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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

Garden

The Self-Taught Gardener: Finding tranquility

When I see these flowers, I cannot help but see the world filled with a beauty that warrants our protection.

Garden

The Self-Taught Gardener: Eliminating the competition

The ability of the boneset plant to kill off its neighbors, except for a few intimates, makes me think this plant is descended from the infamous Italian Renaissance Borgia family.

Garden

The Self-Taught Gardener: Of cabbages and kales

For years I have been confused by the concept of ornamental cabbages and kales that are planted but not eaten. Now I have arrived at the perfect balance of beauty and edibility.

Garden

The Self-Taught Gardener: Flower power

Flowers from the composite family, actually hundreds of flowers held tightly together to look like one, gave me a vision of how we can all come together to provide the world with a little color and beauty.

Garden

The Self-Taught Gardener: Water lilies, two ways

What intrigued me most about two water lily sightings was how the setting influenced my response to this wonderful aquatic.

Garden

The Self-Taught Gardener: The Ornamental and the Economic

Ros Creasy, whom I had the pleasure of visiting in Los Altos this week, taught me about another merging of two seemingly opposing forces, the ornamental and the economic.

Garden

The Self-Taught Gardener: It’s a matter of taste

At this time of year, at the height of the growing season, nothing argues more for the preservation of seed variety than the pleasure of savoring the abundance of tastes.

Garden

The Self-Taught Gardener: Strength in diversity

There is every reason in the world to celebrate and maintain the diversity of all species, beginning with our own.

Garden

The Self-Taught Gardener: Slow Flowers

Of late, a new movement, Slow Flowers, has been giving local a new dimension. Local flowers have become just as popular as their vegetable counterparts.

Garden

The Self-Taught Gardener: The lineup

The only time plants look good set in tightly spaced rows in the garden is in an allée of trees, or in the vegetable or cutting garden. Or perhaps in Victorian bedding schemes at historic houses.

Garden

The Self-Taught Gardener: Fruitful thoughts

Growing fruit is an unpredictable business with bumper crops (where does this term come from?) often followed by less productive seasons.

Garden

The Self-Taught Gardener: Bold choices

To my eye, every plant has a proper home.

Garden

The Self-Taught Gardener: Borne that way

Sometimes a plant in the wild has a form that appears to differentiate it from other members of its same species.

Garden

The Self-Taught Gardener: Long-term investment

So often we allow mundane garden tasks like weeding or raking up fallen leaves and spent magnolia flowers to distract us from the garden activities that would benefit us more greatly in the future.

Garden

The Self-Taught Gardener: The great unifiers

These ancient non-seed forming plants are good team players and always seem to unify the landscape.

Garden

The Self-Taught Gardener: Cut-backs and by-roads

Willows are enjoying the rain and showing us how they can shine.

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