'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 woodchuck-proof fence.

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 opportunity for a different kind of beauty.

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

Uli 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.

Trevor 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.

Jacob 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.

Kat 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.

Drs. 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

Ecological 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.

They 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.

Landscape 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.

A 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.

American 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.

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.

Ecological garden designer Christine Cook discusses the beauties and benefits of dragonflies, and how you can make your garden a haven for these exquisite creatures.

Dr. 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

As "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

Compact, 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.

Naturalist, 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.

When 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.

Policy 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.

Gardening 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.

His 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

If you are frustrated by the poor selection of native plants at local garden centers, check out Izel Native Plants.  Listen as founders and owners Amanda McLean and Claudio Vasquez explain how they have made the wares of leading wholesale growers accessible to amateur gardeners, and how their company emphasizes education as much as sales.

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.

Maya K. van Rossum shares what she observed at the recent trial in Montana, where 16 young natives of that state charged the legislature with deliberately violating the guarantee of "a clean and healthful environment…for present and future generations" in Montana's state constitution

Gardening is changing, and our understanding of the field must keep pace. Veteran horticulturist and longtime teacher Joe Seals rises to this challenge in his new book, "Back to the New Basics: A Practical Guide and New Reference Manual to the Ways, the Whys, and the New Sciences of Better, Easier Gardening." A great introduction for the novice and a quick update for experienced gardeners, this is an invaluable book.

This week, in a re-posting of a program first heard in August 2021, ecologist and author Tom Wessels discusses his "Forest Forensics," the system of simple visual clues you can use to read the history of your woodland acreage

As our climates grow warmer and frequently drier, gardeners need the drought and heat tolerance, and innate sustainability of our native grassland plants more than ever.  In their new book, The Gardener's Guide to Prairie Plants, Neil Diboll and Hilary Cox have combined their decades of experience to produce an indispensable tool for beginners and veterans alike, with invaluable advice about how to create functioning grassland ecosystems inside and outside the prairie states.

"Grow Your Own" is a cornerstone of sustainability, but our vegetable gardens are being challenged by increasingly erratic weather as the climate changes.  John Traunfeld, Program Director at the University of Maryland's Home & Garden Information Center shares his experiences in making food gardens more climate resilient, and how this can even draw our communities closer together.

Lead contamination is common in soils of many residential neighborhoods in urban, suburban, and even rural settings.  Soil scientist Clay Robinson – "Dr. Dirt" – details where this problem is most likely, how to test your soil, and how appropriate gardening can provide protection.

Artist Robert Adzema discusses his history of creating ingenious and innovative sundials, and what sundials can teach the gardener about plants' primary fuel.

Dan Jaffe Wilder's response to the polluting sterility of the traditional lawn?  Plant strawberries.  And that's only one of many intriguing – and tested - proposals made by this talented native plants pioneer. 

Robert Kourik, a pioneer of sustainable gardening, draws on his 45 years of experience with Permaculture to explore the strengths and weaknesses of this controversial gardening movement

Will "volcano mulch" the landscaper piled around the bases of your trees kill them?  And is a mulch made of ground-up shipping pallets really beneficial for your plants?  You may be surprised by the science-based insights about common organic mulches that Dr. Linda Chalker-Scott of Washington State University shares in the most recent "Growing Greener."

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.

Ecological gardening leader Larry Weaner details how you can get all the benefits of conventional mulch, plus boosting biodiversity and wildlife, with a well-designed and beautiful groundcover of native plants

Maya K. van Rossum discusses Green Amendments for the Generations, the movement she founded to bring an amendment to every state constitution guaranteeing residents' basic human right to clean air and water, and a healthy environment

John Walker, a horticulturist who trained at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and a multi award winner environmental writer, shares advice on Veganic Gardening, an approach that combines organic practices with plant-based nurturing of the soil with resources found or grown on-site for maximum sustainability.

Buying topsoil is a quick and popular fix for many garden problems – but buyer beware says Dawn Pettinelli, Director of the University of Connecticut's Soil & Nutrient Analysis Lab.  There are no industry standards, not even a definition, of what makes a good topsoil. Dawn shares tips on making sure the topsoil you buy is non-toxic and of a quality that will benefit your plants.

"Gardeners are the worst threat to native plants."  Hostility toward horticulturists is common within the ecological restoration community. But, John Gedraitis of Van Berkum Nursery says, it's an impediment to growers such as him who want to expand the availability of local ecotype plants, genetically adapted natives grown from locally collected wild seed.

Elizabeth Licata, a passionate promoter of Garden Walk Buffalo, the nation's largest free open garden tour, and a longtime contributor to the popular blog "Garden Rant" takes on gardener anthropomorphism, our appealing but destructive habit of ascribing human emotions and characteristics to plants.

Landscape architects Wolfgang Oehme and James van Sweden electrified the gardening world in 1975 when they introduced a new horticultural richness and a concern for sustainability with their "New American Garden Style."  Eric Groft, current CEO of Oehme, van Sweden discusses the firm's new book, "Beyond Bold," describing how the successor generation has remained true to that legacy while pursuing new avenues of environmental sensitivity.

Dr. Douglas Tallamy, the University of Delaware entomologist who has been awakening homeowners to the need to plant natives and join our plots together in a giant "homegrown national park," has found a new audience.  He has just released a young readers' edition of his best-selling book, "Nature's Best Hope."  Learn how you can enlist your children in the campaign to save our ecosystems.

Founded in 2013 by internationally acclaimed garden designer Edwina von Gal, the Perfect Earth Project seeks to introduce landscape professionals to toxin-free, sustainable approaches to their craft, while reaching out to their customers to create a market for these skills.  Listen to the Project's new Executive Director Matt Jeffery discuss the many new programs the organization is pursuing.

Jeff Lorenz, founder of the acclaimed Refugia Design Build, explains why the pandemic was a boom time for a landscaper committed to native plants, and how his firm's "Ecological Greenway Network" is transforming neighborhoods

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

Nebraskan Benjamin Vogt, a leader in nature-based gardening, has just published Prairie Up, a book that is sure to become a go-to tool for those designing and installing landscapes rooted in our native grassland flora.  With its many insights how the dynamics of native plants will shape a native landscape, Prairie Up offers invaluable lessons to nature-based gardeners everywhere

My quest for tomatoes that will bear in my cool, cloudy climate led me to Dr. James Myers of Oregon State University.  He shared with me the cultivars he had bred for that purpose, then described a program to produce vegetables better adapted to organic cultivation, and his collaboration with chefs

Horticultural Educator Carol Reese explains why feeding your garden in springtime with a "complete" fertilizer can be a mistake, and describes a "lazy" style of gardening that can help heal the environment while drastically reducing your work.