Launches May 15
www.exploratorium.edu/gardening

Join the ‘accidental scientists’ at The Exploratorium as they mess around in the garden. Find out what’s the dirt on dirt? Where do broccoli, strawberries, peas, pumpkins, and other fruits and vegetables come from? How is plant procreation similar to and different from ours? How do you save seeds (hint: it’s more complicated than you may think)? And what’s the story behind competitive pumpkin growing? Spring has sprung, and the Exploratorium’s award-winning Web site series, Accidental Scientist now focuses on gardening at www.exploratorium.edu/gardening. Dig into these and other topics as the Exploratorium explores the art and science of growing fruits, vegetables, plants, and flowers. Through interactive exhibits, video, photo essays, and articles, you’ll also meet fascinating people who cultivate these living things, and some of the surprising places they grow. The Exploratorium has won 4 Webby Awards in the fields of science and education.

Explore the site and learn why a fruit cocktail tree isn’t as sci-fi as it sounds. Discover what pickle juice can do for your hedges, and whether or not dropping nail clippings in your garden has any basis in scientific truth. Explore the world of carnivorous plants with Peter D’Amato and get a plant’s-eye view inside one of his specimens, the
carnivorous pitcher plant. Tour a hydroponic greenhouse in Antarctica, an oasis of green and light in the world’s coldest and driest place that provides food for the body and soul. Visit Quesada Gardens with Ms. Annette Smith and see how an inner-city community is brought together through cleaning and cultivating a formerly trash-strewn median. And learn how Bob Cannard, gardener extraordinaire, who grows vegetables for Chez Panisse and carrots for Odwalla, strives to nurture both humans and nature through his intriguing, symbiotic gardening techniques. You’ll see dazzling dahlias, 1,000+-pound pumpkins, and arrays of orchids, and watch The Secret Life of Plants, where sex, garden- style, plays the lead role.

Based on the notion that anyone who gardens or even fantasizes about gardening is a scientist, Accidental Scientist is devoted to gardens — as they involve observation, experimentation, testing and results. Accidental Scientist: Gardening also includes such interactive features as an online flower dissection — not your usual botany class! The dissection offers parallels between the strategies of human and flower reproduction, and 3D models that online visitors can pull apart.