thefantasybotanist

[thefantasybotanist]

happy ides of March

[thefantasybotanist]

Okay, I'm about to lay down some garden history.

1. People in acient Rome, Byzantium, and the early Renaissance had gorgeous gardens with all sorts of flowers and plants and pots and even greenhouses made with selenite.

2. In the 1700s, people wanted to recapture the Renaissance and ancient cultures, which was when a lot of neoclassical architecture popped up. One way people were doing this was by recreating gardens.

3. Some dipshit (can't remember his name) saw gardens all overgrown with greenery and thought that those were the plants they had grown in those beds, and started this trend of greenery-only gardens.

4. This is where hedge mazes and lawns comes from, not because "I'm rich and have nothing better to do with it." It wasn't about emulating royalty, it was about emulating the great thinkers of the past, but in a fundamentally flawed way.

5. At the exact same point in time, games that required open spaces like golf, and bowling started moving out of their grassy homelands of primarily Scotland (but other games like tennis were a thing, too) and started integrating with the rest of Europe as the melting pot that was the American and Australian colonies mingled them together.

6. This turned greenery gardens into much flatter areas as they needed the space for recreation. However, it wasn't a monoculture.

7. Lawns were very diverse spaces. Low-growing vines, chamomile, thyme, clover, as well as various grasses local to the area (sedges, hays, crabgrass, etc.) were all common and created something much more similar to a prairie or a forest glen.

8. After WW2, poison manufacturers needed a new product because no one was buying mustard gas anymore. They reworked their various poisons to become "nontoxic" to humans in small doses but killed plants and insects, and herbicides and insecticides were born.

9. However, they couldn't figure a way to kill prickly weeds like prickly lettuce without also killing all the other broad-leafed plants, which includes clover and thyme and chamomile, so they launched a campaign to tell everyone that multiculture lawns were bad and if you wanted to be a good suburban homeowner, you wouldn't have any weeds like clover in your yard, so buy this weed killer and get the flawless grass lawn you've always wanted.

That is how lawns were invented, a bunch of miniature steps and if you wanted a lawn for golfing and lawn bowling and tennis and croquet, you could absolutely do it because there are dozens of walkable plants that can be symbiotically grown and also don't denigrate people in the 1800s when it was clearly the fault of the 50s.

#did anything good happen in the 50s #i dont think so

[thefantasybotanist]

Zelena: This particular weed is a morning glory.

Zelena: They're practically impossible to kill.

Zelena: I'm going to plant it in Regina's flowerbed.

Sheriff David: we got a call you have pot in your car.

Zelena: *pulls out flower pot* oh you mean this?

Sheriff David: *laughing* my mistake, what are you growing?

Zelena: weed

[thefantasybotanist]

heres to the other dandelions out there

[thefantasybotanist]

[thefantasybotanist]

It's just very important to me that you know prairie-style gardens exist.

Ok. Thank you. Carry on.

[thefantasybotanist]

[thefantasybotanist]

This Mediterranean palazzo offers endless terrace options around the entire home. One more stunning than the other. Photo by @lifestyle_mallorca

Get Inspired, visit www.myhouseidea.com

[thefantasybotanist]

i love how every plant guide ever is like

#there should be a post about how to properlt neglect your neglect proof plant

[thefantasybotanist]

As promised, some budget advice for absolute beginner garderners! It's a slow process to fill a garden while spending little money, but it makes the pay off all the sweeter, and isn't it nice to slow down in this day and age?

[thefantasybotanist]

You would kill a man for this bedroom

#fuck me #preferably in this bed #hot shit right here

[thefantasybotanist]

Dinosaurs 🦕🌿, leaf artwork by Raku Inoue

#i love this

[thefantasybotanist]

[thefantasybotanist]

Abandoned 19th century greenhouse 🙂 💚

Log Homes

Sandra L Evans

[thefantasybotanist]

Here is a picture of J.R.R. Tolkien looking at some flowers in a greenhouse. Apparently, he was the worst person to take walks with because he liked to stop and observe every tree he passed very carefully. We can only assume that he did this because he was waiting for them all to reveal their true Ent nature and speak to him. Ents do speak slowly, after all. They were probably between words while he was watching.

[thefantasybotanist]

You can eat Pokeweed if you cook it right. Tastes oniony.

As a society, we need to return to plant symbolism, but not the obscure and arbitrary stuff—a lot of plants' meanings were connected to their medicinal properties or other properties. More of that, and include the ecological roles and values too. More plant symbolism where plants "mean" things because they really do literally mean those things

Red poppies came to symbolize remembrance of fallen soldiers and hope for a peaceful future because they flourished in the fields after WW1 due to the disturbance caused by the bombings, which created the perfect environment for an early-successional-stage plant. Do you see what I'm saying

[thefantasybotanist]

You can eat these petals. I think they taste like apricot.

Begonia Plant