Growing Greener

Many 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 introduced plant species are as effective or better than locally native ones.  A garden up the block from me in Connecticut suggests the fallacy of that claim.

Shawn Maestretti, principal of Studio Petrichor, a celebrated landscape design and installation firm in Altadena, California, describes his "conversation" with pocket gophers, generally reviled as a pest in western gardens, and how he has come to respect not only this native creature's right to share the landscape but also the invaluable role it can play as a soil engineer.

"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 Growing Greener Jessica shares how she does not fertilize, mulch, or irrigate her lush, colorful, and wildlife-rich garden, and how she enlisted the bees in her program to breed the black-leaved dahlias whose blossoms mak...

Ecological gardeners and restorationists have long relied on seed collected from wild populations to supply the need for locally adapted, genetically diverse planting material.  As the enthusiasm for native plants has exploded, though, this practice has begun to threaten the continued vitality of those wild populations.  In this episode of Growing Greener, Uli Lorimer, Director of Horticulture at...

That 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 ecological gardener, discusses how Instagram has become her favored platform for communicating her experiences and reflections, and its unique capabilities.

Brian 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 garden soils are lacking.

Tom Wessels, professor emeritus at Antioch University New England and a celebrated ecologist, author, and educator explains how gardeners can enrich their landscapes with microenvironments to hugely boost their biodiversity and resilience. 

Ned 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 climate change, helping trees flourish in an increasingly challenging environment, and how you can share in his passion for these extraordinary organisms by bonding with one tree.

Amy 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 garden.

Theresa 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 emergences of their insect pollinators is essential to good gardening and shares how climate climate change is disrupting natural collaborations that stretch back over millennia.

Horatio Joyce, the Garden Conservancy's Director of Public Programs & Education details the rich opportunities his organization provides to tour remarkable gardens in every region of the United States, and the innovative opportunities for gardening education it provides both in person and online.

Rutger 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 finished product and what you can do to prevent that.

A 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 benefits to natural plant communities of locally co-evolved species.   Peter Adler, a plant ecologist at Utah State University, helps us explore the potential of such a practice.

Texan 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 July 2020

Sara Weaner Cooper describes how New Directions in the American Landscape is incorporating indigenous American approaches into Ecological Gardening and how by adjusting the growing conditions in her lawn she caused it to transform itself into a meadow of native grasses and wildflowers without the use of herbicides or other unsustainable practices. A replay of a July, 2024 conversation.

By 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.

Dr. 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 treatments such as pesticide sprays are unproductive as well as environmentally destructive, and outlines a very different approach to this public health threat.

Arya 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 climate resilient ecosystems

In "The Continuous Vegetable Garden" Charlie Nardozzi applies lessons learned from ecologically-informed gardening to bring vegetable and fruit gardening into a new, more sustainable, and less laborious era.

Emma 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 knowledge and resources for a coordinated, plant-based effort to combat the consequences of global climate change.

"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 aesthetic principles to please the human eye?   Can it allow the gardener to enjoy favorite plants not indigenous to the area?   Duncan Brine, co-proprietor with his wife Julia of design/build firm Garden Large explains how...

Are 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 fertility?   British gardener John Walker, an award-winning environmental writer, shares the techniques he has used to make his garden cruelty free, self-sustaining, and sustainable in a conversation first shared in May of 2023.

Award-winning investigative journalist Carey Gillam exposed the corruption and suppression of evidence involved in the Environmental Protection Agency's original approval of the use of the herbicide Roundup and its active ingredient glyphosate on American gardens and farms.   In today's conversation she details the on-going suppression of evidence of its harmful impact on human and environmental h...

In 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 conditions in your garden.

James Hitchmough, an eminent British garden designer and former professor of horticultural ecology asserted on a previous episode that research confirms that gardens rich in alien plants support a greater diversity of insects.   Today, Matthew Shepherd of the Xerces Society, an organization founded to promote insect and invertebrate conservation shares a different understanding of the science.