February 2, 2026 Franz Ludwig Späth, Elizabeth Pitts Lamboll, William Rose Benét, Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen, and Charlie Chaplin

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Today’s Show Notes

February second is Candlemas Day — an old turning point in winter, heavy with weather lore.

“If Candlemas Day be fair and bright, winter will have another flight.”

In other words, don’t be fooled by a little light. The season still has something to say.

Today’s stories live right there — between what has endured, and what is just beginning to stir.

Today’s Garden History

1913 Franz Ludwig Späth died in Berlin.

The Späth family had been cultivating trees since 1720 — six generations of gardeners, each enlarging the work of the last.

When Franz took over the nursery in 1863, at just twenty-five years old, he expanded it a hundredfold.

By the end of the nineteenth century, it was the largest nursery in the world — more than one hundred hectares of trees, shrubs, and trial plantings.

The work became so defining that the surrounding Berlin district took its name from it: Baumschulenweg — literally, nursery way.

Then, in 1879, Franz did something lasting.

He transformed the grounds around his stately, vine-covered home into an arboretum — not arranged by strict science or geography, but by beauty, effect, and possibility.

It was a working landscape. A place to test trees. To watch them age. To see what endured.

The nursery business did not survive the Second World War.

But the trees did.

Today, the property lives on as the Späth Arboretum, stewarded by Humboldt University in Berlin — a public garden, a teaching collection, and a refuge of old trees in one of the world’s busiest cities.

Some of those trees are champion specimens — planted in Franz’s lifetime, now among the finest of their kind.

They have outlived empires, economies, and generations of the Späth family.

It’s the kind of endurance that belongs to winter.

1725 Elizabeth Pitts Lamboll was born in Norfolk, England.

Elizabeth’s garden life would unfold far from home.

By the mid-eighteenth century, she was living in Charles Town — Charleston, South Carolina — a place of salt air, strong sun, and astonishing botanical possibility.

Elizabeth became the third wife of Judge Thomas Lamboll.

Together, they shared a deep interest in horticulture.

At their home on lower King Street, Elizabeth oversaw a garden shaped by European sensibilities — designed for both use and pleasure.

It was not small.

Beside the house, flowers, vegetables, and kitchen beds spread in a broad green swath, stretching southward toward the Ashley River.

At their plantation on James Island, they cultivated an orange grove.

But what makes Elizabeth’s story endure is not scale.

It is generosity.

Elizabeth gave seeds freely. She shared rootstock. She passed along cultivation methods and observations with fellow gardeners and with the leading botanists of her time.

She corresponded with Peter Collinson of the Royal Society in London, and with John Bartram of Philadelphia, the most important naturalist in the American colonies.

John visited her garden more than once.

And in one letter, Collinson gently scolded him for how he and Mrs. Lamboll “rambled on in the intense heat of a midday sun,” which means they lost track of time while talking about plants.

Seeds left Elizabeth’s Charleston garden in small paper packets — traveling north, crossing oceans.

And when her daughter Mary later inherited the family home and garden, Elizabeth’s influence continued.

Gardens endure not just through plants, but through people willing to pass something on.

Unearthed Words

In today’s Unearthed Words, we hear from the American poet William Rose Benét, born on this day in 1886.

Here is his poem, “Imagination.”

Rich raptures, you say, our dreams assume,

Slaking the heart’s immortal thirst?

Only the old we reillume;

But think—to have dreamed the flowers first!

Think,—to have dreamed the first blue sea;

Imaged every illustrious hue

Of the earliest sunset’s tapestry;

And the snow,—and the birds, when their songs were new!

Think,—from the blue of highest heaven

To have sown all the stars, to have whispered “Light!”—

Hung a moon in a prismy even,

Spun a world on its splendid flight!

To have first conceived of boundless Space;

To have thought so small as to garb the trees;

All planet years in your mind’s embrace,—

And the midge’s life, for all of these!

And Man still boasts of his brain’s weak best

In dream or invention; from first to last

Blunders ’mid wonders barely guessed.

And fondly believes that his thoughts are “vast”!

Benét isn’t praising human brilliance.

He’s putting it in its place.

Wonder arrived first. We are still trying to catch up.

And gardeners know this instinctively.

Book Recommendation

Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen

This week, we’re celebrating novels — stories rooted in gardens, kitchens, and small towns.

Garden Spells is a work of gentle magical realism, set in North Carolina, centered on the Waverley sisters and their extraordinary garden.

There are apples that hint at the future. Edible flowers that influence moods. And a garden that becomes a place of reckoning, return, and repair.

It understands something gardeners know instinctively: that tending living things often changes the people doing the tending — whether they notice it or not.

Botanic Spark

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

1914 Charlie Chaplin made his first film appearance.

Seventeen years later, he released City Lights — a silent love story between the Tramp, who cannot speak, and a blind woman who sells flowers on the street.

In the early twentieth century, flowers still functioned as a language.

Roses spoke of romance. Lilies suggested refinement. Orchids signaled wealth.

The Tramp does not offer an orchid. He offers a carnation — a humble flower sold on street corners.

In the Victorian language of flowers, carnations stood for affection, gratitude, and admiration.

They were dependable. They lasted.

Chaplin let the carnation speak for him.

And in the end, it won over the flower girl who had already stolen his heart.

Final Thoughts

As we close today’s show, remember that February is not asking us to rush.

It’s asking us to notice what lasts — old trees, shared knowledge, beauty that precedes us and still knows how to speak.

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