The Liberty Hyde Bailey Center Project

08/18/2026

For our friends in West Michigan!

🌱 Come join us for the Bailey Conference!

The Bailey Conference is a great chance to learn, meet new people, and spend some time thinking about the things that connect us to nature, agriculture, and our communities.

If you’ve never been to the conference before, this is a great year to come check it out. There will be plenty of interesting conversations, new ideas, and opportunities to connect with others who share an interest in the work and legacy of Liberty Hyde Bailey.

We hope you’ll join us! 🌿

08/11/2026

🙏🙏🙏

Learning to follow my own vocational advice—an odyssey to Ithaca.

08/11/2026

"Liberty Hyde Bailey, the influential horticulturist and educator often called the Father of American Horticulture, wrote that gardeners should cultivate 'that happy peace of mind which is satisfied with little.' That gentle spirit thrives in small gardening spaces throughout Marin County. Meaningful gardens are not defined by acreage, but by the relationship that gradually develops between garden and gardener. What is sometimes described as small-space gardening is a profoundly rewarding undertaking because every flower matters, every leaf matters, and every watering matters. In many ways, small-space gardening is a more intensive, intimate, and rewarding experience."

from "Growing with the Garden, Small Spaces Offer Big Rewards," by Terry Armerson for the UC Marin Master Gardeners

Whether upscaling from an apartment or downsiz

08/07/2026

"I once asked an old gardener how much land he had and he said with pride that he had one acre; and he added, 'It is a wonderful acre; it reaches to the center of the earth in one direction and it takes in the stars in the other.'"

–Liberty Hyde Bailey, from The Harvest of the Year to the Tiller of the Soil (1927), p. 48

08/07/2026

Updates! Given our progress, Cornell has given us more time to raise funds; a $675,000 grant application has been submitted; and we welcome John Linstrom as Director of the Liberty Hyde Bailey Center Project.

All this and more in our latest newsletter (consider subscribing!): http://eepurl.com/QoTwnLpW_7

Picture: John at The Climate Museum for the launch of his poetry book in April 2024

07/27/2026

"'Is it not the fault amongst us, also,' continues Questor, 'that we are in danger of losing our mysticism? The hard realities, I fear, drive out the spiritual meanings and these meanings have lost standing. We have little patience with intangible ideas, wanting those that are evident, immediate and demonstrable. Yet the mystic, if sensible, makes the nearest approach to real solutions. I cannot forget the speech of Socrates as he waits the fatal cup, as Plato saith in the immortal Crito: "This is the voice which I seem to hear murmuring in my ears, like the sound of the flute in the ears of the mystic; that voice, I say, is humming in my ears, and prevents me from hearing any other."'"

–Liberty Hyde Bailey (a scientist), from The Seven Stars (1923), pp. 130-131

Image: The Death of Socrates (1787) by Jacques-Louis David. Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Wolfe Fund, 1931. Public domain.

07/21/2026

A follow-up to yesterday's post about David A. Williston, first professionally-trained Black landscape architect whose work shaped the campuses of many HBCUs. This photo shows Williston, fourth standing from left, with the Horticultural Lazy Club in 1896. Williston was the first Black member of the club, which Bailey founded, and claimed never to have missed a meeting during his student years. Bailey is seen standing at the far right in this image.

More about Williston's time at Cornell at the following blog post, including a full scan of the letter quoted in our last post (in which Williston writes that "Dr. Bailey inspired men to study plant life, and and I am now happy to state that I was a student of his for more than sixty years"), written by Cornell historian Ed Cobb: https://blogs.cornell.edu/sipshistory/2021/12/22/david-a-williston-98-was-the-first-professionally-trained-african-american-landscape-architect-in-the-u-s/

Image courtesy Cornell University, via the link above.

07/21/2026

Late in his life, accomplished Black landscape architect David A. Williston wrote in a letter to Cornell University that his professor Liberty Hyde Bailey “inspired me to study plant life, and I am happy to state that I was a student of his for more than 60 years.” Quoted in Carol Kammen, Part & Apart, pp. 33–34.

Today, Williston's remarkable story should be better known in its own right. The thread at this link is one starting place: https://www.threads.com/.rva/post/DF8s6HXRvI6?xmt=AQG0kghGX_yjM_E4O1M0Q30KQyYaNeTdXZHHQxpp5-BaJhyct9dNc8tuGcOGssaKeeTTIJx3&slof=1

07/20/2026

NGC HISTORY
The first recipient of what has become the Award of Excellence for Nonmembers was presented at the 1949 Convention to the renowned Dr. Liberty Hyde Bailey who was 91 at the time. President Helen Hull described him as a "longtime Cornell University dean, who left his mark as the most important person to advance agriculture in America. His three volumes of Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture were heralded as masterpieces in the field".

07/20/2026

"[…] All this lies in the alembic of the sun, of the sun so many millions and millions of miles away, that no man can compass and comprehend, that sends invisible rays through unimagined void and cold to strike as if by accident this tiny mote of earth floating in the vast and dead abyss. Its rays strike also on Saturn and on Mars. Inconceivable are the arcana of death; incomparably minute are the atoms in space where life resides. Yet these atoms are all in all unto themselves; continuous is the renewal, and neither sun nor earth grows weary."

–Liberty Hyde Bailey, from The Seven Stars (1923), p. 77

Image: "Sun Emits a Solstice CME," December 8, 2017, NASA, link in comments