Michigan Gardener - Your guide Great Lakes gardening: Garden Event Calendar / Expert Advice / Plant Profiles / Tree Care

PLEASE NOTE: In the autumn of 1995, we hatched the idea for a free, local gardening publication. The following spring, we published the first issue of Michigan Gardener magazine. Advertisers, readers, and distribution sites embraced our vision. Thus began an exciting journey of helping our local gardening community grow and prosper.
After 27 years, nearly 200 issues published, and millions of copies printed, we have decided it is time to end the publication of our Print Magazine and E-Newsletter.

After 32,000 years, an Arctic plant is revived

March 9, 2012 • Leave a Comment

32000-year-old-plant — This plant was grown from the fruit of a narrow-leafed campion which died 32,000 year ago.

New York Times:

Living plants have been generated from the fruit of a little arctic flower, the narrow-leafed campion, that died 32,000 years ago, a team of Russian scientists reports. The fruit was stored by an arctic ground squirrel in its burrow on the tundra of northeastern Siberia and lay permanently frozen until excavated by scientists a few years ago.

This would be the oldest plant by far that has ever been grown from ancient tissue. The present record is held by a date palm grown from a seed some 2,000 years old that was recovered from the ancient fortress of Masada in Israel.

Read the full story…

Bob Stewart, 1952-2011

February 8, 2012 • Leave a Comment

bob-and-brigitta-stewart — Bob and Brigitta Stewart

Bob Stewart, co-founder of Arrowhead Alpines, passed away on December 16, 2011 after a long and brave battle against cancer. Bob was a brilliant plantsman, with encyclopedic knowledge of diminutive rock garden perennials to towering evergreen conifers, and virtually everything in between. His genius extended well beyond the plant world, including physics, chemistry, politics, the environment, predator birds, butterflies, and the list goes on. For those fortunate to have spent time with him, Bob could easily weave a conversation through all these subjects and more. And when it came to plants, seeing Bob converse with other elite plantsmen was amazing—listening to his full knowledge firing on all cylinders was an unforgettable experience.

Many simply knew Bob through the Arrowhead Alpines catalog. His opening page letter became legendary—ranging from current events to science to the simple (“Winter Sucks”) and back, of course, to plants. Bob tackled this annual, monumental task and produced an epic catalog. Readers got to know him through the thousands of plant entries written with sharp wit in his personal stream-of-consciousness style.

To say this catalog got around would be quite the understatement. While admiring plants in gardens around the world, it wouldn’t be unusual to bend down and read a label that said “Arrowhead Alpines – Fowlerville, Michigan.”

Brigitta Stewart, Bob’s wife and Arrowhead Alpines co-founder, will continue to run the retail and mail-order nursery. The printed catalog will no longer be published; current plant listings will be maintained on the Arrowhead Alpines website.

New USDA map confirms early planting times in northern regions

February 7, 2012 • 2 Comments

USDA:

Compared to the 1990 version, zone boundaries in this edition of the map have shifted in many areas. The new map is generally one 5-degree Fahrenheit half-zone warmer than the previous map throughout much of the United States. This is mostly a result of using temperature data from a longer and more recent time period; the new map uses data measured at weather stations during the 30-year period 1976-2005. In contrast, the 1990 map was based on temperature data from only a 13-year period of 1974-1986.

Find your new zone on the USDA website

Digital Editions