Monday, October 26, 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: Leaving the prairie

As we move through life, what things do we carry with us to make us feel whole? Our Self-Taught Gardener Lee Buttala shares his own choices.

Self-Taught Gardener: Reliable ground cover

In these times of fluctuating weather, if we humans are confused, imagine how the plants in your garden are reacting. Lee Buttala, our Self-Taught Gardiner, tells you how to protect them.

The Self-Taught Gardener: Embracing codependency

Lee Buttala tells you things you never knew, about how much plants and humans depend on each other.

The Self-Taught Gardener: Evolution and adaptation

According to our Self-Taught Gardener Lee Buttala, if politicians looked to the natural world and to Darwin for inspiration, we might all find ourselves inhabiting a better universe.

The Self-Taught Gardener: Succession gardening

What happens when someone else now owns the gardens that once were yours? Lee Buttala shares his personal reactions.

The Self-Taught Gardener: Courtly behavior

Our Self-Taught Gardener Lee Buttala can't help but wonder why the U.S. Congress can't learn from the garden, where diversity gets along just fine.

The Self-Taught Gardener: The right fruit for the right place

Lee Buttala, our Self-Taught Gardener, learns lessons in biodiversity through a celebration of apples.

The Self-Taught Gardener: The other fall colors

Forget the traditional oranges and golds. Our Self-Taught Gardener Lee Buttala opens our eyes to a different fall palette.

The Self-Taught Gardener: Summer palette on Nantucket

Our Self-Taught Gardener discovers that the window boxes of Nantucket exhibit a palette range all their own.

The Self-Taught Gardener: Tableside gardening

According to our Self-Taught Gardener, gardening, like a good conversation, needs to keep moving forward.

The Self-Taught Gardener: Midsummer night’s dream

Why should vacations from gardening happen only in winter? Lee Buttala discovers the joys of midsummer gardening breaks.

The Self-Taught Gardener: Fantasyland

Lee Buttala finds a garden not far from Disneyland that takes Disney's magic a step further.

The Self-Taught Gardener: Tropical effects

A tropical Thai garden that can survive in Madison, Wisconsin? It is colorful, and otherworldly (at least for us northerners).

The Self-Taught Gardener: L.A. Stories

For our Self-Taught Gardener Lee Buttalia, it is plants, not buildings, that make L.A.

The Self-Taught Gardener: The art of perspective

A exhibition about "Power and Beauty in China's Last Dynasty" seem like a funny place to learn about placement and perspective in the garden. But, maybe not.

The Self-Taught Gardener: Southern drama

Partly creepy, partly divine, a Georgia plantation teaches our Self-Taught Gardener a lesson in tolerance and diversity.
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