Sun., June 11, noon-5 p.m, "A Place to Take Root" exhibit runs through June 30, free with advance registration, Bartram's Garden, 54th St. and Lindbergh Blvd., 215-729-5281, ext. 100, www.bartramsgarden.org

"Gary Wolff was a young man of his times," says Susan Tamulevich, garden historian and organizer of "A Place to Take Root," a Bartram's Garden retrospective on American container gardening.

Those times were the 1960s, so naturally Wolff learned his potting craft by apprenticing. He is now famed for period-correct reproduction pots.

This weekend, the master craftsman will be at Bartram's throwing pots. Get him to tell how difficult his devotion to authenticity made it for him to fill that first commission for period planters. No records existed, so he became a part-time sleuth. City gardening has always called for containers of some sort. Investigate for yourself what our predecessors used, including a fragment of a pot from the Garden's earliest days.