Growing Greener
261 episodes - English - Latest episode: 5 days ago - ★★★★★ - 73 ratingsYour 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.
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Episodes
Carol Reese Explains Sex in the Garden
July 17, 2024 11:38 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBDistinguished horticultural educator Carol Reese shares a lively exploration of transexual plants and other reproductive mysteries displayed in your garden (originally broadcast in January 2022).
The Mind of a Bee
July 10, 2024 10:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBIn this revelatory book Dr. Lars Chittka of Queen Mary University of London explores the psychology of bees, their extraordinary learning abilities and their individual personalities.
Creating a Meadow the Ecological, Easy Way
July 03, 2024 10:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBSara Weaner Cooper, Executive Director of New Directions in The American Landscape, describes her organization’s dynamic educational programing and her success in transitioning a front lawn into native meadow without the use of herbicides, smothering plastics, or turf removal
A Garden Icon’s Disastrous Impact on Our Native Flora
June 26, 2024 10:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBAlthough beloved by gardeners, earthworms are not native to the northern half of North America and can cause extreme changes in soil ecology there, with disastrous effects on native plants and animals. A recent study Dr. Jérome Mattieu of the Sorbonne and colleagues reveals routes by which 70 species of alien earthworms are spreading throughout the United States
Conversing with Plants
June 19, 2024 10:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBEcological landscaping trail blazer Larry Weaner explains the importance of the long-term conversations you hold with your plants, letting them inform you about the role they can play in the garden ecosystem
A Fresh Look at Garden Thugs
June 12, 2024 10:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBTraditional gardeners shun plants that spread aggressively, but Ben Vogt, renowned natural garden designer, describes the positive roles they can play in an ecologically-based landscape
CowPots – Better for the Environment, Better for the Plants
June 05, 2024 10:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBAmanda Freund of the Freund Dairy Farm describes how her family’s ingenuity has transformed manure from an environmental liability into a source of renewable energy, a means of recycling waste paper and cardboard, and “Cowpots,” a horticulturally superior replacement for environmentally destructive peat pots.
Biopesticides: A Different Approach to Plant Pest Control
May 29, 2024 10:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBDr. Amara Dunn-Silver of Cornell University discusses the advantages and limitations of biopesticides, and how, if properly used, they can often provide a more environmentally friendly alternative to conventional chemical treatments
Foraging as an Education for Ecological Gardeners
May 22, 2024 10:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBMegan Edge of Victoria, British Columbia shares how her lifelong interest in foraging for wild foods and herbs set the stage for her current practice as a natural healer while also informing her passion for gardening.
Pinelands Nursery Leads in Adapted, Diverse Native Plant Production
May 15, 2024 10:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBTom Knezick of Pinelands Nursery, one of the largest producers of native plants in the U.S., tells how his family’s business has mastered growing natives from locally collected seed, producing plants that are genetically diverse and regionally adapted. The nursery industry as a whole claims this is too difficult and labor intensive; Tom describes how Pinelands has succeeded.
Organic Applications to Enhance Stress Resistance and Vigor in the Vegetable Garden
May 08, 2024 10:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBDr. Matthew Kleinhenz of Ohio State University describes the ancient history of “biostimulants,” and how contemporary researchers are identifying natural bacteria and fungi that help crops cope with the extreme weather events of climate change
Shubhendu Sharma Plants Tiny Forests Around the World
May 01, 2024 10:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBWhen automotive engineer Shubhendu Sharma met Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki, Sharma found the cause he had been looking for. Today, Sharma’s company Afforestt is the global leader in creating Miyawaki’s transformational tiny forests
Garden for Wildlife Makes Selecting the Right Plants Easy
April 24, 2024 10:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBShubber Ali, CEO of Garden for Wildlife, a new venture of the National Wildlife Federation, describes how his company makes it almost effortless to order site-adapted, locally native plants that provide the maximum benefits for wildlife.
An Extraordinary Online Resource for Native Plants Enthusiasts in Every State
April 17, 2024 10:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBLady Bird Johnson put native plants on the map with her program to plant wildflowers alongside our nation’s highways in the 1960’s. Her legacy, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, continues to play a key role by providing gardeners with extraordinary and free online resources about selecting and growing native plants in every U.S. state.
Boosting the Ecosystem While Boosting Your Spirits
April 10, 2024 10:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBAs the first Executive Director of Homegrown National Park, Brandon Hough talks about his unconventional journey to conservation, and how this non-profit makes it easy for homeowners to find plants that give the maximum boost to the local ecosystem while also, at least in Brandon’s case, relieving eco-grief.
Daryl Beyers Shares a Fresh Approach to Gardening Fundamentals
April 03, 2024 10:00 - 30 minutes - 41.5 MBCoordinator of the New York Botanical Garden’s Gardening Education Program, Daryl Beyers has developed a fresh approach to teaching the fundamentals of the craft, one that not only provides a strong foundation for novices to go on and build their own skills, but which has proved valuable to experienced practitioners who want to move beyond the old-fashioned, often environmentally harmful practices they may absorbed at the beginning of their careers.
Native Annuals of the Eastern United States
March 27, 2024 10:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBAnnuals offer unique advantages for the ecological gardener, growing fast to stabilize disturbed soils, and providing quick color for new plantings. In this conversation, master plantsman Ethan Dropkin of Larry Weaner Landscape Associates shares his pick of the best native annuals native to eastern North America.
Thomas Rainer: A Case for Thoughtful Optimism
March 20, 2024 10:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBIn 2015 landscape architect Thomas Rainer and his professional partner Claudia West stirred the gardening world with their best-selling book, “Planting in a Post-Wild World.” Now Rainer shares his arguments for thoughtful optimism regarding gardening and its potential impact on our ecological challenges.
Celebrating Regional Beauty
March 13, 2024 10:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBIn the 1990’s Lauren Springer helped pioneer a new, regionally focused gardening style in Colorado, an “undaunted garden” that celebrated the Rocky Mountain landscape and the plants, native and introduced, that were at home there. In this conversation, Springer recalls those times and details how her design style has continued to evolve, and what comes next.
Can Genetic Engineering Help Save North American Trees From Imported Threats?
March 06, 2024 11:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBThe American chestnut was a foundational species of eastern forests until an imported blight killed virtually all mature specimens back to stumps in the early 20th century. Jared Westbrook, Science Director of the American Chestnut Foundation discusses how a project to genetically engineer a blight-resistant American chestnut has revealed the complexity of applying this process to tree species.
A New CEO for the Native Plant Trust
February 28, 2024 11:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBWhen it was founded in 1900, the Native Plant Trust was the first plant conservation organization in the United States. Its new CEO, Tim Johnson describes how, more than a century later, the Trust continues to break new ground, defining how an organization such as this can rise to meet the challenges currently facing our native flora.
“Poor Man’s Fertilizer”
February 21, 2024 11:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBToo often we regard snow as merely an annoyance, but Kim Eierman, ecological garden designer and educator, makes the case for snow as a natural source of great and sometimes surprising benefits for the garden.
Create Your Own Locally Adapted Garden Seeds
February 14, 2024 11:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBHybrid 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.
Invasive Plants Waging Chemical Warfare
February 07, 2024 11:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBWhy 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.
Easy Hacks for Starting Native Plants from Seed
January 31, 2024 11:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBJim 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.
Restoring the Canopy of an Olmsted Masterpiece
January 24, 2024 11:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBBrooklyn’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.
Bankrupting Your Garden’s Weed Seed Bank
January 17, 2024 11:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBThere 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.
Roots Revealed
January 10, 2024 11:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBRobert 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
Rebecca McMackin and the Innovative Beauty of the Ecological Landscape
January 03, 2024 11:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBAs 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.
Biocontrol – Beating Back Invasive Plants
December 27, 2023 11:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBInvasive 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.
Exploring the Soil Food Web with Elaine Ingham
December 20, 2023 11:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBJoin 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
Biodiversity and Its Importance in the Garden
December 13, 2023 11:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBUli 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.
Innovative Education Programs from a Regenerative Landscape Designer
December 06, 2023 11:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBTrevor 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.
Botany Made Fun
November 29, 2023 11:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBJacob 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.
The International Reach of Rewilding Magazine
November 22, 2023 11:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBKat 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.
A Gardening Calendar For the Era of Climate Change
November 15, 2023 11:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBDrs. 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
Leave the Leaves Without Banishing Beauty
November 08, 2023 11:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBEcological 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.
The Special Hazards of Systemic Insecticides
November 01, 2023 10:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBThey 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.
Garden-Making for Those Who Own No Land
October 25, 2023 10:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBLandscape 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.
Native vs. Exotic Plants: Support for Insect Populations
October 18, 2023 10:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBA 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.
Tribute to David Salman
October 11, 2023 10:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBAmerican 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 contributions and the tribute garden that the Botanical Garden is planning.
Designing the Dragonfly Garden
October 04, 2023 10:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBEcological garden designer Christine Cook discusses the beauties and benefits of dragonflies, and how you can make your garden a haven for these exquisite creatures.
Cityscapes as Native Insect Refuges
September 27, 2023 10:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBDr. 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
“Biodiversity Builders” Cultivates a New Generation of Native Plant Entrepreneurs
September 20, 2023 10:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBAs “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
An Overlooked Native Fruit Finds Its Niche
September 13, 2023 10:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBCompact, 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 fruit orchards and why it is ideal for the home garden.
A Brilliant New Book for Gardeners
September 06, 2023 10:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBNaturalist, 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.
How Introduced Plants May Behave Like Ecological Time Bombs
August 30, 2023 10:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBWhen 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 very risky gamble.
Benefits Big and Small of Grassland Planting
August 23, 2023 10:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBPolicy 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 unique ecological benefits. Dr. Jessica Gutknecht of the University of Minnesota examines the opportunities and limitations of this approach, and the potential impact of backyard prairies such as her own.
Greening the Green Industry
August 16, 2023 10:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBGardening 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 landscape designer Marie Chieppo has made it her mission to change this. Learn about how her work is promoting recycling, changes in design to use less plastic, and a switch where possible to biodegradable and compostable substitutes.
A Personal Exploration of the Beauty of Back Yard Insects
August 09, 2023 10:00 - 29 minutes - 40.1 MBHis 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 strange and beautiful creatures. Brian shares his story and tips for insect identification in this program first broadcast in November of 2019