountain ridges until his clothes were in tatters. And once met a local tailor named Silas McDowell. Silas mended his coat. And then joined him in the field. Because Silas happened to be an amateur botanist. Back home in North Carolina, Moses\u2019s wife Mary and their children processed his specimens. Pressing. Drying. Labeling. And they did it so well that no one ever guessed it was a family operation. But through it all, his greatest joy was walking in the woods. In contrast, the greatest heartbreak of his life happened during the Civil War. As the Union blockade tightened and North Carolina began to starve, Moses looked at the woods he loved around Hillsborough. And saw what no one else could see. A pantry. As he foraged the land within two miles of his own house, he had collected and eaten over forty different species of mushrooms. Moses immediately realized that if it was possible for him, foraging could work for anyone. So he wrote a book. To teach ordinary people how to identify and cook edible mushrooms. And his son Charles painted the color illustrations. So that someone with no training could look at the page and know what was safe to eat. But when the South ran out of paper and ink, the book was never printed. And though people would listen to Moses on Sundays, they would not follow him into the woods on Mondays. That is why his message about the edibles hiding in the forest never reached the people who needed it most. It was his biggest regret. That he couldn\u2019t help people who literally starved to death while food was growing all around them. For most of history, the world has wanted to pit science against God. And yet there were people like Moses who held both in the same mind. And the same life. And found no contradiction. Moses died in 1872. Twenty-five years after his death, his book on edible fungi was finally published in 1897. Today, his gravestone in the churchyard at St. Matthew\u2019s Episcopal Church in Hillsborough, North Carolina, reads simply: Moses Ashley Curtis, D.D. Priest and Scientist. 1794 Frances Stackhouse Acton was born. The British botanist and illustrator grew up at the elbow of one of England\u2019s most celebrated botanists. Her father, Thomas Andrew Knight. President of the Royal Horticultural Society. Fanny, as her family called her, later said those years working beside her father were the happiest of her life. While other girls were taught needlework, Fanny was taught to graft a pear tree. And cross-pollinate a strawberry. When she came of age, no woman could attend a university. But her father\u2019s orchard was on par with any degree. And the botanical illustrations she painted for his published works were the equivalent of a thesis. At eighteen, Fanny married Thomas Stackhouse. A man twenty-five years her senior. But they were both serious. And curious. And shared a passion for botany. For nearly twenty years, everything was going along just fine. Fanny had her husband. Her father. And a life full of the work she loved. But when Fanny was in her late thirties, she gradually lost her entire family. First, she lost a baby girl. The only child she would ever have. Then her mother-in-law and her husband died within about twelve months of each other. And the final blow was losing her father. The man who gave her a love for nature that would last her entire life. By the time Fanny was forty-one, she was alone in the world. But she had also inherited her husband\u2019s family estate. Acton Scott Hall in Shropshire. Along with all the wealth and responsibility that came with it. Fanny would spend the next forty-six years as a widow. But also as a woman fully prepared to live a life of service, science, and stewardship. Everything she learned at her father\u2019s elbow. The patience. The precision. The love of the land. Made her ready for her final four decades. Fanny seized her independence with both hands. And never let go. In an era when a man could say \u201cI am self-made,\u201d but a woman could not, Fanny built a legacy that rested squarely on her own shoulders. She cared for her local village the way a mother cares for her family. Repairing what was broken. Building what was missing. And making sure no one around her went without. And when Fanny died in 1881 at eighty-six, a local newspaper wrote that her name had become \u201ca household word for all that is good, kind, and benevolent.\u201d Fanny was buried at St. Margaret\u2019s Churchyard on the family estate. Right beside her husband. And the baby daughter they lost. Unearthed Words In today\u2019s Unearthed Words, we hear from the Irish novelist William Trevor, born on this day in 1928. William wrote about quiet lives. And missed chances. In his work, gardens appear again and again. Not as decoration. But as memory. And inheritance. In his 1988 novel The Silence in the Garden, an old Irish estate is set inside a landscape he knew by heart. He wrote: \u201cThe high white gates stood open at the head of a sunless avenue\u2026 Moss and cropped grass softened the surface beneath the horse\u2019s hooves, making our journey eerily soundless. Beech trees curved their branches overhead. The shiny leaves of rhododendrons were part of a pervading greenness.\u201d Although William spent most of his life in Devon, his imagination never left rural Ireland. And William kept returning to it. Again and again. Just to be there once more. Book Recommendation My Gardening Life by Mary Berry It\u2019s time to Grow That Garden Library, with today\u2019s book: My Gardening Life by Mary Berry. It\u2019s Mother\u2019s Day Week here on The Daily Gardener. And that means all of this week\u2019s Book Recommendations are devoted to garden stories about care, inheritance, teaching, and the quiet ways gardening is passed from one generation to the next. Most people know Mary Berry for cakes. And careful measurements. But in My Gardening Life, she steps outside the kitchen. And into the garden. Which she freely admits has always been her first love. This is not a technical manual. It is a memoir of seasons. About childhood gardens. About the solace of tending plants while raising a family. And the steady comfort of returning to the soil after life\u2019s disruptions. In the opening pages, Mary wrote: \u201cAs a child, gathering things in the wild is my first real recollection of enjoying plants and flowers. We used to go primrosing in spring, and often my grandparents would be there. My father\u2019s father, Grandpa Berry, was a canon of York and was very proper and correct. He used to come on these outings wearing an overcoat and a sort of trilby-style hat. Mum would make up a picnic. After we\u2019d enjoyed a rock cake, we\u2019d pick primroses and would tie them into bunches with lengths of wool. We\u2019d put them in small vases around the house, and, most likely, I would take some to school the next day for my teacher to sweeten them up, because most of the time I was quite naughty. To this day, I still clearly remember the delicate smell of those primroses, and they remain one of my favourite flowers. They herald spring.\u201d Mary is an absolute delight. And this book shows how tending a garden can mirror tending a family. Both imperfect. And both enduring. Botanic Spark And finally, here's something sweet to ignite the little botanic spark in your heart. 1939 Henri Correvon died. The Swiss alpine gardener spent his life devoted to the small, stubborn plants of the mountains. As a young boy, Henri lost his mother. And was raised by his grandfather. A nurseryman. It was in that nursery that Henri first fell in love with alpine plants. And he never let them go. As a garden designer, Henri built gardens on north-facing slopes. Where the air was thin. And the soil was mostly rock. Because he believed hardship made flowers more beautiful. Henri had an intimate understanding of plants. He could walk through a garden and toss out the secrets of a lifetime without breaking stride. Once, passing a group of acacias, he simply said: \u201cAcacias hate lime.\u201d And kept walking. Just a small piece of hard-won wisdom. Shared in passing. Once, when a British diplomat visited his nursery in Geneva, Henri was unimpressed. But later, when that same diplomat identified a rare tulip by its leaves alone, before it had even bloomed, Henri lit up. He later said: \u201cThere is a Minister of Foreign Affairs in every country, but there is only one who can identify Tulipa clusiana by its leaves.\u201d That was Henri. He didn\u2019t care who you were. He cared what you knew. His nursery, Floraire. The place of flowers. Passed to his son. And then to his grandson. Three generations rooted in the same soil. In his final years, Henri began to go blind. He had spent eighty-five years seeing what no one else could see. Losing his sight was a loss he could not bear. So Henri went in for what should have been a straightforward operation. To help him see again. It did not work out that way. A former student later wrote: \u201cHe went to sleep happy in the thought that he should again see his beloved flowers, and he did not awake.\u201d Final Thoughts If you\u2019re standing in your garden this week with a flat of plants and your kids running about, try something simple. Have them help you. One at a time. Just you and them. Hand them the trowel. Show them where to dig. And then be quiet. You\u2019ll be amazed at what comes up. And I don\u2019t just mean the plants. Thanks for listening to The Daily Gardener. And remember, for a happy, healthy life, garden every day. ","author_name":"The Daily Gardener","author_url":"https:\/\/thedailygardener.org","html":"