Echeveria: Desert Rosettes of Color and Grace

 

Among the world’s most beloved succulents, Echeveria holds a special throne—a rosette of living sculpture, each leaf a waxy petal of resilience. Native to the rocky slopes and high plains of Central and South America, particularly Mexico, these plants evolved under the sun’s unrelenting blaze and the mercy of brief desert rains. Their geometric beauty, soft tones of blue-green and lavender-pink, and patience in dry soils have made them universal companions in windowsills and gardens alike.

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Native Habitat and Origins

Echeverias hail mostly from Mexico, with some species found further south into Central America and the Andes. Their homeland landscapes—rocky outcrops, cliffs, and semi-arid highlands—taught them frugality. The thick, fleshy leaves are reservoirs of water, the silvery bloom on the leaf surface a natural sunscreen. This desert pedigree gives Echeveria an enviable toughness and explains their preference for bright, unfiltered sunlight and porous soil.

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Cold Hardiness

Though hardy by nature, Echeveria are children of warmth. Most species are tender perennials in USDA Zones 9–11, tolerating temperatures down to about 35°F (1–2°C). A light frost may scar them, but a hard freeze will kill the plant outright. In colder regions, they thrive in pots that can be brought indoors during winter months. When overwintering inside, a sunny window and reduced watering are the key to survival—think of them as sun worshipers resting through winter’s gray.

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Soil Requirements

Echeveria despise “wet feet.” Their roots must breathe. A gritty, fast-draining mix—half cactus soil and half coarse sand or perlite—is their ideal home. In nature, rainwater runs off within minutes; in a pot, the gardener must imitate that. A clay or terra cotta container, which wicks moisture away, adds another layer of protection. Rich, loamy soils are fatal indulgences for these desert natives; neglect, in this case, is love.

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Care and Maintenance

Echeveria are undemanding yet reward those who pay attention.

• Light: Full sun brings out their richest colors and tightest forms. Indoors, they need the brightest light available—ideally six hours daily.

• Water: Let the soil dry thoroughly between waterings. Overwatering leads to rot; underwatering, merely to temporary shriveling.

• Feeding: A light feeding of diluted fertilizer during active growth (spring and summer) suffices.

• Propagation: One of the delights of Echeveria is how easily they multiply. A single leaf, set upon dry soil, will sprout roots and a new rosette—life born from patience and air.

• Maintenance: Remove withered leaves and old flower stalks to keep the plant tidy. Repot every few years to refresh the soil and admire the offsets (or “pups”) that often cluster at the base.

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The Gardener’s Companion

Echeveria embody the poetry of restraint: beauty shaped by necessity. Whether gracing a modern container garden, cascading from a wall planter, or sitting proud on a windowsill, they carry a quiet reminder from their homeland—that life thrives best when rooted in simplicity, sunlight, and well-drained soil.

Bring the timeless elegance of Echeveria into your own garden or home. These sculpted rosettes ask for little—just sunlight, good drainage, and a gardener’s quiet admiration. Explore our selection of Echeveria varieties and start growing beauty that thrives on simplicity.

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Here is your gardener’s to-do list for November, 2025 across the United States

Here is your gardener’s to-do list for November, 2025, across the United States—a month of deepening quiet, where the garden exhales and folds in on itself. November calls for tucking things in, protecting roots, and preparing the soul (and soil) for winter’s long sleep.

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Northeast

• 🌷 Last Call for Bulbs: Get tulips, daffodils, and garlic in before the ground freezes.

• 🍂 Mulch Deeply: Add a thick layer over perennial beds, roses, and root crops.

• 🧤 Protect Trees: Wrap young trunks to guard against frost cracking and animal damage.

• 🪣 Drain Tools and Hoses: Store all irrigation materials to prevent freeze damage.

• 🍁 Leave the Leaves: Rake excess, but let some stay for overwintering pollinators.

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Midwest

• 🧄 Finish Garlic Planting: If the ground isn’t frozen, there’s still time.

• 🧹 Clean Beds: Remove debris to prevent overwintering pests and disease.

• 🛡️ Mulch and Cover: Add mulch to beds and cover crops on vegetable plots.

• 🧊 Winterize: Drain hoses, insulate spigots, and store containers.

• 🧰 Tool Care: Sharpen, clean, and oil tools for winter storage.

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Southeast

• 🥬 Fall Veggies: Keep planting and harvesting greens, carrots, turnips, and onions.

• 🌼 Fresh Flowers: Pansies, violas, and dianthus can still go in.

• 🍂 Rake and Compost: Use fallen leaves as mulch or compost them for next year.

• 🐞 Pest Watch: Aphids and cabbage loopers may still lurk—stay alert.

• 🌿 Divide Perennials: Now’s a fine time to divide daylilies, hostas, and iris.

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Southwest

• 🧄 Plant Garlic and Onions: Cool temps make now ideal for root crops.

• 🌸 Plant Flowers: Sow poppies, larkspur, calendula, and wildflowers.

• 🌵 Care for Cactus: Protect tender succulents from early frost with frost cloths.

• 🧹 Clean Beds: Remove spent summer growth and compost healthy remains.

• 🧤 Water Wisely: Cut back irrigation but don’t let roots go bone-dry.

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Pacific Northwest

• 🧄 Get Garlic In: Plant hardneck garlic before the soil hardens.

• 🌾 Mulch Beds: Use leaves and straw to insulate perennials and vegetable beds.

• 🌧️ Check Drainage: Clear gutters and ensure garden beds don’t flood in heavy rain.

• 🧤 Store Tubers: Dahlia, canna, and gladiolus tubers should be dug, dried, and stored.

• 🌿 Cover Crops: Sow if you haven’t yet—rye, clover, and vetch enrich soil.

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Mountain West

• ❄️ Winterize Everything: Beds, trees, hoses, irrigation—batten down the hatches.

• 🧄 Plant Garlic: As long as soil is workable, it's not too late.

• 🌿 Mulch and Cover: Protect any overwintering crops or perennials.

• 🧹 Tidy Up: Compost leaves, pull spent plants, store tools.

• 🪵 Protect Evergreens: Water them well and consider windbreaks in exposed areas.

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California

• 🥬 Cool Season Crops: Keep planting lettuce, spinach, broccoli, and root veggies.

• 🌸 Fall Flowers: Sow sweet peas, Iceland poppies, and stock.

• 🧼 Clean Up Beds: Remove dying summer plants; freshen mulch.

• 🌱 Compost: Build piles with leaves, straw, and garden waste.

• 🌧️ Prepare for Rains: Repair drainage, clear gutters, and store tools out of the weather.

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November in the garden is not lifeless—it’s restful. It's a time for reflection, stewardship, and preparation. A good gardener in November thinks not only of survival, but of resurrection come spring. And that, my friend, is hope with dirt under its nails.

 

Don't miss these special garden events in November, 2025

 

Here's  a crisp list of garden-related events across the U.S. this November 2025. I’ve combed through extension services and botanical gardens to bring you the freshest happenings.

 

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Botanical Garden Events (November 2025)

• Fort Worth Botanic Garden (TX)

  • Dog Days: November 8–9 – Bring your canine companions for two dog-friendly days with regular garden hours. fwbg.org

  • Member Appreciation Day: November 8 – Members enjoy 20% off in the gift shops. fwbg.org+2missouribotanicalgarden.org+2

  • Members‑Only Quiet Hour Walk: November 8 – A peaceful, guided silent walk at sunrise (7:30 AM). fwbg.org+1

  • Free Admission Day, Veterans Day: November 11 – The garden opens its gates free to all in tribute to veterans. The Washington Post+15fwbg.org+15missouribotanicalgarden.org+15

  • Blooms & Beats: November 14 – Evening live music, food trucks, yard games, and grown-up refreshments under the stars. fwbg.org

• Missouri Botanical Garden (St. Louis, MO)

  • Member Appreciation Days: November 1–2 – Perks for members with special access or offers. United States Botanic Garden+9missouribotanicalgarden.org+9Better Homes & Gardens+9

  • Member Speaker Series: Dr. Lúcia G. Lohmann talks – November 10, 2:00–3:00 PM. missouribotanicalgarden.org

  • Garden Glow & Holiday Flower & Train Show –

    • Garden Glow Member Preview Night: November 14, 5:00–10:00 PM

    • Garden Glow (open to public through Jan 3, 2026): November 15–Jan 3, nightly light spectacle.

    • Holiday Flower & Train Show: November 15–Jan 3, day running model trains and festive blooms.

    • Sensory Night at Garden Glow: November 18, 5:00–9:30 PM.

    • Holiday Around the World Wine Dinner: November 20, 7:00–9:00 PM.

    • Jingle & Mingle at Garden Glow: November 21, 7:00–9:30 PM. Cornell Cooperative Extension+15missouribotanicalgarden.org+15Cornell Cooperative Extension+15

• Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden (Richmond, VA)

  • As Seen in the Garden – Photography Exhibit: Nov 1–Jan 4, featuring Camera Club of Richmond’s seasonal garden photos. Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden

  • Dominion Energy GardenFest of Lights: Nov 24–Jan 4—holiday light event rich with color, decorations, and seasonal cheer. Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden

• Coastal Georgia Botanical Gardens (Savannah, GA)

  • December Nights and Holiday Lights begins late November into December, drenched in a million lights. Wikipedia

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Cooperative Extension & Master Gardener Events (November 2025)

• UNH Cooperative Extension

  • “A Biocontrol Starter Pack” Webinar: November 25, 6:30–8:00 PM. A practical session for greenhouse, nursery, and garden center folks. The Washington Post+3Extension | University of New Hampshire+3Extension | University of New Hampshire+3

• Cooperative Extension Ulster County (NY)

  • 2025 Cut Flower Webinar Series: November 19, noon–1:00 PM—free via Zoom, insights for flower producers. Cornell Cooperative Extension+2events.uri.edu+2

• Cornell Cooperative Extension, Genesee County (NY)

  • Garden Talk: “Gardening Myths: Fact vs. Fiction”: November 6. Bust those myths (yes, gravel in pots is a myth). Cornell Cooperative ExtensionCornell Cooperative Extension

• University of Delaware Master Gardeners (DE)

  • Autumn Garden Landscape Workshop: November 7, Kent County—hands-on learning on fall landscape styling and design. University of Delaware

     

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When to Welcome Earthworms to Your Southern Garden

 

 In the South, we don’t just grow plants — we grow soil. And there’s no better partner in that work than the humble earthworm. These quiet tillers turn clay into crumb and leaf litter into living loam, feeding your garden from the ground up. But timing matters when you invite them in.

The Right Season for the South

For most of the Southeast, the best time to introduce earthworms is early fall — after the worst summer heat has passed but before the first frost. The soil is warm, the air is mild, and autumn rains soften the ground just enough for worms to slip comfortably into their new home.

Spring works too — once the soil warms past 50°F and isn’t waterlogged. Think dogwoods blooming, azaleas flaring pink, and soil that feels cool but not cold to the touch.

Avoid midsummer, when Southern clay bakes like brick, and winter, when the ground sleeps too deeply.

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A Few Southern Secrets

• Loosen your soil with a fork and water it lightly the night before release.

• Add leaf mold, compost, or shredded mulch — that’s worm food.

• Set them free in the evening or on a cloudy day so the sun doesn’t drive them off.

• Never add worms to soil treated with chemicals — it’s like setting out a banquet in a poison garden.

Once they take hold, they’ll stay — multiplying in the shade of your collards and the roots of your roses.

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The Living Soul of the Garden

A healthy Southern garden hums below the surface. Earthworms breathe life into red clay, making it loose, rich, and fragrant. They’re proof that every good garden begins with patience, humility, and the quiet work of the unseen.

Bring earthworms home this season — and let your soil come alive.

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Roots and Reverence: The Gardens Within Gullah Geechee Folk Art

 

Where the Land Speaks Through the Hands

Along the coastal plains and sea islands from North Carolina to Florida, the Gullah Geechee people have tended both land and soul for generations. Descended from West Africans enslaved on the rice, indigo, and cotton plantations of the Lowcountry, they preserved ancestral languages, beliefs, and craftsmanship through centuries of hardship. Their art — humble yet transcendent — springs directly from the soil itself.

In Gullah Geechee folk art, the earth is not backdrop but storyteller. Sweetgrass basket coils trace the spiral of life. Patchwork quilts bloom with colors recalling the Carolina marshes. Hand-carved figures and painted boards shimmer with images of fields, trees, rivers, and blossoms — the everyday Eden that has sustained their people body and spirit.

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Horticultural and Agricultural Imagery: Symbols of Labor and Life

Agriculture lies at the heart of Gullah Geechee identity. Rice, indigo, and okra are not mere crops; they are living connections to Africa, each seed carrying memory across the Atlantic. Folk artists often depict hands sowing, women harvesting, and fields of gold rippling beneath a Lowcountry sky — images of toil transformed into testimony.

Garden scenes and cultivated rows appear in paintings and story quilts as symbols of both survival and dignity. The garden, in Gullah understanding, is sacred ground — a space where human care meets divine providence. Many works show garden gates, furrows, and trellised vines as metaphors for passage, faith, and endurance.

Even simple motifs — a hoe, a seed sack, a water gourd — hold the weight of heritage. They speak of ancestors who coaxed beauty and sustenance from difficult soil, often under the shadow of oppression, yet never without hope.

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Floral Motifs: Blossoms of Memory and Spirit

Flowers in Gullah Geechee folk art are never purely decorative. Hibiscus, cotton, lilies, and sunflowers appear in brilliant contrast against earthen backgrounds, evoking both Africa’s tropics and the Southern coast’s bloom-filled seasons. These blossoms often represent renewal — the resurrection of faith, the endurance of family, and the continuity of beauty through struggle.

In burial grounds and praise houses, flowers mark remembrance and spiritual rebirth. Artists like Mary Jackson in her sweetgrass baskets, or Sonja Griffin Evans in her vibrant paintings, continue that lineage — expressing through petals and leaves the same reverence for life that runs through Gullah hymn and prayer.

The floral motif is not mere adornment; it is theology. In a world once stripped of freedom, to plant and to bloom became visible prayers rooted in creation itself.

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The Living Garden of Culture

Today, Gullah Geechee art thrives in galleries from Charleston to Savannah, in markets, and along the coastal highways where sweetgrass baskets still gleam in the sun. Each basket, carving, and painting is a seed of cultural memory — proof that creativity, like the garden, endures when tended.

To display such art is not just to decorate a wall, but to honor a tradition that found beauty in endurance and divinity in the soil. The horticultural, agricultural, and floral themes remind us that every garden — whether of earth or spirit — must be cultivated with patience, reverence, and love.

 

Bring the Spirit Home

Celebrate the beauty of garden heritage through GoGardenNow’s Garden Art Collection— featuring designs that honor Southern landscapes, ancestral craftsmanship, and the enduring poetry of plants. From botanical prints to garden flags, our exclusive selections echo the same deep connection between soil, spirit, and story.

Shop now and bring the living art of the Lowcountry into your home and garden.

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Mary Cassatt: The Garden as a Mirror of Tender Humanity

 

On a Balcony, oil on canvas by Mary Cassatt, 1878/79 

Public domain 

A Brief Portrait of an American Impressionist

Mary Cassatt (1844–1926) was born in Pennsylvania and made her mark in Paris, where she became the only American to exhibit with the French Impressionists. Among the ranks of Degas, Monet, and Renoir, she forged her own path — painting not the grand salons or bustling boulevards, but the quieter domestic worlds where women and children lived their daily poetry.

Cassatt’s art glows with tenderness and restraint, capturing moments that might otherwise have passed unnoticed — a child’s hand in a mother’s, a sister reading in the afternoon light.

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Drawn to the Garden

Though best known for her mother-and-child portraits, Cassatt was deeply inspired by gardens. Her paintings such as Lydia Crocheting in the Garden at Marly reveal that she found in the garden a space both private and luminous — a sanctuary where women could simply exist, free from the rigid expectations of society.

To Cassatt, the garden was more than a setting; it was a state of being. The sunlight that filters through her leaves mirrors the emotional clarity of her subjects. Each petal, each patterned shadow, reminds us that tenderness and strength are not opposites — they grow from the same soil.

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Cultivating Beauty, Quietly

Cassatt’s palette softened in the open air: pale greens, gentle blues, rose and gold. Unlike her male contemporaries who painted gardens as spectacles, she treated them as living companions. The flowers in her work do not merely decorate; they participate. They lean toward the figures as if listening — sharing in the intimacy of life, love, and loss.

In her art, we see what every gardener knows: that to tend the earth is to tend the soul.

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Discover Garden-Inspired Art

Explore GoGardenNow’s Garden Art Collection— where Impressionist light, botanical beauty, and timeless design meet.

Visit our art collection, and enjoy the same harmony of art and nature that Mary Cassatt once painted.

Shop now — and let your garden tell a story of grace and color.

By GoGardenNow
Tend the Garden, Mend the Soul.

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The Garden Beyond the Horizon: How Columbus’ Voyages Transformed the Horticultural and Culinary World

 

Christopher Columbus - The Garden Beyond the Horizon

 When Christopher Columbus set sail westward in 1492, he sought a shorter route to the riches of the East—spices, silks, and the fertile trade routes of Cathay. What he found instead was a new world of flora and flavor that would forever alter the course of horticulture, cuisine, and human history. His “discovery,” though fraught with tragic consequences for native peoples, unleashed what historians call the Columbian Exchange—a botanical revolution that still fills our gardens and our plates today.

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The Great Exchange: From Old World to New

Before 1492, the gardens of Europe were filled with cabbages, onions, wheat, and turnips—solid fare, but lacking in variety and sweetness. The voyage of Columbus opened the floodgates. From Europe, Africa, and Asia came wheat, barley, sugarcane, onions, citrus, bananas, and grapes. These plants took root in the Americas, reshaping local agriculture and economies. Imagine the Caribbean without sugarcane or Florida without oranges—both legacies of that fateful exchange.

The colonists also carried weeds and pests in their soil and ballast—an uninvited army that would challenge the New World’s native ecosystems. Yet for every dandelion that slipped ashore, there came a citrus tree or vine that changed the face of horticulture forever.

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The New World’s Gift to the Old

If the Old World sent seeds of empire, the New World repaid with a banquet. Potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, maize, beans, pumpkins, cacao, and tobacco—all native to the Americas—crossed the Atlantic to astonish Europe’s gardeners and cooks alike.

The tomato, once dismissed as poisonous, would come to define Mediterranean cuisine. The potato, humble and earthy, would become the sustenance of peasants and the power behind population booms. Maize (corn), sacred to native peoples, would feed livestock and nations. And the pepper, in all its forms—sweet bell and fiery chili—would ignite cuisines from Hungary to India.

Even the world’s gardens blossomed anew. European horticulturists marveled at the ornamental beauty of American species—marigolds, zinnias, petunias, and sunflowers—and soon, every noble estate boasted these botanical treasures.

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The Garden of Consequence

Columbus did not merely bridge oceans; he bridged biomes. The Columbian Exchange created what biologists call a globalized ecosystem—plants and animals now traveled freely across hemispheres. It was the birth of a truly interconnected horticultural world.

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A Legacy in Every Meal and Garden Bed

Today, we need not look far to see Columbus’s horticultural legacy. The tomato in your pasta, the corn in your bread, the cocoa in your dessert—all trace their lineage to that first encounter between hemispheres. Your home garden, filled with peppers, beans, and squash, is a living memorial to the voyages that rewrote the map of human appetite.

In short, Columbus did not just “discover” new lands—he discovered new worlds of cultivation and cuisine. His journeys re-planted the garden of humanity itself, intertwining the fates of continents in soil and seed.

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Conclusion: The Gardener’s Reckoning

As we tend our gardens today, we are heirs to the Columbian Exchange. It reminds us that plants are never mere ornament or sustenance—they are ambassadors, travelers, and teachers. Columbus’s voyages began an age where no seed stayed home, and no garden was ever again the same.

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Maria Sibylla Merian’s Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium (1705): Art, Science, and the Birth of Ecological Wonder

 

In the year 1705, in an age when women were seldom permitted to step beyond the domestic sphere, Maria Sibylla Merian brought forth a book that would change how Europe looked at the natural world. Her Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium—“The Metamorphosis of the Insects of Suriname”—was not merely a folio of plants and insects; it was a declaration that nature is alive with relationships, cycles, and mysteries worth both study and reverence.

 A Radical Journey

Merian was already renowned as an engraver and painter of flowers and insects when, in her fifties, she undertook an expedition to Suriname, a Dutch colony in South America. At a time when natural history specimens were often studied dead, dried, and shipped across oceans, Merian went straight to the source. She observed insects alive, on their host plants, tracking their metamorphoses under the hot and humid skies of the tropics. For two years she sketched, painted, and recorded the rhythms of Suriname’s flora and fauna, producing fieldwork that few Europeans had dared attempt, much less a woman of independent means.

The Book That Changed Natural History

Published in 1705, the folio contained 60 copperplate engravings, each hand-colored, depicting insects in their various stages of life—egg, larva, chrysalis, and adult—always alongside the plants that sustained them. Here, the cacao tree bore fruit while moths and ants clambered over its trunk. There, the passionflower twisted its tendrils as butterflies unfurled their wings.

This was not natural history as an inventory of parts, but as an ecological whole. Merian insisted that insects could not be understood apart from their habitats. She refuted lingering medieval notions of “spontaneous generation,” showing instead that butterflies emerged from caterpillars in a predictable cycle. In doing so, she laid groundwork for modern entomology and ecology, decades before either word was common currency.

The Aesthetic Revolution

Yet Metamorphosis was not merely scientific—it was profoundly beautiful. The illustrations breathed life into natural history, capturing the drama of metamorphosis with vivid colors and baroque composition. Leaves curl, wings shimmer, flowers unfold. These were not stiff diagrams, but living tableaux, as if nature herself had staged them.

Merian’s work reshaped the European aesthetic of the natural world. Collectors, scientists, and aristocrats alike were struck by the union of accuracy and artistry. The insect, often dismissed as lowly or loathsome, was transfigured into an object of wonder. The tropical plant, unknown to most Europeans, was no longer just a curiosity but part of a living web of relationships.

Legacy

The book influenced scientists such as Carl Linnaeus, who drew upon Merian’s meticulous observations in developing his classification system. It also inspired generations of naturalists, artists, and collectors to see beyond mere specimens, to appreciate the interconnectedness of life. In a sense, Metamorphosis was one of the earliest works to popularize what we now call “biodiversity.”

More than three centuries later, Maria Sibylla Merian’s folio still speaks. It reminds us that science and art are not adversaries but companions; that careful observation wedded to beauty can awaken both knowledge and awe. In the curling tendril of a passionflower or the delicate wing of a butterfly, Merian taught us to see not only the workings of nature but its poetry.

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Here's a gardener’s to-do list for October, 2025 across the United States

 

Here's a gardener’s to-do list for October, 2025, across the United States—month of crisp air, golden light, and the quiet beginning of rest. October is a time to tuck in the garden and prepare for the slumber ahead. Let’s walk the rows together, region by region:

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Northeast

• 🍁 Leaf Duty: Rake and compost leaves—or shred for mulch.

• 🌷 Plant Bulbs: Get tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths in the ground before frost.

• 🧤 Protect: Mulch perennials and roses against winter heave.

• 🌾 Final Harvest: Pick green tomatoes before frost; pull up tender plants.

• 🪓 Cut Back: Perennials that attract disease—leave ornamental grasses standing.

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Midwest

• 🧅 Plant: Garlic, shallots, and spring bulbs.

• 🧹 Clean Up: Remove dead vegetable plants; compost healthy debris.

• 🍂 Mulch: Add a fresh layer around trees and shrubs.

• 🧤 Winterize: Wrap young trees against sunscald and rodent gnawing.

• 🌬️ Prepare Tools: Clean and oil tools before putting them away.

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Southeast

• 🥬 Plant: Cool-season vegetables—broccoli, kale, mustard greens, radishes.

• 🌼 Add Color: Plant pansies, violas, snapdragons, and dianthus.

• 🌿 Prune: Trim back perennials and divide overcrowded clumps.

• 🐜 Pest Patrol: Watch for aphids and whiteflies on fall crops.

• 🪣 Irrigate: Adjust watering as nights cool, but don’t let roots dry out.

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Southwest

• 🧄 Plant: Garlic, onions, spinach, carrots, beets.

• 🌸 Fall Annuals: Add calendula, nasturtium, and mums.

• 🌵 Desert Care: Plant native and xeric plants while soil is warm.

• 🪓 Cut Back: Prune warm-season grasses and trim trees if needed.

• 🧹 Rake: Clean up around citrus trees to reduce pest overwintering.

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Pacific Northwest

• 🍂 Leaf Mulch: Collect and mulch leaves for beds.

• 🧄 Plant: Garlic and shallots; sow cover crops in empty beds.

• 💦 Drain: Empty hoses and shut off irrigation systems before freeze.

• 🌧️ Protect: Lift and store tender bulbs like dahlias and gladiolus.

• 🍄 Watch: Slugs and snails are active—use traps or bait carefully.

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Mountain West

• 🧄 Plant: Garlic is your last call—get it in now!

• 🧤 Winter Prep: Mulch young trees; wrap trunks and insulate root zones.

• 🍂 Cut Down: Remove dead annuals, but leave some for wildlife habitat.

• 🪣 Drain Systems: Blow out irrigation to prevent freezing.

• 🪚 Tool Care: Sharpen blades and store tools indoors.

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California

• 🌿 Cool Crops: Plant lettuce, spinach, beets, peas.

• 🌼 Color: Fall flowers like pansies, calendula, and snapdragons go in now.

• 🌱 Prep Beds: Add compost and mulch to rest beds over winter.

• 🌴 Light Pruning: Deadhead and trim—but avoid major pruning until later.

• 💧 Water Wisely: Cool nights mean less watering—adjust accordingly.

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October is a holy hush in the garden. The soil is still warm, the light slants gold, and everything whispers, “Put me to bed gently.” Whether you're planting garlic or just sipping cider beside your compost pile, you’re a part of nature’s great turning wheel.

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Is there a botanical garden or Cooperative Extension event near you in October, 2025

 

Here’s your nationwide roundup of garden-related events blossoming in October 2025—featuring botanical garden delights and Cooperative Extension happenings.

Autumn's last fingerprints are in the air, and here are the few that won't slip through your fingers.

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Botanical Garden Events (October 2025)

• Halloween at the BOOtanical Garden (Cape Fear Botanical Garden, Fayetteville, NC)
  Oct 23–26 (daily, 4:30–9:00 pm). A glowing, whimsy‑laced family Halloween stroll with lights, costumes, treats, and a bug‑buddy crew leading the way through the garden’s shadows. Dog Night kicks off on the 23rd. Cape Fear Botanical Garden

• Desert Pulse Kickoff Weekend (Desert Botanical Garden, Phoenix, AZ)
  Oct 11–12. Kick the season off with hands‑on art, interactive photo setups, giveaways, and face‑time with the artists behind the installations. Desert Botanical Garden

• Ongoing: Cactus Clubhouse (same)
  Oct 11–May 10. Child‑centric nature play zone with immersive learning for the little wildlings. Extension | University of New Hampshire+4Desert Botanical Garden+4Cornell Cooperative Extension+4

• Groovin’ in the Garden: Stephen Wilson Jr. (Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, Richmond, VA)
  Thu, Oct 2, a soulful evening concert under garden skies. Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden+1

• Groovin’ in the Garden: Jeff Tweedy (same)
  Sat, Oct 25, join the music buzz of this garden‑concert experience. Lewis Ginter Botanical GardenThe Washington Post

• Heathcote’s 39th Annual Fall Garden Festival (Heathcote Botanical Gardens, NJ)
  Oct 18–19, 9 am–4 pm. Part garden‑fest, part car show (on the 18th), part Bonsai Expo (on the 19th)—this is tradition with all the fall finery. Desert Botanical Garden+15Heathcote Botanical Gardens+15Cooperative Extension+15

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Cooperative Extension & Master Gardener Events (October 2025)

• Growing Native Plants from Seed (Maine Cooperative Extension Webinar)
  Tue, Oct 7, 6:00–7:15 pm. A down‑to‑earth guide to sowing and nurturing native perennials, complete with critter‑proofing advice. Cornell Cooperative Extension+4Cooperative Extension+4Cornell Cooperative Extension+4

• A Beginner’s Guide to Composting (same series)
  Tue, Oct 14, 6:00–7:15 pm. Learn to build a compost pile that works—seed‑of‑a–legacy stuff. Cooperative Extension+2Fort Worth Botanic Garden+2

• Demonstration Gardens Tours (CCE Rockland County, NY)
  Thu, Oct 2. Wander through Master Gardener‑tended demonstration plots, picking up tips on natives, deer resistance, veggie design, pollinator‑friendly planting, and more. Cornell Cooperative Extension+4Cornell Cooperative Extension+4Extension | University of New Hampshire+4

• Gardening Classes (CCE Orange County, NY)
  Sat, Oct 25, 10:00 am–12:00 pm. Another round of Saturday‑morning classes courtesy of Master Gardener volunteers—the specific topic will depend on the schedule. en.wikipedia.org+11Cornell Cooperative Extension+11Cornell Cooperative Extension+11

• Master Gardener Volunteer Training Open House (CCE Ulster County, NY)
  Thu, Oct 23 and Sat, Oct 25. Curious about volunteering in horticulture? Pop in, meet folks, and get the low‑down on Master Gardener training. Cornell Cooperative Extension+1