A Way To Garden

LEA JOHNSON is a plant ecologist whose work, she says, is driven by this question: “All of the wild diversity of life on earth is here, with us, right now. How can we take it with us into the future?” It’s a compelling question, and one that can motivate not just scientists like Lea, Director of Conservation at Native Plant Trust in New England, but also native-plant gardeners like us. She talked to me about where conservation and gardening intersect, and some of the challenges and the possibilities we face together. Lea joined Native Plant Trust, the nation’s oldest native plant conservation organization, in 2025, as its Director of Conservation. At the Massachusetts-based nonprofit, she manages various conservation and restoration initiatives, including the monitoring of rare and endangered species; a rare plant seed bank with over 10 million seeds, and the Trust’s seven native plant sanctuaries in New England. She also oversees the leading botanical resource GoBotany—one of my favorite reference websites. Read along as you listen to the July 6, 2026 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify (and browse my archive […] The post where conservation meets horticulture, with lea johnson appeared first on A Way To Garden.

I KNOW, it feels like we just planted the vegetable garden moments ago. But a close look around as summer really takes hold quickly reminds us that our work is never done… Some crop or other is reaching the end of its run, making room for a succession sowing of more of that same thing or something else altogether, or maybe of a weed-suppressing, soil-building cover crop—some of which are actually edible, too, (like the winter-hardy field peas, above) in what’s perhaps the cleverest season-extending scheme of all. Mastering the art of stretching the harvest season is my topic today with Doug Muller of Hudson Valley Seed Company. Doug is co-founder and managing director of the mail-order seed business and retail store, based on its organic farm in Accord, N.Y., and I was pleased to speak to him and get some inspiration on succession sowing and creative cover cropping—because yes, there’s still time for lots more possibilities out there. Read along as you listen to the June 29, 2026 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify (and browse my archive of podcasts here). […] The post vegetable successions and edible cover crops, with doug muller appeared first on A Way To Garden.

THE RECENTLY PUBLISHED book “Madoo: The Making of an American Garden,” reminded me of the power of certain key design strategies that can make all the difference—ones that proved to be formative elements in the highly distinctive garden that is Madoo, in Sagaponack, Long Island, which visitors often use words like “magical” to describe. Madoo was created starting in the 1960s by the late painter and poet Bob Dash, and the book’s authors join me today to talk about some of those garden-making tactics he used and that the garden team there keeps using—like how important it is to consider inside-out views from key windows, and how flourishes of colorful paint (including on the welcoming element of carefully placed garden seating) can unite a landscape’s many elements. My guests today are Alejandro Saralegui, executive director of the Madoo Conservancy since 2009, and Kendell Cronstrom, a longtime magazine editor (left to right, in the photo below), who have co-authored the book, “Madoo: The Making of an American Garden” (affiliate link). Plus: Comment in the box near the bottom of the page for a chance to win their new book, “Madoo.” Read along as you listen to the June 22, 2026 edition […] The post color, views, seating & more: design lessons from madoo appeared first on A Way To Garden.

I’VE BEEN DIGGING into a diverse and compelling collection of essays in a recent book that’s centered on the subject of flowers—everything from topics like their breeding, to which species we covet most of all, to some of the downsides of the massive floral industry, including ubiquitous plastics used in propagation and flower arranging, or how the branding of plants has limited the palette. The author, Christin Geall, calls the book “Flora Culture: How Flowers Shape Our World” an abecedarium (yes that’s a word), since the entries are arranged alphabetically. She also calls it a manifesto. She made time recently to tell us some of the tales within in. Christin Geall’s work focuses on the intersections of nature, culture, and horticulture, and her latest book,  “Flora Culture: How Flowers Shape Our World” (affiliate link) is no exception. (Above, a photo she took of a collection of cultivars of tulips and more from her garden.) Plus: Comment in the box near the bottom of the page for a chance to win a copy of “Flora Culture.” Read along as you listen to the June 15, 2026 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to […] The post of flowers and us: ‘flora culture,’ with christin geall appeared first on A Way To Garden.

WHEN ELISE HOWARD and I talked on the show in March, her new book, “Plant This, Not That,” was just out. The popular book offers basic guidelines for selecting and using native plants, and specific substitutes for non-natives you may wish to replace. Once spring arrived, Elise Howard got back to making a garden around the weekend home in Western Massachusetts she and her husband bought in 2025—not just deciding what to grow, but thornier topics like tackling invasives and all the rest of what goes into rethinking a landscape with ecology in mind. I wanted to check back in and hear how the implementation of the book’s principles and plant choices is going for her in real time, because Elise is practicing what she preaches. And like for all of us, that means being confronted with some tricky questions to puzzle out along the way. Elise Howard, a literary agent, began learning about natives more than 15 years ago as a volunteer at Riverside Park in New York City. Her book, “Plant This Not That” (affiliate link), offers 200ish examples of swaps for plants that have proven troublesome or just don’t do much in the name of supporting biodiversity, […] The post elise howard’s adventures in native-plant gardening appeared first on A Way To Garden.

IF YOU’VE EVER posted a photo on the massive community science project called iNaturalist and wondered how such contributions get used in research… well, today’s guest is here to tell us about one especially stunning example. It involves 1.6 million such crowd-sourced observations, and the timing of the migration of hummingbirds in Eastern North America. You’ve probably heard it said that hummingbirds love red flowers, and scientists in the Hopkins Lab at the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University took a much closer look at that connection thanks to all that community data, and the use of artificial intelligence to sort through it all. One of the Harvard scientists, a post-doctoral researcher in the plant evolution lab named Patrick McKenzie, part of the team at Dr. Robin Hopkins’s lab, is here to explain what they learned and how. Patrick has written that, “Quiet hours in the sun, meditating with the bugs, plants, and birds, are my inspiration as an evolutionary biologist.” He is always on the lookout for patterns—and then asking himself why each pattern unfolds—like the why of red flowers and hummingbirds, for example. Besides his extensive training in plant evolution, Patrick is a keen birder, and I was glad for […] The post the hummingbird-red flower connection, with harvard’s patrick mckenzie appeared first on A Way To Garden.

OWLS: THEY ARE birds we more often hear than see, exceptionally well-camouflaged creatures,  many of whom move about in the hours of low light for an extra layer of stealth, making them seem even more mysterious. So what do you know about owls—besides perhaps the eerie sound of their voices? For wildlife photographer and writer Paul Bannick, owls have been the subject of much study and also the topic of several of his books, and he’s here today to tell us about these incredible animals who have commanded his attention, and should command more of ours. (Above, a great gray owl and owlets.) Paul Bannick is an award-winning author and wildlife photographer based in Seattle whose work focuses on the natural history of North America, with a particular emphasis on the conservation of birds and their habitats. He has written several previous books about owls—including “Owl: A Year in the Lives of North American Owls” (affiliate link) and another about the great gray and one about the snowy owl, too, plus a book about woodpeckers. Plus: Comment in the box near the bottom of the page for a chance to win a copy of “Owl: A Year in the Lives […] The post the magic of owls, with paul bannick appeared first on A Way To Garden.

HOW CONFIDENT are you about the use of color in your garden, and where do you draw your inspiration from for creating a pleasing palette? The topic of color is just one of many that Stephen Orr tackles in his new book, “The Gardener’s Mindset: Connecting with Nature Through Plants,” and we talked together recently about how he’s finding his way to some combinations that please him through his own garden experiments. Stephen, the former editor-in-chief of “Better Homes & Gardens,” is embarking on the fifth growing season at the home he shares with his husband on Cape Cod. It’s their fourth garden and their most ambitious one, a place that presented new realities to acclimate to like sandy soil, but also at least one form of great relief: Finally, no deer. Above, one of his tactics that we discussed for keeping track of color ideas that work is to take snippets of plants of a given moment in the garden and photograph them as a still-life, for future inspiration. Plus: Comment in the box near the bottom of the page for a chance to win a copy of “The Gardener’s Mindset” (affiliate link). Read along as you listen to […] The post getting confident with color in the garden, with stephen orr appeared first on A Way To Garden.

IF WE’RE shopping for native plants with the most ecological impact—ones with the most pollinator appeal, for example—then simply choosing by the prettiest picture on a label or by a catalog photo won’t get you to your goal. It helps to understand the vocabulary of natives: words like straight species and ecotype and selection and cultivar. Especially with cultivars—the cultivated named varieties of, say, Echinacea or Phlox or Aster of which there are now so many to choose from—we need to learn to read between the lines on those plant labels, because not all cultivars are created equal. Sam Hoadley, the manager of horticultural research at Mt. Cuba Center in Delaware, helped me  understand how to do just that. Since 2002, the gardeners at Mt. Cuba Center in Delaware have been studying native plants and their cultivars for their garden-worthiness and ecological value, and since 2019 Sam Hoadley has been heading up that effort, conducting multi-year trials that compare different species and varieties of a genus. (Above, Phlox paniculata ‘Jeana,’ a top performer in their Phlox trial.) Read along as you listen to the April 27, 2026 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can […] The post straight talk on native-plant cultivars, with mt. cuba’s sam hoadley appeared first on A Way To Garden.

BOTH GARDENERS and their plants have to be more resilient than ever these days in our changing climate it seems. At the High Line in New York City, one of the best-known naturalistic gardens anywhere, that’s especially so, since it’s built on the preposterous site of a former rail line, 30 feet above street level, meaning a plant must be an exceptional performer to make the grade. Richard Hayden, the High Line’s Senior Director of Horticulture, talked to me about the plants that excel in different extremes of moisture, for instance, or in shade, or offer the most ecologically, and about how the team is using certain species to create weed-suppressing living green mulch, and also shifting their thinking about gardens as ecological communities rather than a collection of plants. Richard joined the High Line four years ago to lead the team that manages the mile-and-a-half-long stretch of gardens, with two new areas set to open this year. Also: On Saturday, May 30, the High Line is holding its first-ever plant sale with 39 different species the team has propagated from the garden—some of those top performers, that play key roles in making the High Line work aesthetically and ecologically. […] The post resilient plants that meet the high line’s test, with richard hayden appeared first on A Way To Garden.

I’M PRIVILEGED to observe a fascinating diversity of animals outside where I live, but the term “Outsider Animals” was new to me. It’s the title of a recent book by today’s guest, Marlene Zuk, a leading expert in behavioral evolution and a professor at the University of Minnesota. The book’s subtitle is “How the Creatures at the Margins of Our Lives Have the Most to Teach Us” (affiliate link), and among her subjects are ones that many gardeners may know—or think they know—like raccoons, cabbage white butterflies, cowbirds and snakes (like the garter snake, above, devouring one of “my” frogs in the garden some years ago). All these animals have one thing in common, she writes: “When we see them, we ask, what are you doing here?” Outsider animals were the topic of my conversation with Dr. Zuk, the Regents Professor of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior at the University of Minnesota, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Plus: Comment in the box near the bottom of the page for a chance to win a copy of the book. Read along as you listen to the April 13, 2026 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the […] The post what we can learn from ‘outsider animals,’ with marlene zuk appeared first on A Way To Garden.