About this podcast
Your weekly half-hour program about environmentally informed gardening. Each week we bring you a different expert, a leading voice on gardening in partnership with Nature. Our goal is to make your landscape healthier, more beautiful, more sustainable, and more fun.
Episodes
The newest 50 of 383 episodes
- "Still Life: A Photographer's Journey through Grief and Gardening" · 29 min · Episode 388Growing Greener speaks to photographer Jane Fulton Alt about her new book, a gallery of stunning images taken in her late husband's native plant garden, and how this immersion…
- Native Lawn 2.0 · 29 min · Episode 387For twenty years Cornell University horticulturists have been working on a blend of short-growing native grasses and wildflowers that could replace introduced turf grasses as the…
- A Franciscan Brother Finds his Ministry in Ecological Restoration · 29 min · Episode 386Can our personal spirituality provide a path to a different, more positive relationship with Nature? In this conversation, first broadcast in December of 2024, Brother James…
- Updating Our Attitude Toward Insects · 29 min · Episode 385Gardeners habitually distinguish between "bad bugs" who feed on their plants and the "good bugs," the predators who feed on those herbivores. As Aaron Anderson of the Xerces…
- My Neighbor's 1/4-Acre Garden Takes the Title for Insect Biodiversity · 29 min · Episode 384Many British garden designers, and their admirers in the United States claim that plant biodiversity is the key to supporting the most diverse insect populations, and that…
- Declaring Peace with Pocket Gophers · 29 min · Episode 383Shawn Maestretti, principal of Studio Petrichor, a celebrated landscape design and installation firm in Altadena, California, describes his "conversation" with pocket gophers…
- Sustainable Color that Mixes Natives with Exotic Favorites · 29 min · Episode 382"Rewilding (with Dahlias)" was the irresistible title that Jessica Williams chose for the Digging Deeper garden tour and talk she gave for the Garden Conservancy. On this week's…
- A sustainable supply chain for plants that are truly native · 29 min · Episode 381Ecological gardeners and restorationists have long relied on seed collected from wild populations to supply the need for locally adapted, genetically diverse planting material…
- Garden Journaling 2.0 · 29 min · Episode 380That classic horticultural memoir, the published journal of a gardener's daily activities, has taken on a new life with the advent of online media; Claire Davis, a very talented…
- How to Make Wood Chips a Basis for Soil Health · 29 min · Episode 379Brian Vagg of the Compost Academy discusses how wood chips, if properly managed, can be a cheap and reliable means for supplying the organic matter – and microbes – that most…
- Creating Microenvironments to Boost Your Garden's Biodiversity and Resilience · 29 min · Episode 378Tom Wessels, professor emeritus at Antioch University New England and a celebrated ecologist, author, and educator explains how gardeners can enrich their landscapes with…
- Ground-Breaking New Takes on Trees from the Oldest Arboretum in the United States · 29 min · Episode 377Ned Friedman, Director of Harvard's Arnold Arboretum discusses that institution's programs to preserve the DNA of tree species and populations threatened with extinction by…
- Welcoming Peter Rabbit back into the Garden · 29 min · Episode 376Amy Free, rabbit-lover and anthrozoologist, awakens Tom Christopher to the beauties and ecological importance of rabbits and shares how to host them without sacrificing your…
- Exploring – and Updating – Nature's Calendar · 29 min · Episode 375Theresa Crimmins, Director of the USA National Phenology Network, explains why knowing the timing of natural events such as the annual bloom of different flowers and the…
- The Garden Conservancy: Your Passport to Garden Visits and Education Nationwide · 29 min · Episode 374Horatio Joyce, the Garden Conservancy's Director of Public Programs & Education details the rich opportunities his organization provides to tour remarkable gardens in every…
- Are There Microplastics in the Compost You've been Buying? · 29 min · Episode 373Rutger Myers of Eco-Cycle, a leader in promoting community composting programs for 50 years, discusses studies that indicate microplastics may be finding their way into the…
- Do "Designed Ecosystems" Function Like Natural Plant Communities? · 29 min · Episode 372A school of European and English garden designers, and now American ones too, claim their "designed ecosystems" of plants gathered from all over the world provide similar…
- The Facts about Fireflies · 29 min · Episode 371Texan Ben Pfeiffer discusses his personal crusade for fireflies and the remarkable facts about their strange and colorful life cycles in this return visit to a conversation from…
- New Cultural Perspectives on Ecological Gardening and How Your Lawn Can Transform Itself into a Native Meadow · 29 min · Episode 370Sara Weaner Cooper describes how New Directions in the American Landscape is incorporating indigenous American approaches into Ecological Gardening and how by adjusting the…
- Tim Clymer Uses Climate Battery Greenhouses to Farm Sub-Tropical Fruits in Pennsylvania · 29 min · Episode 369By storing excess heat from sunny days in the soil below his greenhouses, Tim Clymer keeps them warm on winter nights for a fraction the cost of conventional propane heat.
- An Ecological Perspective on Tick-Borne Diseases · 29 min · Episode 358Dr. Rick Ostfeld of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies shares thirty years of research on the ecology of tick-borne diseases in North America, detailing why landscape…
- Citizen Scientists of iNaturalist Playing Crucial Role in Preservation of Biodiversity · 29 min · Episode 367Arya Natarajan of iNaturalist describes how that online platform's user community is playing a central role in monitoring changes in global biodiversity and the creation of…
- Charlie Nardozzi's New Book – an Ecological Update for the Kitchen Garden · 29 min · Episode 366In "The Continuous Vegetable Garden" Charlie Nardozzi applies lessons learned from ecologically-informed gardening to bring vegetable and fruit gardening into a new, more…
- The Nurturing Nature Initiative – Botanical Gardens Unite To Address Climate Change · 29 min · Episode 365Emma Grover and Dr. Mauricio Diazgranados discuss a new program from the New York Botanical Garden to unite the thousands of botanical gardens worldwide in devoting their shared…
- What is Naturalism? · 29 min · Episode 364"Naturalism" is the dominant design style in ecological gardening, but what exactly is it? Is Naturalism just mimicry of nature, or does it allow for the designer to include…
- "Veganic" Gardening · 29 min · Episode 363Are you troubled about supporting industrial agriculture and its mistreatment of animals by purchasing by-products such as manures and blood meal to maintain your garden's…
- A New Chapter in the Roundup Debacle · 29 min · Episode 362Award-winning investigative journalist Carey Gillam exposed the corruption and suppression of evidence involved in the Environmental Protection Agency's original approval of the…
- Landraces – Customizing Vegetable and Fruit Cultivars to Flourish in Your Garden · 29 min · Episode 361In a conversation first shared in February of 2024, farmer and author Joseph Lofthouse describes how to foster "landraces," strains of vegetables and fruits adapted to the unique…
- Are Alien Plants Superior at Supporting Insect Diversity in the Garden? · 29 min · Episode 360James Hitchmough, an eminent British garden designer and former professor of horticultural ecology asserted on a previous episode that research confirms that gardens rich in…
- The Million Orchid Project Turns Urban Areas into Sanctuaries for Critically Endangered Native Species · 29 min · Episode 359Dr. Jason Downing of Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden turns rare orchid propagation into an educational adventure for Miami area students, beautifies the cityscape, and rescues…
- Maine's Wild Seed Project Offers Education and an Example of Nationwide Significance · 29 min · Episode 358In this week's Growing Greener Heather McCargo, founder of the Wild Seed Project, describes its programs to encourage gardeners to grow native plants from wild-collected seeds to…
- Chemical Warfare from Invasive Plants · 29 min · Episode 357One of the ways that invasive plants displace indigenous floras is "allelopathy." In a conversation first broadcast in February 2024, Dr. Susan Kalisz of the University of…
- Using Genetics to Avoid Spraying in the Vegetable Garden · 29 min · Episode 356Selecting disease-resistant cultivars is an essential tool for avoiding the use of pesticides in the vegetable garden. Plant pathologist Nicole Gauthier of the University of…
- Make Your Lawn a Low-Maintenance Contributor to Biodiversity and Landscape Beauty · 29 min · Episode 355As Dan Jaffe Wilder Wilder says "you can grow a lawn which is a whole bunch of green stuff. Or you can grow a lawn that is a whole bunch of low-growing green stuff with some…
- A Gardener's Introduction to Fungi and Their Essential Support for Plants · 29 min · Episode 354Estimates of fungi diversity range into the millions of species, yet the vast majority remain unknown. What is clear, says mycologist Gabriela D'Elia, is that your garden plants…
- A Brazilian Genius of the last Century Created Invaluable Lessons for Today's Ecological Gardeners · 29 min · Episode 353James Lord speaks of his mentor and inspiration Roberto Burle Marx, the painter, sculptor, musician, and botanist who found in Brazil's native plants the basis for a new style of…
- A British Horticultural Ecologist Challenges the U.S. Consensus · 29 min · Episode 352Citing European studies, British horticultural ecologist James Hitchmough, a leader of the ecological gardening movement in his country, rejects the intrinsic superiority of…
- Balancing your account in the soil seed bank · 29 min · Episode 351A square foot of topsoil typically hosts thousands of dormant seeds deposited by previous floras. Nathan Lambstrom of Lambstrom Garden Ecology discusses his research into how…
- A Tree's Perspective on Pruning · 29 min · Episode 350Is your pruning aimed only at gratifying your aesthetics and needs? Chris Roddick also views pruning from the plants' perspective, promoting techniques that enhance their growth…
- O Canada ¬– A Garden Activist Enriches and Beautifies Lawns with Local Prairie Flora · 29 min · Episode 349Travel with Growing Greener to Winnipeg, Manitoba to learn how Ash Burkowski is collecting seed from local prairie remnants to raise indigenous grasses and wildflowers that can…
- Creating Crops that Thrive in Your Garden · 29 min · Episode 348A replay of a February 2024 conversation in which Joseph Lofthouse, author of "Landrace Gardening" details how anyone can create genetically diverse vegetable and fruit crops…
- Colorado Agrivoltaic Learning Center combines energy generation with agriculture for a double harvest · 29 min · Episode 437Byron Kominek knew the family farm needed a more profitable crop than hay to survive. By installing photovoltaic panels and growing crops underneath, he now supplies electricity…
- The Missing Piece of Your Ecological Garden · 29 min · Episode 346Liz Koziol of the University of Kansas shares hew work with mycorrhizal fungi and native plants, and how a properly designed fungal inoculant can make your ecological garden more…
- An Antique Tool Brings New Knowledge of Native Plants · 29 min · Episode 345Herbariums, annotated collections of dried plant specimens first appeared in Italy almost 500 years ago. In today's Growing Greener, Lea Johnson, Director of Conservation at the…
- How Your Garden Helped Drive the Deer Population Boom · 29 min · Episode 344Dr. Elic Weitzel of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History describes the thousands of years of association between deer and people, how they long ago came to prefer…
- Behold the Magic of Warm-Season Grasses · 29 min · Episode 343In a conversation recorded in December of 2019 Shannon Currey, a leading educator in the native plants industry, describes how the unique adaptations of warm season grasses make…
- How Vermont sculptor Dan Snow has elevated the traditional New England wall into a powerful, locally rooted art form · 29 min · Episode 342In a conversation from January of 2021, Dan Snow tells how, using locally sourced stone, he expresses the intrinsic beauty of a site in bold constructions held together only by…
- Partnering with Goats to Maintain Biodiversity in Ecological Hotspot · 29 min · Episode 341Goats love invasive plants, says Elijah Goodwin, Director of Ecosystem Monitoring at New York's Stone Barns Center; and with careful timing and regulation the Center's herd is…
- Seemingly non-invasive exotic garden plants can be ecological time bombs · 29 min · Episode 340Revisiting a conversation from August 2023 with Dr. Bethany Bradley of the University of Massachusetts, who describes how plants introduced from outside our ecosystems may remain…
- Snagged: How a Dead Tree Can Enrich Your Garden · 29 min · Episode 339Wildlife biologist Ken Bevis discusses the many benefits to biodiversity of "snags," standing dead trees, and how to incorporate them safely and aesthetically into our gardens.
