Michael Weishan (born 7 August in Milwaukee, Wisconsin) is an American author, designer, popular historian and former television personality.
Biography edit
Weishan was host of the public television series The Victory Garden from 2001 through 2007. He was the fourth host of the series, and retired after five seasons to resume active direction of his landscape design firm, Michael Weishan and Associates, which specializes in creating traditionally inspired landscapes for homes across the US and Canada.
In addition to his work on PBS, Weishan has appeared on numerous national TV programs in the United States, including the Today Show on NBC, as well as the CBS Early Show. On radio, he hosted his own weekly NPR program, The Cultivated Gardener from 1999 to 2001, and still appears as a guest contributor on NPR's venerable environmental news program Living on Earth, where he first appeared in the early 1990s. Weishan is also the author of three books on horticulture: The New Traditional Garden (1999); From a Victorian Garden (2004); and The Victory Garden Companion (2006).
The gardening editor at Country Living for five years, Weishan was a frequent contributor to various national periodicals, including New Old House Magazine where he wrote a quarterly gardening column. Weishan's research in landscape design overlaps with a lifelong love of architecture, architectural design and archaeology, and his first published work (1991) was as editor and co-contributor (along with noted Harvard archaeologist George M.A. Hanfmann) of The Byzantine Shops at Sardis, volume 9 of the Sardis Archaeological Series published by the Harvard University Press.
An honors graduate of Harvard College in Classics and Romance Languages, Weishan is active in many charities and non-profit institutions, especially those relating to history and FGLI (first generation/lower income) college programming at Harvard as well as institutions across the country. Among these, he is a member of the Adams House Senior Common Room at Harvard, where he is founding executive director of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Foundation, an organization that has completed the restoration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's student rooms – the FDR Suite at Adams House, Harvard University. The Foundation has restored the Suite to its original 1904 appearance as a memorial to the 32nd president of the United States, which is the only one at Harvard.
In addition, the FDR Foundation sponsors a host of educational activities, including the annual Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial lecture at Adams House; and an intensive undergraduate summer internship program, The Roosevelt Scholars, which promotes study and research opportunities for first-generation, lower income students at Harvard. The Foundation is also home to a think-tank, The FDR Center for Global Engagement, which seeks practical solutions to real-world problems of climate change, governance, and social justice.
In his role as executive director of the Foundation, Weishan co-authored (with Dr. Cynthia Koch, past director of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum) a new biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt entitled FDR: A Life in Pictures in 2013.
As president and CEO of the Southborough Historical Society in Southborough, Massachusetts, he has published two books, Lost Southborough and Tales of Old Southborough. He is currently leading the construction of Southborough's new history and arts center in a restored 1910 village hall. Opening of the new center is slated for 2024.
Major publications edit
- Weishan, Michael. (1999)The New Traditional Garden: A Practical Guide to Creating and Restoring Authentic American Gardens for Homes of All Ages. ISBN 0-345-42041-1
- Weishan, Michael. (2004) From a Victorian Garden: Creating the Romance of a Bygone Age Right in Your Own Backyard. ISBN 0-670-89426-5
- Weishan, Michael. (2006) The Victory Garden Companion. ISBN 0-06-059977-4
- Weishan, Michael. (2013) FDR: A Life in Pictures. ISBN 1-482-06889-3
- Weishan, Michael. (2019) Lost Southborough. ISBN 978-1979727518
- Archaeological Exploration of Sardis (Book 9, 1991). The Byzantine Shops at Sardis. ISBN 0-674-08968-5 (Contributor/editor)