Growing Greener

Hybrid fruit and vegetable seeds are like thoroughbred horses –   extraordinary performers but not resilient or good at coping with adverse conditions.   When they didn't succeed in Joseph Lofthouse's Utah garden, he created his own "landraces", biodiverse crop strains that "promiscuously pollinate" and speedily evolve to thrive in local conditions and adapt to the gardener's style of cultivation.

Why are invasive plants so effective in muscling out native species?   Research by Dr. Susan Kalisz of the University of Tennessee Knoxville details how the invaders commonly release chemicals into the soil that disrupt the functioning of native plants and even the soil fungi and bacteria that help them grow.

Jim Sirch of Yale University's Peabody Museum shares gardener-friendly resources and an easy, nearly foolproof method for starting natives from seeds, together with tips for finding locally collected seeds wherever you garden in the United States.

Brooklyn's Prospect Park, one of Frederick Law Olmsted's greatest masterpieces, was failing by 1989 when Joseph Doccola signed on to restore its tree canopy. Over the next decade he replanted lost trees, matching adapted native species to each site, helping to turn Prospect Park into a pioneering example for urban parks across the United States.

There are thousands, millions of weed seeds lying dormant in your garden soil – the "weed seed bank" – waiting for a chance to emerge and invade your plantings.   Listen as Dr. Bryan Brown of Cornell University shares strategies for drawing down the account before those seeds become a problem.

Robert Kourik, a pioneering gardener in Santa Rosa, California shares a new understanding of roots and how gardeners can better foster these hidden but foundational elements of their plants

As Director of Horticulture at Brooklyn Bridge Park, Rebecca McMackin played a leading role in transforming 85 acres of abandoned piers and pavement into a series of vibrant ecosystems that are a model of what an urban park can be.   We talk with her about her subsequent year of study at Harvard and her new endeavors to make ecological landscaping the mainstream.

Invasive plants flourish in part because in their transition to North America they leave behind the co-evolved pests that help keep them in check in their homelands. Dr. Lisa Tewksbury, Director of the University of Rhode Island Biocontrol Laboratory, describes the painstaking process of introducing to our landscape organisms that can control the invasive plants without harming our native species.

Join us for a replay of our 2020 interview with Dr. Elaine Ingham, internationally renowned expert on the soil food web about how to make your soil far more fertile and productive using only natural, scientifically proven inputs

Uli Lorimer, Director of Horticulture at the Native Plant Trust, discusses the role gardeners can play in maintaining biodiversity without sacrificing their favorite, non-native plants.

Trevor Smith has won awards with his expert design that brings damaged landscapes back to a fuller function. He's applied that experience to his second passion: educating young people, home gardeners and professionals about how they too can heal the landscape.

Jacob Suissa and Ben Goulet-Scott, two young PhD botanists, have launched an educational non-profit. "Let's Botanize," that demonstrates online and for free how accessible and fun plant science can be.

Kat Tancock and Domini Clark, founders and editors of Rewilding Magazine (available for free online) explore the restoration of local habitats and ecosystems worldwide, with reports from Asia, Africa, and Australia as well as Europe, Canada, and the United States.   A rare, truly international perspective.

Drs. Michael Balick and Gregory Plunkett of the New York Botanical Garden share results of their research in the Pacific nation of Vanuatu, where local informants have shared with them a calendar based on clues from indigenous plants – a calendar that governs residents interactions with nature and which is automatically adjusting to the dislocations of climate change

Ecological landscape designer and educator Kathleen Connolly takes a deep dive into her new approach to putting the garden to bed in fall.   Leave the leaves but keep the beauty.

They sound great – something you apply to a seed or plant and which spreads throughout the organism to provide protection against any insect attack.   The reality, though, as described by Sharon Selvaggio,   Pesticide Program Specialist at the Xerces Society, reveals the way these highly toxic chemicals cause indiscriminate death and persist in the soil for years.

Landscape architect Marissa Angell has worked with premier firms on high profile projects, but today she's sharing her personal experience with tips for an overlooked demographic: the more than 15 million, largely younger gardeners who rent rather than own.

A hot topic in gardening circles is the relative value of exotic versus native plants for supporting native insect populations, a foundation of the food chain for birds and other wildlife.   Listen to Dr. Douglas Tallamy, best-selling author and professor of insect ecology at the University of Delaware, explain what the data actually reveals.

American gardening, which had been for the most part a lesser copy of European landscapes, began an exciting new chapter with the explosion of innovative, regionally adapted gardening styles in the 1980's.   No one played a larger role in this than the late David Salman of Santa Fe, New Mexico.   Linda Churchill, Director of Horticulture at the Santa Fe Botanical Garden discusses Salman's contribu...

Ecological garden designer Christine Cook discusses the beauties and benefits of dragonflies, and how you can make your garden a haven for these exquisite creatures.

Dr. Luis Mata of the University of Melbourne Australia details how the installation of just 12 native plant species turned a small urban greenspace almost overnight into a hotspot for native insect biodiversity

As "chief seed sower" at Devine Native Plantings, LLC, Jean Devine takes time out from habitat revitalization to mentor students in "Biodiversity Builders," a paid, six-week program that introduces participants to working in partnership with nature while also building a business

Compact, beautiful, and trouble-free, the pawpaw is the northernmost representative of a tropical fruit family, a North American native tree that bears large fruits with a delicious, exotic flavor over an extended season, while also supporting a host of native butterflies and moths.   Sheri Crabtree of Kentucky State University's Pawpaw Program explains why this gem never made it into commercial f...

Naturalist, gardener, and journalist Nancy Lawson talks about her new book, "Wildscape,"   which introduces readers to details of how very differently wildlife perceives our gardens, and the extraordinary relationships between plants and animals we can observe in our own backyards.

When our native flowering dogwood tree was laid waste by an imported fungus in the 1970's, the east Asian kousa dogwood was widely planted as a disease-resistant replacement.   After 50 years, however, it has turned invasive.   Dr. Bethany Bradley of the University of Massachusetts Amherst explains that such a "lag period" is common among introduced plants and why this makes plant introduction a v...