PODCAST · leisure
Growing Greener
by Tom Christopher
Your 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.
Episodes
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Declaring Peace with Pocket Gophers
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...
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Sustainable Color that Mixes Natives with Exotic Favorites
"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...
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A sustainable supply chain for plants that are truly native
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...
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Garden Journaling 2.0
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...
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How to Make Wood Chips a Basis for Soil Health
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.
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Creating Microenvironments to Boost Your Garden's Biodiversity and Resilience
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.
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Ground-Breaking New Takes on Trees from the Oldest Arboretum in the United States
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...
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Welcoming Peter Rabbit back into the Garden
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.
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Exploring – and Updating – Nature's Calendar
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…
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The Garden Conservancy: Your Passport to Garden Visits and Education Nationwide
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.
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Are There Microplastics in the Compost You've been Buying?
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.
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Do "Designed Ecosystems" Function Like Natural Plant Communities?
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,...
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The Facts about Fireflies
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
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New Cultural Perspectives on Ecological Gardening and How Your Lawn Can Transform Itself into a Native Meadow
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...
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Tim Clymer Uses Climate Battery Greenhouses to Farm Sub-Tropical Fruits in Pennsylvania
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.
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An Ecological Perspective on Tick-Borne Diseases
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...
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Citizen Scientists of iNaturalist Playing Crucial Role in Preservation of Biodiversity
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
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Charlie Nardozzi's New Book – an Ecological Update for the Kitchen Garden
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.
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The Nurturing Nature Initiative – Botanical Gardens Unite To Address Climate Change
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.
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What is Naturalism?
"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…
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"Veganic" Gardening
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...
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A New Chapter in the Roundup Debacle
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…
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Landraces – Customizing Vegetable and Fruit Cultivars to Flourish in Your Garden
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.
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Are Alien Plants Superior at Supporting Insect Diversity in the 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...
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The Million Orchid Project Turns Urban Areas into Sanctuaries for Critically Endangered Native Species
Dr. Jason Downing of Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden turns rare orchid propagation into an educational adventure for Miami area students, beautifies the cityscape, and rescues native Floridian species from the brink of extinction.
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Maine's Wild Seed Project Offers Education and an Example of Nationwide Significance
In this week's Growing Greener Heather McCargo, founder of the Wild Seed Project, describes its programs to encourage gardeners to grow native plants from wild-collected seeds to preserve genetic diversity in the garden and beyond, and how McCargo has embraced the evolution of her personal garden...
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Chemical Warfare from Invasive Plants
One of the ways that invasive plants displace indigenous floras is "allelopathy." In a conversation first broadcast in February 2024, Dr. Susan Kalisz of the University of Tennessee Knoxville describes how many introduced plants actually poison the soil so that indigenous species cannot germinate...
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Using Genetics to Avoid Spraying in the Vegetable Garden
Selecting disease-resistant cultivars is an essential tool for avoiding the use of pesticides in the vegetable garden. Plant pathologist Nicole Gauthier of the University of Kentucky explains how to identify cultivars appropriate to your region and your garden, and why "tolerance" may serve you…
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Make Your Lawn a Low-Maintenance Contributor to Biodiversity and Landscape Beauty
As Dan Jaffe Wilder Wilder says "you can grow a lawn which is a whole bunch of green stuff. Or you can grow a lawn that is a whole bunch of low-growing green stuff with some yellow, some blue, some white, some pink and some red mixed in. Which do you choose? " Join the conversation with this…
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A Gardener's Introduction to Fungi and Their Essential Support for Plants
Estimates of fungi diversity range into the millions of species, yet the vast majority remain unknown. What is clear, says mycologist Gabriela D'Elia, is that your garden plants depend on the services provided to them by the indigenous fungi.
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A Brazilian Genius of the last Century Created Invaluable Lessons for Today's Ecological Gardeners
James Lord speaks of his mentor and inspiration Roberto Burle Marx, the painter, sculptor, musician, and botanist who found in Brazil's native plants the basis for a new style of landscape architecture and a language to celebrate the distinctive beauty of his homeland.
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A British Horticultural Ecologist Challenges the U.S. Consensus
Citing European studies, British horticultural ecologist James Hitchmough, a leader of the ecological gardening movement in his country, rejects the intrinsic superiority of native plants over exotic garden imports for supporting insect diversity in the garden.
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Balancing your account in the soil seed bank
A square foot of topsoil typically hosts thousands of dormant seeds deposited by previous floras. Nathan Lambstrom of Lambstrom Garden Ecology discusses his research into how this "soil seed bank" can enhance or derail ecological restoration, and how to manage your "account" to benefit your garden.
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A Tree's Perspective on Pruning
Is your pruning aimed only at gratifying your aesthetics and needs? Chris Roddick also views pruning from the plants' perspective, promoting techniques that enhance their growth patterns and ecological function as well.
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O Canada ¬– A Garden Activist Enriches and Beautifies Lawns with Local Prairie Flora
Travel with Growing Greener to Winnipeg, Manitoba to learn how Ash Burkowski is collecting seed from local prairie remnants to raise indigenous grasses and wildflowers that can be integrated into lawns, restoring populations of native flora while relieving homeowners of the need for fertilization...
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Creating Crops that Thrive in Your Garden
A replay of a February 2024 conversation in which Joseph Lofthouse, author of "Landrace Gardening" details how anyone can create genetically diverse vegetable and fruit crops that flourish in the local climate and soil with minimal inputs in just three years.
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Colorado Agrivoltaic Learning Center combines energy generation with agriculture for a double harvest
Byron Kominek knew the family farm needed a more profitable crop than hay to survive. By installing photovoltaic panels and growing crops underneath, he now supplies electricity to 300 neighboring houses while also producing food and hosting educational programs at what is now a popular learning...
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The Missing Piece of Your Ecological Garden
Liz Koziol of the University of Kansas shares hew work with mycorrhizal fungi and native plants, and how a properly designed fungal inoculant can make your ecological garden more biodiverse, quicker to establish itself and more resistant to weeds.
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An Antique Tool Brings New Knowledge of Native Plants
Herbariums, annotated collections of dried plant specimens first appeared in Italy almost 500 years ago. In today's Growing Greener, Lea Johnson, Director of Conservation at the Native Plant Trust discusses why they remain an essential tool for those who track and study native plant populations,...
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How Your Garden Helped Drive the Deer Population Boom
Dr. Elic Weitzel of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History describes the thousands of years of association between deer and people, how they long ago came to prefer human-created landscapes, and why their population has exploded
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Behold the Magic of Warm-Season Grasses
In a conversation recorded in December of 2019 Shannon Currey, a leading educator in the native plants industry, describes how the unique adaptations of warm season grasses make them winners in an era of climate change as well as invaluable in the late summer garden.
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How Vermont sculptor Dan Snow has elevated the traditional New England wall into a powerful, locally rooted art form
In a conversation from January of 2021, Dan Snow tells how, using locally sourced stone, he expresses the intrinsic beauty of a site in bold constructions held together only by gravity, friction, and history.
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Partnering with Goats to Maintain Biodiversity in Ecological Hotspot
Goats love invasive plants, says Elijah Goodwin, Director of Ecosystem Monitoring at New York's Stone Barns Center; and with careful timing and regulation the Center's herd is restoring ecological balance to its 80-acre campus and hundreds of acres of a famous nature preserve.
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Seemingly non-invasive exotic garden plants can be ecological time bombs
Revisiting a conversation from August 2023 with Dr. Bethany Bradley of the University of Massachusetts, who describes how plants introduced from outside our ecosystems may remain quiescent for decades before turning invasive, and how climate change is threatening to explode this threat.
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Snagged: How a Dead Tree Can Enrich Your Garden
Wildlife biologist Ken Bevis discusses the many benefits to biodiversity of "snags," standing dead trees, and how to incorporate them safely and aesthetically into our gardens.
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Celebrate Thanksgiving with Pawpaws – a North American native fruit ideal for the home gardener
In a replay of a conversation from September of 2023, Sheri Crabtree of Kentucky State University describes the northernmost species of the tropical custard apple family, the pawpaw, which offers delicious tropical flavor, a creamy texture, and thrives in the backyard garden as far north as USDA...
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Start from Seed for a Special Relationship with Your Native Plants
William Cullina, a leading expert on the propagation of native plants, describes the special insights about a species' adaptations and ecology that starting from seed provides, and offers simple tips for success with this endeavor.
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Coexistence with a garden nemesis
'Good fences make good neighbors,' especially, according to Vermonter Susan Shea, when it comes to gardeners and woodchucks. A nature writer and photographer, Shea details the extraordinary abilities of this native mammal, the important ecological and cultural roles it plays, and how to install a...
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Edwina von Gal Closes the Loop
Everything that grows on your property – its "biomass" – should remain there even after death, says this award-winning garden designer and founder of the Perfect Earth Project. Fallen branches, leaves, even tree trunks as they decay reactivate a cycle essential to Nature's health, and are an...
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Pollinators of the Night
Overlooked by many gardeners, moths are actually more efficient as pollinators than bees and are the basis of the food chain for everything from bats and songbirds to grizzly bears
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Your 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.
HOSTED BY
Tom Christopher
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Growing Greener have?
Growing Greener currently has 379 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Growing Greener about?
Your 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.
How often does Growing Greener release new episodes?
Growing Greener publishes regularly with 379 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to Growing Greener?
You can listen to Growing Greener on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Growing Greener?
Growing Greener is created and hosted by Tom Christopher.
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