My favorite part of the Garden History feature is:

Gessiegail perhaps the Texas Horticultural Society might know? I couldn't find a website for them but I'm techy challenged so you should try.

O just to let Dave and Admin know that I will be bombarding them with Cowtown/AB and CA (Canada has the same code as California, how funky weird is that?) historical stuff ^_^

This sounds like fun. I'll try to particapate.
Vickie

Thanks for the tip. A friend and I love to visit nurseries or anywhere we can buy plants. We are planning a September trip and will really have to do some research on where to find the best plants.

One small cautionary note: Since Gardening History is date-driven, we need to be able to pinpoint a particular date for an event or location.

Most preferable is the anniversary of the first/inaugural event, opening or dedication ceremonies of the park or garden was opened. The dates aren't always readily available, but if it's something near to you (or near and dear to your heart), you may be able to track down the group responsible for maintaining the records, and wheedle information out of them.

An few targeted emails were how we got the dates of the first Master Gardener class, the first U.S. garden club meeting, and the first Philadelphia Flower Show.

Heres one swamp cabbage festival.

http://oldmanriggs.com/swampcab.html

This is not the official website but it has a link to the Official one, and lots of other stiff like how to make swamp cabbage. when it started Ect...

I just found out that the pomegranates I bought at an Miss. State Univ. Experiment Station truck garden festival are progeny of those smuggled in from Turkmenistan by a Russian botanist. This fascinating tale of the botanist is in the short book at:

http://books.google.com/books?id=_G59NFbNpREC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_navlinks_s

It is so much more fun to know the history of plants! So much food, medicine, textiles like rayon in clothing and so many things we use come from plants!

Susan

The Swamp Cabbage Festival is added and will appear next Feb. It sounds a lot like our Tater Day, but unfortunately (or fortunately) we have no armadillos to race up here in KY.

I'll see if I can come up with something for the pomegranates...(got to be able to link to a specific day and date)

The pomegranate story is wonderful!

I'll try to find a way to incorporate it. (I need the book for my library, as I love these types of stories and the writer has a wonderful way of putting their thoughts on paper)

Yes, and I am excited that I have four of his plants. Now if I can just get the cuttings to root better so I can share them....

I see that many others think there are too many death notices for famous botanists. 3 in today's column. Maybe the emphasis could be switched to birth dates instead, which would be a more positive approach.

I just read the article about Isabella Stewart Gardner on todays garden history and I loved it.

As one of the voters who felt there are way too many birth and death notices, I like MaryE's idea of switching to birth notices only. Granted, I understand now that it may take time, and a major collaborative effort by DGers, before there are enough dates on file to whittle it down to one or the other.

Many kudos to DG for being interested in all of our opinions on how this portion of the site is run, while also getting a lot of exposure to it at the same time for all those who never knew....brilliant!!!!!

At least 20 years ago or more I came across a tidbit of info on the introduction of bamboo into America in TwinLeaf, a publication out of Monticello. It dealt with someone in Philadelphia, probably Ben Franklin, receiving a basket of fruit from afar. When the fruit was consumed the basket was tossed into the lot beside the home - where all household garbage was tossed in those days. Sometime later it was discovered by a guest to the home (Thomas Jefferson maybe) that the basket had "sprouted". I wish I could remember the particulars but the gray cells are fleeing fast these days.

I could not find the exact article about the bamboo but I did come across this site with some other historical data:

http://www.twinleaf.org/articles/index.html