Growing Greener

Award-winning garden designer and writer Tony Spencer introduces the New Perennial Movement that has brought a revolutionary naturalistic ethic to gardens worldwide

Combining native plants gardening with land preservation and a museum of extraordinary regionally focused art has made the Brandywine Conservancy a unique celebration of the local landscape.  Join Horticultural Coordinator Mark Gormel as he explains how this all begins with locally collected seeds, and how home gardeners can duplicate this in their own back yards.

One of the most important events of my gardening year is the extraordinary collection of gardeners, designers, and ecologists who assemble to exchange ideas every January at the New Directions in the American Landscape's two-day annual symposium.  Join executive director of NDAL, Sara Weaner, to learn about this year's line-up of extraordinary speakers and topics.  It's a don't miss opportunity

One of the great success stories of American wildlife, black bears are returning throughout their historic range and even moving into the suburbs.  Confrontations with human inhabitants have fed calls for hunting seasons to curb their numbers.  Wildlife ecologist Laura Simon explains why this is unlikely to resolve the problem, and shares proven strategies for reducing black bear problems

Join Collin Thompson, the Farm Manager at Johnny's Selected Seeds, as he discusses how planting "cover crops" in your garden can benefit not only the health of the soil and the plants you grow on it but also enhance pollinator populations and curb weeds, all while reducing your carbon footprint and fighting the spread of plant pests and diseases

Hedgerows, informal borders of intermingled shrubs and trees, are a familiar feature of the British countryside, serving not only to enclose farmers' fields but also providing a refuge for wildlife and a source of foods for humans, birds, and pollinators alike.  Dr. Annabel Renwick, the curator of native plants at the Sarah P. Duke Gardens in Durham, North Carolina, describes how she is using sout...

Dr. Leigh Whittinghill of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station is extending that storied institution's research into a new landscape:  the rooftops of Connecticut's city neighborhoods.  Enhancing city-dwellers' diet can also benefit the local environment

Mike Lizotte, the "Seedman" of American Meadows and High Country Gardens discusses his companies' program to provide locally adapted wildflower and native grass seed mixes throughout the United States, and the growing enthusiasm among gardeners nationwide for environmentally beneficial plantings

In his fascinating new book, "The Mind of a Bee," Dr. Lars Chittka explores not only bees' ability to learn and process information, but also the evidence that individual bees possess distinctive personal psychologies.  His research transformed my understanding of pollinators and enriched my garden experience.

One of my favorite gardening tools is the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the #1 resource for gardeners who want to know more about the birds in their landscapes.  Join Dr. Emma Greig to explore the apps and online courses the Lab offers to help you identify and foster feathered visitors, and citizen science programs you can support to promote bird conservation.

Senior and physically challenged gardeners have a special interest in sustainable landscapes, according to Toni Gattone, author of The Lifelong Gardener: Garden With Ease and Joy At Any Age.  Join her for guidance on everything from saving your back by reducing resource inputs to ergonomically adapting favorite tools.

Native garden designer and pollinator ecologist Alicia Houk details how incorporating reseeding native annuals makes your garden self-healing, weed-resistant, more colorful, and more wildlife friendly

Cathy Ludden epitomizes the role individual gardeners can play in transforming their local landscapes to meet our current environmental challenges.  An avid student of native plants and wildlife, she has worked with great success at a personal, neighborhood, and county level to make her community biologically richer, ecologically healthier –and more beautiful.

Inheritor of a century-old family tradition of supplying the best spring-flowering bulbs to American gardeners, Brent Heath details the important role that they can play in today's sustainable gardens.  Flourishing without the use of chemicals, these plants furnish reliable early spring color and food for early season pollinators; follow Brent's growing tips and your bulbs will return year after y...

Fostering wildlife and native plants – making our landscapes contributors to the local ecosystem – has become a goal of so many gardeners.  In her new book, "Wild By Design: The Rise of Ecological Restoration," Laura J. Martin traces how this became so.  Introducing a remarkable band of ecologically minded pioneers, many of them women, Martin describes how this consciousness spread through the lan...

American gardeners typically turn to England when looking for inspiration abroad, but they'll find a far more imaginative approach to integrating nature with human needs in contemporary Dutch gardening.  Carrie Preston, an American designer who has made a career there, takes us for a tour.

Gardeners are busy now planting Dutch bulbs for a spring show, but there is an environmentally more beneficial alternative: native spring ephemerals.  Neil Diboll, founder and president of Prairie Nursery, shares how to use these early blooming natives to create truly perennial early spring color while also benefiting pollinators and other wildlife.

Too often environmentally conscious gardeners look for the "silver bullet" for our sustainability and resource issues, rather than contenting ourselves with what Kathy Connolly describes as "two percent solutions."  Kathy, an in-demand natural garden designer and educator, is referring to small changes that cumulatively can have a big impact.  Listen to her describe her use of rain barrels as a co...

Late summer through early fall, according to Shay Lunseth, is the ideal time to put your lawn on a more environmentally friendly path.  Shay's got advice about boosting the health of your grass without chemicals, reducing or ending inputs of fertilizer and water, and even making your lawn pollinator friendly

Biochar has been touted as a valuable soil amendment that fosters better plant growth and stretches fertilizer budgets.  Will Hessert and Javaughn Henry have also found in it a means to sequester carbon and confront global climate change.  Listen as Will describes how they are putting in place a project to convert municipal landscape waste into biochar on a grand scale

Starting native plants from locally sourced seed is the most economical and ecologically advantageous way to rewild domestic landscapes. In the past, though, this has been perceived as tricky and demanding, a process only for experts.  Anna Fialkoff, Ecological Programs Manager of the Wild Seed Project in North Yarmouth, Maine, describes how her organization makes starting native plants from seed...

Admirers of exotic garden plants have taken to claiming that their foreign-born treasures are just as good nutritionally for our North American pollinators.  Proponents of native plants insist that their flora supplies a better diet.  We ask Dr. Harland Patch of Pennsylvania State University for the facts

Managing water is the crucial task of the summertime garden, especially as climate change boosts the heat and the frequency of droughts.  Join Nancy DuBrule-Clemente, founder of the pioneering woman-owned landscape company and garden center, Natureworks, as she brings her organic gardening sensibility to bear on ways to reduce watering while weathering our warming summers.

Looking at plants is one thing; learning to truly see them is another.  Carrie Roy, Acting Curator of Art, introduces us to one of the world's great collections of plant portraits, the Hunt Institute For Botanical Documentation in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and shares how the artist's vision can delight and inform gardeners, changing the very way we see

Rebecca McMackin, a visionary horticulturist, has spent the last decade supervising the transformation of Brooklyn Bridge Park, 85 acres of abandoned shipping piers, into a complex of functioning ecosystems that serve as havens for wildlife and an accessible means for city dwellers to reconnect with nature.  Now she's moving on to new adventures.  In our conversation she reflects on the accomplish...