Summary/Annotation -> A wide-ranging and delightful narrative
history of the celebrated plant breeder Luther Burbank and the
business of farm and garden in early twentieth-century America A
century ago, Luther Burbank was the most famous gardener on the
planet. His name was inseparable from a cornucopia of new and
improved plants—fruits, nuts, vegetables, and flowers—for both
home gardens and commercial farms and orchards. At a time when
the science of genetics was in its infancy and agriculture was
often a perilous combination of guess work and luck, many people
wanted a piece of the man they called the Wizard of Santa Rosa.
As the United States moved from a nation of farms to a nation of
city dwellers, the people behind the new products that
transformed daily life were admired with a fervor that is not
accorded to their present-day counterparts. Everyone knew and
marveled at Samuel Morse’s telegraph, Alexander Graham Bell’s
telephone, and Thomas Edison’s electric light. And like these
other great American i