Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart   The Daily Gardener Friday Newsletter Sign up for the FREE Friday Newsletter   Facebook Group The next time you're on Facebook, search for Daily Gardener Community, where you'd search for a friend and request to join.   Historical Events 1880 Birth of Reginald Farrer ("Fair-rur")(books by this author), the legendary English rock and alpine gardener, plant explorer, nurseryman, writer, and painter. A son of a wealthy family in the Yorkshire Dales, Reginald repeatedly referenced Yorkshire in his writing. Reginald was born with many physical challenges. He had a cleft palate, speech difficulties, and what Reg himself called a "pygmy body." He had many surgeries to correct his mouth, which meant he was homeschooled. But the silver lining of his solitary childhood was his connection to nature. Reginald found happiness among flora and fauna, and he particularly loved the rocks, ravines, and hills around his home. At 14, he created his first rock garden, which eventually became a Craven nursery specializing in Asian mountain plants. Every time Reginald went on expeditions, he sent new alpine plants and seeds to Craven.  After college, Reginald became a devout Buddhist, and he liked to say that he found "joy in high places." The European Alps became a yearly touchstone. And although he saw some of the most incredible mountains vistas in the world - they held no sway with Reginald. For Reginald - it was always about the plants. Reginald wrote, It may come as a shock and a heresy to my fellow Ramblers when I make the confession that, to me, the mountains… exist simply as homes and backgrounds to their population of infinitesimal plants. Reginald's book, The Garden of Asia, launched his writing career and showed garden writers a new way to write about plants. The botanist Clarence Elliot observed, As a writer of garden books [Reginald] stood alone. He wrote… from a peculiar angle... giving queer human attributes to his plants, which somehow exactly described them. His passion for rock gardens was perfectly timed. The British gardening public latched on to rock gardening with a frenzy. Rockeries were in every backyard. Reginald's book My Rock Garden (1907)was an instant success and earned him the moniker Prince of Alpine Gardeners.  In 1919, at the age of 40, Reginald took a trip to Myanmar. He would never see his beloved Yorkshire again. He met his end alone on a remote Burmese mountain. Most reports say he died of Diptheria, but the explorer and botanist Joseph Rock said he heard Reginald drank himself to death on the night of October 17th, 1920. And I thought of Reginald up on that mountain alone when I researched the etymology of the name of his nursery, Craven, which means defeated, crushed, or overwhelmed. Today Reginald is remembered in the names of many plants like the beautiful blue Gentiana farreri ("jen-tee-AYE-na FAIR-ur-eye"). And the Alpine Garden Society's most highly-prized show medal is the Farrer Medal, which honors the best plant in the show. It was Reginald Farrer who said, I think the true gardener is a lover of his flowers, not a critic of them. I think the true gardener is the reverent servant of Nature, not her truculent, wife-beating master. I think the true gardener, the older he grows, should more and more develop a humble, grateful and uncertain spirit. He also said, All the wars of the world, all the Caesars, have not the staying power of a lily in a cottage garden.   1918 On this day, Dora Hughes wrote an article for the New-York Tribune called, The Carrot Comes into its Own, (carrot cookbooks). She wrote,  Time was when the carrot held high estate, for in the days of King Charles I, the ladies of the royal court used its feathery plumes in place of feathers for their adornment. Physicians prized the roots for their diuretic properties, from which came the general impression that eating carrots beautified the complexion and hair. Possibly the reason wh