Tuesday, February 10, 2026

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: R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Who would have thought that Lee would have a gardening revelation while attending a political presentation by a Kennedy cousin?

THE SELF-TAUGHT GARDENER: Je ne regrette rien

You never know where ideas for gardening will come from. I learned an important lesson from Keith McNally's book about his life and work as a restaurateur.

THE SELF-TAUGHT GARDENER: Solstice flowers

There is something about this season, when we leave behind the shortest day of the year, that energizes me as a gardener.

THE SELF-TAUGHT GARDENER: Sow, tend, harvest

Gardener and writer Clark Lawrence is coming to Dewey Hall to screen a film about his garden in Italy and to share his adventures of going from Manassas, Virginia, to Italy, where he lives a life that feels like a re-gendered Italian reboot of “Eat, Pray, Love.”

THE SELF-TAUGHT GARDENER: Conquer the soil

Abra Lee’s speech next Sunday will bring something new to the audience at Rooted in Place—an understanding that the art and science of gardening the land we cherish can be learned both in a classroom and on the outskirts of a farm.

THE SELF-TAUGHT GARDENER: The cook’s garden

On the eve of Berkshire Botanical Garden’s Rooted in Place conference, author and speaker Kevin West shares his tenets for gardening, cooking and canning that can fill our gardens, tables, and larders with sustenance for the body and soul.

THE SELF-TAUGHT GARDENER: A tree grows in Cambridge

Often viewed as the first landscaped cemetery in the United States, Mount Auburn was formed in 1831, and its 175 acres are charged with the goal of comforting the bereaved and commemorating the deceased in a beautiful setting.

At the Dewey Hall Dahlia Festival: A new generation of growers

The crowd at Dewey Hall’s Dahlia Festival may not have been surprised by this beautiful bloom winning best in show, but they were certainly surprised by who the grower was.

THE SELF-TAUGHT GARDENER: Merit badges

The student, who was born in Italy, called into question our assumption that foreign plants are aggressors by asking who determines what belongs where.

THE SELF-TAUGHT GARDENER: Fall Flowers

Lee looks forward to Dewey Hall's Third Annual Dahlia Festival that takes place in the coming days and focuses on the variety of flowers all belonging to the single genus of dahlia.

THE SELF-TAUGHT GARDENER: Sharing what you know

A horticultural whisperer shared his take on what we can learn from nature to apply in our gardens, which are often anything but natural.

THE SELF-TAUGHT GARDENER: Make America shady again

Currently, the U.S. spends as much energy cooling and heating our homes as the continent of Africa expends on all electrical usage, so maybe a few trees could supplant some of our energy usage, should we be so inclined.

THE SELF-TAUGHT GARDENER: The mean greens

Like Holly Golightly’s mean reds in Capote’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” the mean greens are a generalized sense of angst and perhaps panic, not about one’s life, but about the state of one’s garden.

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.
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