Lee Buttala has been until recently the Executive Director of Seed Savers Exchange, which is dedicated the preservation of America’s garden and farming heritage. He is an Emmy Award-winning television producer of Martha Stewart Living and was the creator, producer and director of Cultivating Life, a PBS series on outdoor living and gardening. He has written for The New York Times, Martha Stewart Living, New York, and Metropolitan Home. As an editor, he has worked for Saveur, Garden Design and Interview, and for the book publisher Alfred A. Knopf. He also served as the preservation program manager for the Garden Conservancy and has studied garden design at Kyoto University of Art and Design, the English Gardening School at London’s Chelsea Physic Garden and the New York Botanical Garden. He is the author and editor of the books Cultivating Life: A Guide to Outdoor Living and The Seed Garden: The Art and Practice of Seed Saving. You can also follow him on Instagram (https://www.igcol.com/user/leebuttala)
Thursday, 21 Mar 2019 - Seeking shade from the Los Angeles sun, our Self-Taught Gardener finds a refreshing oasis tucked into the heat-reflecting folds of Gehry's Disney Center.
Thursday, 7 Mar 2019 - A trip to Chrystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas, reminds our Self-Taught Gardener Lee Buttala about the importance of good architecture, structure, and landscape design, especially in the dead of winter.
Thursday, 14 Feb 2019 - While snow birds may head south for some color, our Self-Taught Gardener Lee Buttala shows us why we should love the muted colors of the winter.
Wednesday, 30 Jan 2019 - Minus 27 degree temperatures in Minneapolis lead our Self-Taught Gardener Lee Buttala to surprising new sources of gardening inspiration.
Wednesday, 16 Jan 2019 - As we move through life, what things do we carry with us to make us feel whole? Our Self-Taught Gardener Lee Buttala shares his own choices.
Thursday, 20 Dec 2018 - In these times of fluctuating weather, if we humans are confused, imagine how the plants in your garden are reacting. Lee Buttala, our Self-Taught Gardiner, tells you how to protect them.
Thursday, 22 Nov 2018 - Lee Buttala tells you things you never knew, about how much plants and humans depend on each other.
Wednesday, 7 Nov 2018 - According to our Self-Taught Gardener Lee Buttala, if politicians looked to the natural world and to Darwin for inspiration, we might all find ourselves inhabiting a better universe.
Thursday, 25 Oct 2018 - What happens when someone else now owns the gardens that once were yours? Lee Buttala shares his personal reactions.
Thursday, 11 Oct 2018 - Our Self-Taught Gardener Lee Buttala can't help but wonder why the U.S. Congress can't learn from the garden, where diversity gets along just fine.
Thursday, 27 Sep 2018 - Lee Buttala, our Self-Taught Gardener, learns lessons in biodiversity through a celebration of apples.
Thursday, 13 Sep 2018 - Forget the traditional oranges and golds. Our Self-Taught Gardener Lee Buttala opens our eyes to a different fall palette.
Thursday, 30 Aug 2018 - Our Self-Taught Gardener discovers that the window boxes of Nantucket exhibit a palette range all their own.
Thursday, 16 Aug 2018 - According to our Self-Taught Gardener, gardening, like a good conversation, needs to keep moving forward.
Thursday, 26 Jul 2018 - Why should vacations from gardening happen only in winter? Lee Buttala discovers the joys of midsummer gardening breaks.
Wednesday, 11 Jul 2018 - Lee Buttala finds a garden not far from Disneyland that takes Disney's magic a step further.
Thursday, 28 Jun 2018 - A tropical Thai garden that can survive in Madison, Wisconsin? It is colorful, and otherworldly (at least for us northerners).
Thursday, 14 Jun 2018 - For our Self-Taught Gardener Lee Buttalia, it is plants, not buildings, that make L.A.
Thursday, 31 May 2018 - A exhibition about "Power and Beauty in China's Last Dynasty" seem like a funny place to learn about placement and perspective in the garden. But, maybe not.
Thursday, 17 May 2018 - Partly creepy, partly divine, a Georgia plantation teaches our Self-Taught Gardener a lesson in tolerance and diversity.
Thursday, 3 May 2018 - Each element is set before you to change your pace, or cause you to look up at a view, or to simply give you pause to notice a fern, some artfully laid stonework, or to stop and hear the sound of the world around you.
Thursday, 19 Apr 2018 - A visit to the home of Richard Hartlage in Seattle brought home for our Self-Taught Gardener Lee Buttala the importance of color.
Wednesday, 11 Apr 2018 - As the season of rebirth arrives, the 'holy trinity' of the trillium brings forth the mystery of life itself.
Thursday, 29 Mar 2018 - Our Self-Taught Gardener Lee Buttala ponders gardeners whose impact on the world will always be remembered.
Thursday, 15 Mar 2018 - From a James Bond-like structure near the Arctic Circle, our Self-Taught Gardener, Lee Buttala, assures us that seeds and the future of our food sources are safely protected.
Thursday, 8 Mar 2018 - In the snow-covered winter landscape above the Arctic Circle, Lee Buttala realizes that trees connect us to the season we are in, and to the seasons yet to come.
Thursday, 22 Feb 2018 - As winter drags on, Lee Buttala, our Self-Taught Gardener, finds ways to hurry along his hopes for spring.
Thursday, 8 Feb 2018 - For Valentine's Day, Lee Buttala, our Self-Taught Gardener, offers us nature's own little love notes.
Thursday, 1 Feb 2018 - One thing was clear: seeds, and the packages containing them that arrive on our doorstep, hold our dreams and our future.
Thursday, 18 Jan 2018 - Our Self-Taught Gardener muses about how a persistent snow cover enables exotic plants to grow in unusual northern climes.
Wednesday, 10 Jan 2018 - Living now in Iowa, Lee Buttala ponders the relationship of the prairie, brought alive to many of us in Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House on the Prairie" stories, to the cultivated farmland that lies alongside it.
Thursday, 21 Dec 2017 - Although pine trees have taken a back seat to spruces and firs as Christmas tree choices, for Lee Buttala, our Self-Taught Gardener, they are still the star performers of the winter season.
