Growing Greener

Leader of the Ecological Gardening movement Rebecca McMackin shares reasons why in a time of discouragement, gardening can restore optimism.

Last May Growing Greener featured the challenge that Plan it Wild, a rewilding design and installation firm, posed to American homeowners: to replace 25 square feet of lawn with locally indigenous plants. Today we hear how nearly 10,000 people in 49 states committed to this 12-week online program, how backyard biodiversity flourished as a result, and how the challenge is expanding through neighborhoods to reach people who hadn't previously considered devoting their landscapes to reinforcing the regional ecosystem.

Nancy DuBrule-Clemente, a pioneer of organic land care, extolls the outstanding aesthetic and ecological contributions of goldenrods, a genus of native flowers too seldom seen in our gardens.

Edwina Von Gal, founder and president of the Perfect Earth Project, completes her interview of Growing Greener host, Tom Christopher, exploring his path to ecological gardening, the hope he finds in the remarkable contributions of young colleagues, and the most effective ways to reach out to the broader gardening public.

Edwina Von Gal, founder and president of the Perfect Earth Project, interviews Growing Greener host, Tom Christopher, about what led him from an education steeped in traditional gardening to helping found ecological gardening in the United States

Andrea Hurd of Oakland, California describes the way she structured Mariposa Gardening and Design Cooperative, Inc. to provide employee equitability and management experience for women breaking into the field, and the firm's commitment to celebrating the local landscape by enhancing habitat and working with indigenous materials.

Switching to more environmentally friendly practices is too often resisted by landscape professionals afraid to stray from familiar routines. Mariah Whitmore and Tony Piazza, both prominent landscape business owners in the eastern end of Long Island, New York, discuss how they are increasing profits by adding Nature friendly land care to their repertoire.

Claire Chambers, founder of Meadow Lab, describes the roll-out sod her company is producing that can transform a landscape into a blooming, mature meadow of native flowers and grasses in a single growing season

A replay of a conversation from April of 2021 with Pollinator Conservationist Heather Holm about her multi-award-winning book, Wasps, Their Biology, Diversity, and Role as Beneficial Insects and Pollinators of Native Plants.

Jenica Allen and Matt Fertakos of Northeast RISCC describe the invaluable free online guide they helped to create that provides all a gardener needs to know about selecting native plants that will flourish not only today but also persist as the local climate changes

Julia Cavicchi and Tatiana Schreiber of the Rich Earth Institute talk of curbing water pollution by removing human urine from the waste stream, and how you can repurpose it to feed your plants

Michael Bone, Curator of the Steppe Collection at Denver Botanic Gardens, relates Denver's native flora to similar grasslands around the world and explains how this knowledge can inspire and enrich the local gardening.

Understanding this concept provides the foundation for creating a high functioning, stable, and resilient landscape – anywhere you garden

When a freak tornado swept through Ambler Arboretum, the staff and university administration took the opportunity to turn its recovery into an exploration of natural resilience in the face of climate change

Dr. Eve Beaury's research reveals the outsize role American gardeners still play in supporting the propagation and spread of plants that are known to be invasive.

Plan it Wild's "Less Lawn More Life" challenge offers a fun, easy, and free initiation into natural gardening that's exploding across the country, drawing thousands of ecosystem novices young and old

Alicia Houk, natural garden designer and educator, describes how native, reseeding annuals can make your plantings self-renewing, weed resistant, and resilient in the face of disturbance

Co-founder of Pollinator Pathway, Louise Washer saw this project go viral, spreading from one Connecticut community to nationwide in just 8 years. Listen as she shares the approach that has made her other environmental activism so effective.

Jennifer Campbell, a sustainable landscape designer in New Hampshire, built herself a natural swimming pool that saves energy, nurtures native plants, serves wildlife, and cost her only $10,000 to install.

Assisted migration, helping native plants move to escape the effects of a rapidly changing climate, is a controversial topic among ecologists. Thomas Nuhfer of the University of Massachusetts Amherst shares a new understanding of how to make these moves without destabilizing existing ecosystems.

Award-winning landscape designer Edwina von Gal describes her Perfect Earth Project's dual approach to changing the culture of land care in the United States: building a constituency among land owners and gardeners for ecologically-based, toxin-free design and maintenance while educating landscapers in how to serve this new market.

The National Plant Germplasm System has protected U.S. farmers against crop diseases and now climate change for over a century; DOGE has defunded its $40 million annual budget, imperiling our $1.5 trillion food system

Award-winning landscape architect Michael Geffel describes how he used precisely targeted and timed mowing to convert a brownfield into a flowering grassland and a vibrant public recreation area.

Slugs are the Rodney Dangerfield of garden wildlife – our only interest is in exterminating them. Yet as Dr. Jann Vendetti of the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum explains, they lead fascinating and, in many ways, very useful lives

Gardeners complain about clay soils, but Benjamin Vogt, a leading designer of natural gardens and landscapes notes that they offer many advantages for the ecologically based gardener

Shannon Currey, head of education and outreach for Izel Native Plants, shares how that transformative plant clearinghouse is as committed to the education of its customers as to providing them with biodiverse bargains

Molly Moore, master gardener and master naturalist, shares the online program she co-wrote with Marlene Smith which can set you on the path to success in starting plants from locally collected seeds without harming the wild populations

Brandon Carbary's pre-designed garden templates, shipped complete with plants, makes creating a locally adapted, aesthetically attractive display of native plants almost effortless

Ethan Kauffman, Director of Stoneleigh, describes the 9-year process his team has pursued, enriching a classic Philadelphia Mainline estate with thousands of species of native plants, to transform it into a model for how to honor traditional landscape aesthetics while boosting biodiversity and serving the local ecosystem

Starting vegetable and annual seedlings indoors is a skill every gardener needs to master and Dr. Steve Reiners of Cornell University shares tricks of the trade. Grow your own locally adapted, disease-resistant cultivars for bigger harvests, better flavors, and a more resilient garden.

Judge's Farm Nursery is the newest venture in the Griswold family's 385-year association with their homestead at the mouth of the Connecticut River. Co-founder Matt Griswold describes the nursery's program of growing native plants sustainably from locally collected seeds.

Aaron von Frank discusses his book, "The Impractical Guide to Keeping Pet and Backyard Ducks" and details the services a flock can provide in controlling weeds and pests, as well as furnishing a supply of eggs and fertilizer.

That bouquet of flowers you buy at the supermarket has a huge, unsustainable carbon footprint. Join Debra Prinzing, founder of the Slow Flowers Society, for tips about sourcing locally grown flowers or growing your own year round for unique, locally rooted, and sustainable beauty.

It's not an either/or choice, native vs. introduced, for Claudia West of Phyto Studio when this leader of the ecological gardening movement develops a plant palette for one of her innovative landscapes. What she seeks, besides selections that serve the customers' needs and delight the eye, are "high performing" species and cultivars that provide maximum benefits to the local ecosystem, regardless of place of origin.

"Your Natural Garden," Kelly D. Norris' new book, is sure to be one of the most essential gardening tools of 2025. In this beautifully illustrated guide, Norris, who split his childhood between working in his grandmother's garden and exploring the 40-acre prairie a quarter mile up the road, shares insights he has gathered from his hands in the dirt-experience, studies of plant science, and his work as a nationally renowned ecological garden designer.

Sports fields and swimming beaches are essential, but public parks can also play a crucial role in maintaining biodiversity. As Curator of Natural Resources for the Westchester County New York Park system, Leah Cass designs management regimes for thousands of acres of habitat, coordinating the needs of residents, wildlife, and more than a thousand species of native plants.

Are you dreaming of a white Christmas? Or a snowy Hanukkah or Kwanzaa? Or just a personal celebration of the winter solstice? EcoBeneficial designer and educator Kim Eierman will share you the many gifts that a blanket of snow gives to the garden.

Gardeners mostly didn't focus on our native plants as such in 1988 when Steve Castorani and Dale Hendricks founded North Creek Nurseries to propagate them in bulk for distribution to retail nurseries. Learn how North Creek's innovations in the years since have continued to shape and expand the native plants movement.

Creating a native lawn, Dave Kaplow says, may require no more than a change in maintenance regimes. And, the ecological restoration pioneer adds, it provides a biodiverse and sustainable turf that is friendly not only to people but also wildlife

Brother James Lockman of the Franciscan Order, whose personal ministry is ecological restoration, discusses the nature-embracing spirituality of St. Francis of Assisi, founder of his order, and how it has inspired the ecological activism of the current Pope

When Carol Bouska and her siblings inherited the family farm in Iowa, they seized the opportunity to commit to restoring the soil, enhancing wildlife habitat, and bolstering the community in which they had grown up ­– and used this process to reinforce family ties

Join pioneering nurseryman and ecologist Neil Diboll for the second half of our conversation about how gardeners can familiarize themselves with the natural characteristics of the soil on their site and use that knowledge in selecting a community of adapted, self-sufficient native plants for their gardens.

Traditional gardening emends the soil to suit the needs of the selected plants; pioneering nurseryman and ecologist Neil Diboll takes the character of the soil on site as the foundation of garden design and key to the selection of an adapted, ecologically functional, and self-sufficient plant palette

Internationally acclaimed landscape designer Edwina von Gal's Perfect Earth Project uses imaginative strategies to connect landowners big and small with nature-based, chemical-free and biodiversity friendly management practices

Garden activist and educator Cathy Ludden describes her encounters with hydrangeas and how transforming the flower heads to suit human aesthetics has proved both harmful and beneficial to pollinators

Richard Hayden, Senior Director of Horticulture at New York's magical garden, the High Line, describes how it integrates North American native plants with carefully chosen exotic species to create a whole that delights human visitors while also supporting wildlife and providing a powerful reconnection with nature

Many homeowners who admire the beauty and environmental benefits of native plants don't care for the wilderness look of the typical naturalized native plant garden. Garden designer Britney O'Donnell shares tricks for designing and maintaining a more domesticated native plant landscape, one that fits better a neater suburban context

Skeptics say that invasive species are not a serious threat to biodiversity, that "Nature will heal itself" despite the looming, man-made mass extinction. Today, paleobotanist Dana Royer describes the five mass extinctions of the past, and why recovery from such episodes typically took millions of years

Karen Bussolini of historic nursery White Flower Farm makes the case for how a mix of native and non-native flowers can feed pollinators better throughout the growing season

Environmentalists say the traditional lawn must go, but homeowners commonly love their turf. Organic lawn specialist Shay Lunseth outlines how we can "meet in the middle," and explains why fall is the critical season for organic lawns