Sometimes the plant gods smile on you with a clearance sale featuring something truly spectacular like Japanese Forest Grass or in this case, Hakonechloa 'All Gold'. My local Lowes was clearancing them for $3 a pop - and it was just what the plant doctor ordered to dress up our  cabin up north. In 2009, my garden idol, Margaret Roach tweeted, "Another plant I cannot garden without: Hakonechloa 'All Gold.' Solid gold in the shade." She's right.     Brevities #OTD  On this day in 1796, Gilbert Laing Meason was born.   Laing Meason was a friend of Sir Walter Scott and he invented the term 'landscape architecture', in his 1828 book on The Landscape Architecture of the Great Painters of Italy. Not many copies of his book were printed, but somehow the prolific garden author, John Claudius Loudon, . secured a copy. He shared the term with American horticulturist Andrew Jackson Downing, who, in turn, shared it with Frederick Law Olmsted.  Olmsted was the first professional to describe himself as a 'landscape architect', and he is regarded as the founder of landscape architecture. Meason was very balanced in his perspective on architecture. He valued both function and beauty.   In terms of his own property, Meason was a romantic and his personal estate was known as Lindertis House. It is no surprise that he surrounded it with ornate gardens. Over time, the cost of maintaining the elaborate gardens in addition to the household management of the estate as a whole brought Lindertis to total financial ruin. Today, barely a trace of the mansion exists. When Meason died, he had no idea that his notion of 'landscape architecture' would be his legacy.     #OTD Today in 1806, Michael Keens, a market gardener from Isleworth, exhibited the first large-scale cultivated strawberry combining flavor and appearance, at the Royal Horticultural Society. It's hard to imagine, but large garden strawberries didn't exist prior to the 1800s. In his wonderfully illustrated book, The Complete Strawberry (Century Books, 1985), Stafford Whiteaker revealed the modern strawberry's development over the last two centuries; sharing how plants were harvested from the foot of the Andes and brought to France by a French spy named Amédée François Frézier (1682- 1773).  Frézier cared for five plants during the six-month journey home by sharing his own precious supply of water. In a strange coincidence, Frézier’s surname is itself derived from fraise, the French word for strawberry. It turns out, his ancestor, Julius de Berry, presented the Emperor with a gift of strawberries and was honored with the name of his gift.  For clarification, the name ‘‘strawberry’’ does not refer to mulching the berries with straw. Rather, it is from the Old English term straw which means ‘‘to spread’ referring to their runners grow. On 30 Apr 1859, The Preston Chronicle and Lancashire Advertiser, offered a little advise about growing Keen's strawberries, saying, "For edgings for these nothing is more profitable than parsley or a line of Keens's seedling strawberry."     #OTD It was on this day in 1939, that The Asbury Park Press, reported that Lambertus C. Bobbink, one of the country's best known florists, was honored at the New York Botanical Gardens. The author, Pearl Buck, was there to dedicate a rose garden and unveil a plaque to Bobbink that read, "To honor Lambertus C. Bobbink, a great rosarian whose counsel and generosity helped to make this garden possible for the enjoyment of all."  Bobbink immigrated to the United States from Holland in 1896. He purchased a few acres of land in Rutherford, New Jersey, and in 1898 Frederick L. Atkins, an English nurseryman, became his partner in the business forming Bobbink and Atkins;  one of the worlds largest horticultural organizations at the time. They both made their homes on Herrick Street, around the corner from their business on Paterson Avenue. In 1911, Bobbink & Atkins successfully grew the first crop of budded Hybri