All the Dirt on Gardening

Barry Fugatt A teaching garden is a public space where everyone from the community can come learn about plants. Most teaching gardens are staffed with volunteers who give tours, teach classes and answer gardening questions. It’s an outdoor classroom, with vegetables, herbs, ornamental plants, and a water feature. The Linnaeus Teaching Garden is tucked away at the back of Tulsa’s Woodward Park and behind the Tulsa Garden Center main building. The 1.5 acre teaching garden is part of the Garden Center (http://bit.ly/9ZkP90). Barry Fugatt, horticulturist for Tulsa Garden Center is the director of the Teaching Garden where 230 volunteers provide tours, give classes, answer phones and greet visitors. Beginning in 2005, Fugatt was instrumental in the original concept , design, and fundraising for the garden. The initial money to start construction came from 3,000 individual donations, and then, companies came forward to donate materials. Fugatt and the volunteer coordinator, Rebecca Fernande...

History is fascinating when an author is able to write like historian Andrea Wulf. Wulf's book, The Brother Gardeners, describes the original botanists, their friendships and feuds, from 1716 to 1770. Great Britain became the center of the horticultural world during the colonial period by importing plants and seeds from wherever her ships traveled around the world. In 1716 nurseryman Thomas Fairchild discovered the process by which plants make seed. Fairchild used a feather to pollinate a flower in his Hoxton potting shed. (The Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Florida is named for the plant explorer and botanist David Fairchild (1869-1954), a descendent of Thomas.) One of the brother gardeners, Peter Collinson was a cloth merchant and amateur botanist in London. Many British merchants were getting rich on recently opened markets in the American colonies, the West Indies and East Indies. Collinson's curiosity about plants took him to Fairchild's garden and his enthusias...