Tuesday, July 15, 2025

News and Ideas Worth Sharing

Lee Buttala

Lee Buttala is a writer and organizational consultant. He is the former Executive Director of Seed Savers Exchange, an organization dedicated to the preservation of America’s garden and farming heritage, an Emmy Award-winning television producer of Martha Stewart Living and 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)

written articles

THE SELF-TAUGHT GARDENER: Learning from others

On the eve of a design symposium to be held at their home and garden, Rockland Farm, Berkshire Botanical Garden board members Madeline and Ian Hooper share the genesis of their magical landscape and how their attending classes and lectures and visiting other people’s gardens influenced it.

THE SELF-TAUGHT GARDENER: Grow a garden IRL (In Real Life)

For parents teaching their children to garden, it is hard to compete with the apps on their tablets and phones, such as “Farmville” and “Grow A Garden,” that grow plants and communities seemingly overnight.

THE SELF-TAUGHT GARDENER: Garden daydreams

Most of the great American gardens I know were not drafted into place but drifted into place, matching not only the creator’s initial interests but their evolution as a gardener.

THE SELF-TAUGHT GARDENER: Memorial daze

A statue of W.E.B. DuBois will be unveiled in July on the steps of the Mason Library in Great Barrington. My visit to another outdoor installation shows what public art can accomplish.

THE SELF-TAUGHT GARDENER: Plants that put us in good company

Daffodils happily naturalized in Berkshire County.

THE SELF-TAUGHT GARDENER: Time travel

With all the talk of red states and blue states and regional politics, we live in a time where we often view anything not connected to us as “other.” But, oddly, at least in the Eastern United States, we have been connected across the 40th parallel by a single mountain range—the Appalachians—that has served for eons as a path not just for the hikers we see along Route 7 in the Berkshires, but by the flora and fauna that have travelled this same pathway.

THE SELF-TAUGHT GARDENER: Sowing lessons for procrastinators

My method of seed sowing involves simply sprinkling seeds on the ground where they will grow and eventually flower. Much easier than elaborate indoor methods.

THE SELF-TAUGHT GARDENER: Cut-back cutbacks

Perhaps the plants that I am most grateful for in this moment are hellebores. Because they are not native, I feel comfortable cutting back their decaying leaves in March.

THE SELF-TAUGHT GARDENER: Botanical personal pronouns

As I garden this season, I hope I will ask who I am gardening for and have an answer that is not first person singular. We all do what we can.

THE SELF-TAUGHT GARDENER: Taking down fences

Heading to a meeting about creating habitat for endangered pollinator species, I started to consider how we can manage our own habitat to make us feel connected and part of a community.

THE SELF-TAUGHT GARDENER: Talking heads tour

Winter is a time when gardening is happening primarily in one’s head. But winter is also the time when we need to see other gardeners.

THE SELF-TAUGHT GARDENER: Year’s end

With my mother’s death in October, I became a member of the oldest living generation in my family. As bleak as that can sound, it also has its merits.

THE SELF-TAUGHT GARDENER: Resilience—Sunday with the Johnsons

While we feel the burn of these moments, we must have faith in our ability to regenerate along with the world around us, and care about and fight for what we want the future to hold.

THE SELF-TAUGHT GARDENER: Responding to loss

The gardening tools from my parents and the values embodied in my father’s family are with me still, and they give me direction about how to move on in challenging times.

THE SELF-TAUGHT GARDENER: The end of the season

While I fondly remember the summers at our cottage, eating from the vegetable garden, living on corn and tomatoes and anything on the grill, it is the late season harvests of fall that come to mind when I think of my parents.

THE SELF-TAUGHT GARDENER: Dewey Hall dahlias

The Dewey Hall Dalia Festival demonstrated the power of flowers to cast a spell on people captivated by the sheer beauty and range of the varieties of flowers within the genus of Dahlia.
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