PODCAST · leisure
Plants Always Win
by Sean Patchett and Erin Alladin
A podcast where two Ontario gardeners dive down plant-fact rabbit-holes, answer audience questions, interview intriguing guests, and compete to bring you the most interesting stories and information. We care about ecologically sound gardening, strong human communities, and up-to-date science.
Episodes
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Ep 51 Our Top Plant ID Apps
These two free plant ID tools can help you level up your observation and identification skills, spot invasive species, and even engage in citizen science to track what is spreading in your area. If you garden, hike, or just want to know whether that weird thing in your yard is a native, a weed…
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Ep. 50 Midsummer Cleanup: Rescue Your Neglected Garden
Reclaim your neglected garden! Sean and Erin share eleven steps to overcome the overwhelm and start your own midsummer garden cleanup, even when you’re short on time and energy.
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Ep. 49 Community Urban Permaculture with Patrick Tohill
When a city dweller with no gardening experience gets pulled into leadership for a communal permaculture project, he starts using all his spare time to grow food and grow community in Toronto’s east end. This is Patrick Tohill co-founder of Garden@Kimbourne Community Permaculture Project.
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Plants Are for Everyone with Jesse Thorn
Sean talks with Jesse Thorn about how gardening in LA compares to gardening in Ontario; about produce exchange and community food distribution organizations; and about access to green space, including majestic sequoia trees. The two of them even step into the roles of internet judge and expert...
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Ep. 47 Are You Starting Your Spring Garden Right?
Spring is tiptoeing in and we want to set you up for the smoothest garden year ever. This week we’re recording live on location in Erin’s garden and examining what tasks she has already done, what’s next on the list, and what pressures to let go of. (Remember: don’t let perfect be the enemy of...
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Ep. 46 Ontario One Call
Are you breaking the law every time you plant a shrub? This week we welcome Ian Simpson, VP of Communications and Corporate Affairs at Ontario One Call. That’s the public safety administrative authority that makes sure your gardening project doesn’t end in a damaged gas line or ruptured water…
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Ep. 45 Hydrangea Happiness with C.L. Fornari
For some of us, happiness is a hydrangea in full, glorious bloom. And if you’re not yet well acquainted with these flowering shrubs, who better to learn from than The Garden Lady herself? C.L. Fornari is the author of the upcoming 2026 book Hydrangea Happiness: Planting, Pruning and Blooming…
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Ep. 44 Internet Plant Science with Dr. Vikram Baliga
The internet is a minefield of questionable plant hacks, rage bait, and—sigh—banana water. Good thing The Plant Prof is here to shed some science on the matter. Vikram Baliga, a.k.a. The Plant Prof, is a professor of horticulture and the host of the podcasts Planthropology and Deep Roots. He is...
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Ep. 43 Rosemary vs. Lavender
In this versus episode, we bring you two of the nicest-smelling and slowest-growing plants in the garden. Sean gets us started with rosemary, which is known to science as Salvia rosemarinus (though some botanists may be surprised to hear that!). We learn how to grow this Mediterranean plant and…
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Ep. 42 Landscape Design Fails
As the 2026 growing season waves tantalizingly on the far horizon, we’d like to help you prepare for a disaster-free garden. To do that, we’re sharing a few key landscape design principles…along with a whole heap of stories about landscape design fails. No garden is truly no-maintenance, but…
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Ep. 41 Thoughtful Foraging with Gabrielle Cerberville
If you’re looking to build a relationship with the land that feeds you, you can start by embracing the wisdom of the Internet’s Mushroom Auntie. Gabrielle Cerberville, a.k.a. your new Mushroom Auntie, a.k.a. The Chaotic Forager, has spent her academic life collecting degrees in music. If you…
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Ep. 40 Nut Trees and Connection with Elspeth Hay
Feeding humanity doesn’t need to come at the Earth’s expense. Elspeth Hay is here to talk nut trees, ecosystems, and humans as keystone species. In 2019, Elspeth was a local food writer who felt despondent about humans’ need to tear up nature in order to feed ourselves. When she discovered that...
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Ep. 39 Plant Evolution: Kid Q&A
Kids ask the best nature questions! For this episode, a class of elementary-school students prepared a list of questions about plants for Sean and Erin to answer. The best part, of course, is that these are questions few adults would think to ask, and they let our hosts explore all sorts of...
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Ep. 38 Little Shop of Horrors
This episode is what happens when two people’s loves for venus flytraps, spooky season, and movie musicals collide. Yes, we’re doing nerdy Halloween horticulture by analyzing the representation of carnivorous plants in the classic musical Little Shop of Horrors—specifically the 1986 movie…
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Ep. 37 Sunflower vs. Sunchoke
It’s the versus episode they said couldn’t be done.
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Ep. 36 Community Gardens with Jessica Letteer
This episode is for anyone who has ever daydreamed about starting a community garden and for anyone who needs the boost of a good-news gardening story.
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Ep. 35 Bat Ecology with Dr. Dana Green Part 2
Dr. Dana Green, a.k.a. "The Eyepatch Biologist" is back for part two! This free-flying conversation just couldn't be contained to a single hour.We plunge straight in this week with an urgent question: how do bats relieve themselves without dribbling on their own heads? From there the facts come...
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Ep. 34 Bat Ecology with Dr. Dana Green, Part 1
Dr. Dana Green is a bat expert who is known online as The Eyepatch Biologist. As a science communicator, a pun connoisseur, and a woman who knows a good joke when it's staring her in the face, she says of herself, "What a wonderful bat advocate to go half blind."In Dana's interview with Sean, she...
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Ep. 33 Establishing Apples, Eradicating Horsetail & Fertilizing Flowers
Our gardens are winding down for the season, but our audience is putting on a growth spurt! This crop of new listeners has seeded our Q&A inbox with a flush of questions, which we love to see. And while we’d normally answer these at the end of our versus episodes, we currently have a backlog of...
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Ep. 32 Home Composting with Delaina Arnold
Do you make compost at home? Do you delight in the experience? If your answer to either of those questions is no, this week’s guest is here to help.Delaina Arnold is the community programs manager with the Georgian Bay Mnidoo Gamii Biosphere, a UNESCO-designated “ecologically significant”…
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Ep. 31: Joyful Gardening with Chris Paul Rainbows
“I am very enthusiastic about [gardening]. I don't know if I'm that great at it. I'm not very knowledgeable. I can't really answer any of your garden questions, but I love getting my hands dirty.”Gardening is for everyone! We’ve interviewed plenty of experts on Plants Always Win who’ve mastered...
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Ep. 30: Sassafras vs. Cola Nut
Are you finding yourself thirsty for a little soda pop this summer? How about for some botanical knowledge about soda pop’s history?In this plant face-off episode, Erin and Sean put some fizz into the competition with the plants behind two iconic flavours: the cola nut that gives cola its kick…
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Ep. 29 Climate Action with Lauren Saville
This week we’re celebrating the difference that can be made when a regional government supports its people and businesses in taking climate action. Get inspired by impactful local initiati...
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Ep. 28 Cultivation Activism with Lorraine Johnson
This week we talk about the activism embedded in native plant gardening and the creation of pollinator habitat with Lorraine Johnson.Lorraine styles herself as a “cultivation activist”. It’s a term she came up with to describe the common purpose at the intersection of everything she does, from...
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Ep. 27 Tomato vs. Pepper Part II
It’s Part II of the nightshade party!Sean and Erin plunge back in with tomatoes and peppers, covering cultural hi...
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Ep. 26 Tomato vs. Pepper Part I
In this shady plant face-off, Sean and Erin explore two of the gardening world’s favourite nightshades: tomatoes and peppers. Both are members of the family Solanaceae, and have plenty of traits in common, so rather than splitting the episode in half our two hosts try a livelier approach this…
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Ep. 25 Smart Hydroponics with Jennifer Holston
Smart hydroponics pioneer Jennifer Holston grows a living pantry in her home through all seasons. And so can you. When most of us hear the word “hydroponics,” we picture sprawling operations in a warehouse or basement, possibly constructed from home-drilled PVC pipes and buckets. We might also…
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Ep. 24 Serviceberry vs. Haskap
We’re berry excited for this extra delicious plant face-off. In this week’s shrub showdown, our hosts go head to ...
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Ep. 23 Life, Death, & Master Gardeners with Cole Imperi
Cole Imperi is known for her trailblazing work in thanatology, the study of death, dying and grief. But she’s also a master gardener: someone who helps others learn how to make life flouri...
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Ep. 22 No Mow May…Debunked?
Every spring, the gardening and sustainability side of the internet explodes with posts: Practice No Mow May! Let your lawn bloom! Support pollinators! But does a lawn and garden initiative begun in the UK have the same environmental impact in North America? That’s the subject under scrutiny in...
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Ep. 21 Permaculture and Biodynamics with Debby Ward
Have you ever wanted to go a step beyond organic gardening and buzzword-y sustainable practices? To grow food, flowers, community, and even society in relationship with the land? This week’s guest, Debby Ward of Prior Unity Garden, helps her clients and students do just that in their own yards....
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Ep. 20 Ask Erin Anything about Monarch Butterflies
How much expertise does a children’s author need to write about monarch butterflies? In this episode, we find out.It’s a special show for a special day. Our co-host Erin Alladin is launching her second picture book, Wait Like a Seed, and we’re testing just how much research she did….and how much...
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Ep. 19 Moths and Butterflies with Stoned Affection
Susie of Stoned Affection is a practicing entomologist who has been raising moths and butterflies—and raising awareness of them—since 2014. She als...
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Ep. 18 Seed Starting vs. Direct Sowing
As a changeable April wears on, spring-hungry northern gardeners are anxious to get seeds planted. But should they start those seeds indoors with grow lights or on a widow sill? Or can the...
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Ep. 17 Plants Need Bugs
Plants always win…and to manage it, they need insects, arachnids, and other creepy-crawlies on their side. Of course, those creatures need plants too. In this episode, Sean and Erin are jo...
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Ep. 16 Q&A Special: Cedars, Compost, and Cardboard Mulch
We’re cultivating a safe space to ask gardening questions!We have been plotting for some thyme t...
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Ep. 15 Lost Ladies of Garden Writing with Carol Michel
Carol Michel is a garden author and co-host of The Gardenangelists podcast. She boasts of having the world’s largest hoe collection…which is overshadowed only by her library-worthy collection of gardening books. Among the hundreds of volumes on her shelves are hard-to-find copies of books by a...
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Ep. 14 Living Soil with Michelle Bruhn
Soil is the foundation of a healthy garden…or homestead…or farm. For sustainable gardening that gives us nutritious food without depleting the land, we need to know how to feed and maintain living soil. After all, it’s the community of living things in the soil that feeds the plants we eat...
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Ep. 13 Beneficial Non-Natives? Borage vs. Cosmos
It’s a concern being voiced by conscientious gardeners everywhere: is it okay to plant a non-native flower that feeds pollinators but also self-sows freely? One suspect that is being discussed in many online gardening groups in borage. It shows up in pollinator-garden seed mixes that the…
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Ep. 12 Groundcovers with Kathy Jentz
This week we cover a lot of ground on the subject of groundcovers with Kathy Jentz. Kathy is the editor and publisher of Washington Gardener, the host of the Garden DC podcast, and the author of Groundcover Revolution, a book written to give inspiration and examples for turf grass substitutes…
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Ep.11 Valentine’s Day Special, Part 2, Carnation Nation
This is the second instalment of our two-part Roses vs. Carnations Valentine’s Day special. After Sean eloquently shared his love for roses earlier this week, Erin barges in with the claim that roses are elitist and carnations are the flower of the people. Her focus is Dianthus caryophyllus, a...
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Ep.10 Valentine’s Day Special Part 1: Roses
This is a special two-part Plant Face-Off! We had so much to say about roses and carnations that we had to split the recording into two episodes. In this instalment, we start with some housekeeping, answering the listener question “What is Patreon?”, explaining why we’re phasing off the Meta...
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Ep.9 Garden Classrooms with Lauren MacLean
Have you learned to read your garden? This week we sit down with Lauren MacLean, a teacher, author, and podcaster from Richmond, British Columbia. She’s a big advocate for how outdoor classrooms help kids learn better, but a few years ago she had a learning experience of her own when her school...
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Ep.8 Peace Lily VS Phalaenopsis Orchid
This versus episode kicks off with a discussion about creating a safe space on social media for respectful, loving communication about everything plants and gardens, then digresses into a discussion of Latin pronunciations in botanical, liturgical, and classical settings. When we make it to the...
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Ep.7 Winter Sowing Native Plants with Amanda Jewell
You might think a gardening podcast would focus on guests who have a lifetime of gardening expertise and plenty of credentials. But we want to emphasize that anyone can garden, and amateurs everywhere find niches to flourish in. That’s why we invited Amanda Jewell to share her adventures in...
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Ep.6 Milkweed VS Beardtongue
This versus episode is a battle of the native wildflower...
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Ep.5 Pokemon Ecology with Alex Meinders
We’re always pretty nerdy on Plants Always Win, but in this interview episode Alex Meinders helps us take it to a whole new level. He’s a wildlife biologist and videogame enthusiast whose passion project is the YouTube and TikTok channel Geek Ecology. He uses his real-world science know-how to...
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Ep.4 Bay Leaves VS Mustard Seed
In this Versus episode, it’s the battle of herbs and spices. Get your fill of these fascinating aromatic plants that have flavoured our food and changed our history since paleolithic times...
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Ep.3 Garden Education with Paul Zammit
In this interview episode, Sean chats with Paul Zammit about the life of a garden communicator. Paul has had a long career in horticulture and is presently a professor of Horticulture and Environmental Studies at Niagara College as well as CBC’s Ontario Today gardening expert—although “expert” is…
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Ep.2 Poinsettia VS Amaryllis
In this “versus” episode, Erin and Sean face off with two big holiday plants: Poinsettias and Amaryllis. Erin comes in swinging with the fraught history of settler (Poinsettia) and Indigenous (cuetlaxochitl) names for her plant, but Sean pushes back with the romantic (or is it?) mythology behind...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
A podcast where two Ontario gardeners dive down plant-fact rabbit-holes, answer audience questions, interview intriguing guests, and compete to bring you the most interesting stories and information. We care about ecologically sound gardening, strong human communities, and up-to-date science.
HOSTED BY
Sean Patchett and Erin Alladin
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Plants Always Win have?
Plants Always Win currently has 51 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Plants Always Win about?
A podcast where two Ontario gardeners dive down plant-fact rabbit-holes, answer audience questions, interview intriguing guests, and compete to bring you the most interesting stories and information. We care about ecologically sound gardening, strong human communities, and up-to-date science.
How often does Plants Always Win release new episodes?
Plants Always Win has 51 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Plants Always Win?
You can listen to Plants Always Win 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 Plants Always Win?
Plants Always Win is created and hosted by Sean Patchett and Erin Alladin.
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