Hello Reader,

There's a color I can't get enough of.

It's not quite purple and not quite black. It's the color that reminds me of a dark wine or vintage velvet. Deep and moody.

The last time it found me was in a stunning heirloom poppy — the black peony. It's a color you'd expect to see on a painter's palette.

It's a color that moves me.

I first tried growing this poppy in my Michigan garden, but we moved to Kentucky before I saw it bloom. I've scattered new seed across the soil in my garden, hoping to see a bloom this spring.

I've been sitting with Claus Dalby's book, Containers in the Garden — the kind of book you open when the garden is dormant and you need to remember what you're working toward.

A photograph stopped me. A container planted with a rex begonia whose leaves were similar to that color, paired with a small Japanese maple in the same family of dark burgundy. The same color, finding me again.

But rex begonias and I have a history that goes back further than Dalby's book.

The first time I encountered one was in a room that had no business hosting anything beautiful — a government office in Michigan, grey linoleum floors and cold fluorescent lights. I was in Master Gardener training.

The teacher reached into a bag and began handing out leaves.

The leaves she passed around were large and slightly waxy, each one a different variation of the same extraordinary foliage — some banded with silver, some deep and saturated in color, some with a metallic sheen that caught the fluorescent light. She told us we could grow a whole new plant from a single leaf. Not from a cutting with a stem attached. From the leaf itself.

I didn't entirely believe her.

You score the veins on the underside of the leaf with a sharp knife, she explained, and lay it against moist soil and wait. And from those scored places — those small, deliberate wounds — new plants will emerge. The leaf contains everything required.

I took a leaf home and did exactly what she said. And it worked.

What I didn't know then was that the leaf in my hand that day was the descendant of a stowaway.

In 1856, a shipment of orchids arrived in London from Assam, India. Someone unpacking the crate noticed a plant growing at the base of one of the orchids — a hitchhiker, attached to the roots, having crossed continents without anyone's knowledge. It had no name. No one had sent for it. No one knew what it was.

What they saw amazed them.

The foliage was unlike anything in cultivation — large, asymmetrical leaves with a surface that seemed to absorb and reflect light simultaneously, patterned and iridescent.

Victorian England, which had seen waves of exotic plants arrive from every corner of the world, had not seen anything quite like this. The plant was formally named the following year by Belgian botanist Jules Antoine Putzeys. He called it Begonia rex. The king.

The name is no exaggeration. In certain light the surface has a quality that's almost metallic, like the wing of an insect, like something that shouldn't be possible in a plant.

That leaf is a direct descendant of the stowaway that arrived in London in 1856 — the plant that crossed continents without anyone knowing.

I recently bought a rex begonia from my local Lowe's. And just like I did all those years ago, I'm cutting the leaves to propagate more plants.

And the cycle continues.

I think that's what a garden asks of you. Not expertise. Not credentials. Not a plan. Just the willingness to follow what inspires you — a color, a leaf, an image in a book on a grey afternoon — and see where it leads.

The stowaway traveled thousands of miles to get here. The least I can do is take a cutting.

From the Garden Library

The Biodiversity Heritage Library — If the botanical illustration at the top of this issue stopped you, you have hours of pleasure ahead. The Biodiversity Heritage Library at biodiversitylibrary.org holds one of the largest collections of digitized botanical art and scientific illustration in the world, all freely accessible. Search Begonia rex and see what the Victorian obsession looked like at its height.

Claus Dalby: Containers in the Garden — The book that started this whole chain of thought for me. Dalby is a Danish garden photographer and designer whose approach to container gardening is unlike anything else I've encountered — layered, creative, genuinely artistic. If you have ever thought container gardening was a lesser form of the art, this book will correct that impression permanently.

On taking a leaf cutting — The technique the teacher showed me in that Michigan classroom is simpler than it sounds. The Royal Horticultural Society has a clear description to the process (the linked PDF has a section on cultivation and propagation). But honestly — the best way to understand it is to try it once. Score the veins, press the leaf to soil, wait. The plant knows what to do.

Thanks for being here. Happy gardening!
Sue