Growing Greener

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 b…

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 p…

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 ov…

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 extraordi…

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…

Policy makers have promoted tree planting as a way to sequester carbon and fight climate change, but grassland advocates say that native prairie is more effective in some circumstances and provides u…

Gardening consumes an enormous amount of plastics, 1.66 billion pounds annually in the U.S. according to the most recent figures, most of it in the form of single-use, unrecyclable pots.  Ecological …

His participation in a Bioblitz introduced Brian Stewart to the fascination of the local insect life.  A dozen years later he had photographed some 400 species in his own back yard, including many st…

If you are frustrated by the poor selection of native plants at local garden centers, check out Izel Native Plants.  Listen as founders and owners Amanda McLean and Claudio Vasquez explain how they h…

Maya K. van Rossum shares what she observed at the recent trial in Montana, where 16 young natives of that state charged the legislature with deliberately violating the guarantee of “a clean and heal…

Gardening is changing, and our understanding of the field must keep pace. Veteran horticulturist and longtime teacher Joe Seals rises to this challenge in his new book, "Back to the New Basics: A Pra…

This week, in a re-posting of a program first heard in August 2021, ecologist and author Tom Wessels discusses his “Forest Forensics,” the system of simple visual clues you can use to read the histo…

As our climates grow warmer and frequently drier, gardeners need the drought and heat tolerance, and innate sustainability of our native grassland plants more than ever.  In their new book, The Garde…

“Grow Your Own” is a cornerstone of sustainability, but our vegetable gardens are being challenged by increasingly erratic weather as the climate changes.  John Traunfeld, Program Director at the Uni…

Lead contamination is common in soils of many residential neighborhoods in urban, suburban, and even rural settings.  Soil scientist Clay Robinson – “Dr. Dirt” – details where this problem is most li…

Artist Robert Adzema discusses his history of creating ingenious and innovative sundials, and what sundials can teach the gardener about plants’ primary fuel.

Dan Jaffe Wilder’s response to the polluting sterility of the traditional lawn?  Plant strawberries.  And that’s only one of many intriguing – and tested - proposals made by this talented native pla…

Robert Kourik, a pioneer of sustainable gardening, draws on his 45 years of experience with Permaculture to explore the strengths and weaknesses of this controversial gardening movement

Will “volcano mulch” the landscaper piled around the bases of your trees kill them?  And is a mulch made of ground-up shipping pallets really beneficial for your plants?  You may be surprised by the …