Monday, March 16, 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: Spring musical

There is no other art form that compares to gardening. Each week in the garden is like a movement in a musical piece.

The Self-Taught Gardener: The minor leagues

I have always loved spring blooming bulbs; planting them in the fall and awaiting their arrival in spring is an act of faith for a gardener.

The Self-Taught Gardener: Gardeners I have never known

By touring their gardens, I came to have an understanding of how gardeners respond to the land that would prove just as essential for me as seed sowing charts and precise measurements.

The Self-Taught Gardener: Spring fever

How would I ever get through the raking of beds and areas of the lawn that I never managed to get to in the fall?

The Self-Taught Gardener: The most ruthless sport

Gardening is not for the faint of heart – it is a ruthless sport that involves everything from Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest standards for selecting plants to the willingness to take out something that isn’t working.

The Self-Taught Gardener: A collector’s vision

There is an approach to collecting, whether the plant is rare or mundane, that transforms gardens and the plants within them into works of art.

The Self-Taught Gardener: The Garden Wall — selecting non-natives that belong here

America’s strength comes from immigration and closing our doors to those who have contributed to a diverse economy and culture throughout our history is shortsighted. And I think the same principles apply to gardening.

The Self-Taught Gardener: No one gardens alone

Garden lore is filled with time-honored truths and a mysticism to which we like to cling.

The Self-Taught Gardener: Inspiration knows no borders

In an age of appropriation, we look at what other gardeners are doing not merely to mimic but to find a way to express ourselves.
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