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Struggling to make a smelly onion or an unripe pepper exciting for your biology students? Grab a simple optical microscope and transform boredom into curiosity! You will discover the vibrant colour palette of plant pigments hidden in food crops we eat every day.

The post Teaching Botany: a deep dive into plant pigments in crops appeared first on Botany One.

Greens senator sees climate crisis and environment as the ‘elephant in the room’ for 2025 election

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The Greens are demanding Labor put a moratorium on the destruction of koala habitat and overcome political opponents and mining interests to implement its full suite of promised environment protection laws, in an early attempt to position nature as a federal election issue.

“What we need is the government, the Labor party, to be tougher and to have some guts to stand up and stare them down,” says the party’s environment spokesperson, Sarah Hanson-Young.

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It’s time to dip back into the gardens I visited as part of last summer’s Garden Fling up in the Puget Sound area. The long weekend was a mix great of gardens I’d previously toured and ones that were new to me. This week I thought it would be fun to write about a few of the private gardens that I’d visited before and link back to my first visit, maybe compare and contrast. I’m starting at the Risdahl-Pittman garden…

My first visit to this garden was in June of 2022 (here), it was part of the Northwest Perennial Alliance Study Weekend—an event that rotates between different cities and groups in the PNW (this year’s event will be in the Portland area, hosted by the Hardy Plant Society of Oregon). 

That first visit was on an overcast drippy day and I think there was one other person in the garden while I was there. This visit was sunny, warm, and the garden was full of people.

The consistent factor was the fabulousness of the garden.

Attention to detail…

And excellent plantswomanship (“Plantsmanship is knowledge of the diversity of plants and their cultivation…” source), I make the distinction because I believe Susan (rather than Guy) is the primary gardener here. That lady in pink—who so nicely brings out the pink of the hydrangea—is Janet Davis of  The Paintbox Garden.

While Susan is the gardener, Guy is the hardscape guru, and builder of their fantastic greenhouse. 

Which sadly I only got a couple lame photos of. There are definitely better greenhouse photos from my last visit.

Daphne x houtteana

I was thrilled to see there plant is still alive, as mine sadly is not.

Off in the distance is the tool shed and storage space.

Our first peek at the interesting pond and surrounding hardscape.

When chatting with Guy during my previous visit said the pond and it’s surrounding features were there when they bought the home. Flinger for scale…

Here’s more of our group, that’s Tamara (Chickadee Gardens) in the pink, the two fellows across the planting island are Justin () and Max, the lady with the striking white hair and black top is Denise (A Growing Obsession)…

I definitely took fewer plant focused photos in the garden this visit, it goes to show you what happens when your chatting up your fellow plant people!

Fancy rhododendrons, Perhaps R. ‘Golfer’ in front and R. orbiculare at the back.

Rhododendron orbiculare (?)

Athyrium otophorum

This area was under construction, or just completed, during my previous visit. It’s definitely in full-swing now.

I’d just purchased a Parthenocissus henryana at our Rhododendron Species Botanical Garden stop earlier that day, so it was fun to see this one looking good against the dark wall.

Then again everything looked good against that dark wall!

Hmm, I have no idea what this beauty is.

And I’m definitely out of order now, as I can see the pond area in the background—it just goes to show you how I wandered around the garden enjoying it all.

If you can swing it it’s a great experience to visit private gardens repeatedly over time and see how the plants grow (or not) and how the areas change as a result of that, or the owners desire for something new. Susan and Guy if you’re reading I guess that means I’ll be back again in 2026!