Do you know who Burbank is?

If you've ever eaten an Idaho baked potato, gazed on the beauty of a Shasta daisy or rejoiced when the seed catalogs arrived in the mail before spring, you owe a debt of gratitude to a plant genius, Luther Burbank. 

The agriculturalist or serious gardener should know who Burbank was - the breeder of the Russet Burbank potato and some 800 new strains and varieties of plants -but most school children today aren't learning about him, and public recognition of him is slipping away. In his time, the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, Burbank became as famous as Henry Ford or Thomas Edison. 

Burbank's work is noteworthy in today's world of biotechnology, and a new biography, The Garden of Invention, by author Jane S. Smith, may help restore interest in his life. Smith described Burbank as the "rock star of the garden,"whose place in the history of living plants is "between Mother Nature and Monsanto."

The Garden of Invention is not offered in the PotatoPro bookshop, but you can buy it at Amazon