Oregonlive.com
Gardening news and notes:
Kym Pokorny, The Oregonian
IT’S ABOUT TIME: The first woman to circumnavigate the globe did so dressed as a man. At least, that’s what the photo shows (which is most likely inaccurate). I think the outfit looks more like a cross between a circus clown and the Sandman. But it wasn’t fashion that was on her mind. Jeanne Baret was a botanist in a day when women weren’t recognized in the fields of science. It was also against French law for a woman to travel on naval ships, but she did it anyway. In 1766, she sneaked on board the first French ship to sail around the world in order to accompany renowned botanist Philibert Commerson, who was her mentor and lover. Together they collected 6,000 plant specimens, including Bougainvillea, which was named after the ship’s captain Louis Antoine de Bougainville. Seventy other species were named after Commerson, but none for Baret. Until now. A new species, Solanum baretiae, was recently named in her honor. It only took 250 years.
GARDENS TO VISIT: Traveling solo solves the push-and-pull process of that inevitable question: “What do you want to do today?” I don’t know which is more frustrating: A travel companion who passive-aggressively says, “Oh, I don’t care; you decide,” and then complains the whole time. Or the irritating person who studies the guide book every night and announces the agenda the following morning without any input from you. And then there are the friends who think of gardens as a park, a place to stroll and perhaps have a picnic. To make a garden an actual designation, maybe even a daylong, label-looking, note-taking trip, is as foreign to them as a visit to a World War II battle ground would be to me. When I figure out how to solve this quandary, which I don’t think is possible, I’m going to plan a garden trip around the suggestions of British gardenerDiarmuid Gavin, who reveals his favorite gardens around the world. First on my list is Jardin Majorelle in Morocco, followed by Tresco Abbey Garden in the Isles of Scilly.
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