January 19, 2026 Alice Eastwood, G. Ledyard Stebbins, Janus and the Snowdrop, The New Romantic Garden by Jo Thompson, and Harris Olson

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Today’s Show Notes

January is a quieter season in the garden. The beds are resting. The work is mostly invisible.

This is the time of year when gardeners turn to stories — to the people who noticed plants closely, saved what mattered, and carried knowledge forward, even when it would have been easier to let it go.

Today is full of those stories.

Today’s Garden History

1859 Alice Eastwood was born.

Alice Eastwood would become one of the most important botanists in American history — not because she sought attention, but because she understood how easily plant knowledge can be lost if no one tends it.

Her early life was unsettled. After her mother died, Alice and her sister were placed in a convent while her father moved west. What steadied her was learning — and later, walking.

When Alice began studying plants seriously, she did so the way many gardeners do: by going where plants grow naturally and paying attention.

In Colorado, she climbed into the Rocky Mountains, collecting alpine plants and learning which species thrived in exposure and which needed protection.

Her careful work brought her to California, where she met Katherine Brandegee, curator of botany at the California Academy of Sciences. Together with her husband, Townshend Brandegee, Katherine edited a journal called Zoe, named for the Greek word meaning life.

Zoe was a working journal, not a polished one. It gave field botanists a place to publish discoveries about western plants at a time when much of that flora was still being named and understood.

New species. Corrections. Observations. This was where the real work appeared.

Alice Eastwood did not just write for Zoe. She helped sustain it.

1893 When the Brandegees retired, Alice became curator of botany at the Academy, a position she would hold for more than fifty years.

Then came the 1906 earthquake.

The Academy burned. Cabinets collapsed. Thousands of specimens were nearly lost.

Alice climbed the damaged stairways herself, rescuing what she could — and then rebuilt the herbarium almost from scratch, traveling tirelessly to restore what had been destroyed.

Gardeners understand that instinct. When something precious is lost, you do not abandon the garden. You begin again.

2000 The botanist G. Ledyard Stebbins died at the age of ninety-four.

Stebbins helped explain something gardeners observe every season: that plants change gradually, shaped by environment, variation, and time.

His work gave botanists a way to understand plant evolution not just as theory, but as something visible in fields, hillsides, and gardens themselves.

He once said he simply pointed out what plants had been showing us all along.

Unearthed Words

In today’s Unearthed Words, we explore the etymology of the word January, which takes its name from Janus, the Roman guardian of thresholds — the figure who looks both backward and forward at once.

It is a fitting image for the garden at this time of year.

January’s birth flower is the snowdrop, one of the first blooms to appear while winter still holds firm. In folklore, the soft green markings on its inner petals are said to be a promise — a sign that warmth will return.

Here is a snowdrop verse to hold onto:

“The snowdrop, in purest white array,
First rears her head on Candlemas Day.”

The gardening year does not begin with abundance. It begins with courage.

Book Recommendation

The New Romantic Garden: Classic Inspiration, Modern Mood by Jo Thompson

If you are gardening mostly by imagination right now, this is a winter-perfect recommendation.

The New Romantic Garden celebrates gardens shaped by feeling as much as function. These are gardens built for atmosphere, reflection, and beauty — places where restraint matters as much as abundance.

It is a book to read slowly, perhaps by the fire, letting it influence how you think about gardens long before you step back into the soil.

Botanic Spark

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

2001 The Detroit Free Press shared the story of Harris Olson, a man whose personal mission was to turn everyone he met into a gardener — preferably, a daylily gardener.

With his warm smile and battered gray truck, license plate reading “Mr. Daylily,” Harris was widely known in the Detroit area for his volunteer work and his plant breeding.

He hybridized daylilies and peonies, naming varieties for the people he loved.

For forty-five years, he served as volunteer head gardener at the Congregational Church of Birmingham. Under his direction, the nine-acre grounds became an arboretum-like landscape filled with peonies, daylilies, roses, hostas, and other perennials.

Even when his health declined, Harris refused to stop gardening. When he could no longer weed himself, he sat in a lawn chair while others worked the beds, offering commentary and encouragement.

“Life isn’t worth living unless you can pull a weed,” he liked to say.

Gardeners like Harris remind us that tending plants is often just an excuse to tend people — generously, patiently, and for as long as we are able.

Final Thoughts

Wherever you are, whatever season you are in, may you find something today worth tending.

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