Lee Buttala is 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)
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.
Thursday, 14 Dec 2017 - Gardening is in the process of evolving and being transformed into something that requires a level of care and nursing different from the highly manicured beds and borders.
Thursday, 16 Nov 2017 - Many vegetables become sweeter with cooler temperatures. So do some gardeners, like our author, in hopes that someone will keep him warm during the winter.
Thursday, 9 Nov 2017 - We can learn a lot from Southern gardeners as we face warmer weather here in the North, such as how to create the illusion of cool.
Thursday, 26 Oct 2017 - How can we help but be confused if the spring catalogs come out in the dead of winter and the autumn catalogs come out when we're just planting in spring? Do gardeners care?
Thursday, 12 Oct 2017 - When I see these flowers, I cannot help but see the world filled with a beauty that warrants our protection.
Thursday, 5 Oct 2017 - The ability of the boneset plant to kill off its neighbors, except for a few intimates, makes me think this plant is descended from the infamous Italian Renaissance Borgia family.
Thursday, 28 Sep 2017 - For years I have been confused by the concept of ornamental cabbages and kales that are planted but not eaten. Now I have arrived at the perfect balance of beauty and edibility.
Thursday, 21 Sep 2017 - Flowers from the composite family, actually hundreds of flowers held tightly together to look like one, gave me a vision of how we can all come together to provide the world with a little color and beauty.
Thursday, 14 Sep 2017 - What intrigued me most about two water lily sightings was how the setting influenced my response to this wonderful aquatic.
Thursday, 7 Sep 2017 - Ros Creasy, whom I had the pleasure of visiting in Los Altos this week, taught me about another merging of two seemingly opposing forces, the ornamental and the economic.
Thursday, 24 Aug 2017 - At this time of year, at the height of the growing season, nothing argues more for the preservation of seed variety than the pleasure of savoring the abundance of tastes.
Thursday, 17 Aug 2017 - There is every reason in the world to celebrate and maintain the diversity of all species, beginning with our own.
Thursday, 10 Aug 2017 - Of late, a new movement, Slow Flowers, has been giving local a new dimension. Local flowers have become just as popular as their vegetable counterparts.
Thursday, 3 Aug 2017 - The only time plants look good set in tightly spaced rows in the garden is in an allée of trees, or in the vegetable or cutting garden. Or perhaps in Victorian bedding schemes at historic houses.
Thursday, 20 Jul 2017 - Growing fruit is an unpredictable business with bumper crops (where does this term come from?) often followed by less productive seasons.
