A Way To Garden

WHAT’S IN A NAME—specifically when it’s the common name of a plant that includes the word “weed”? When you hear of plants like jewelweed or pokeweed or clearweed, to name a few, what does it make you think? All of those are native plants, but they’re also often treated more like that suffix in their names—like weeds, something gardeners are inclined to cast out. I read recently about an upcoming webinar entitled “Weed by Name, Native by Nature” by Renee Kemmerer, the senior horticulturist at the Brandywine Conservancy and Museum of Art in Pennsylvania. It promises to offer a closer look at such misunderstood native plants and their ecological value, and how we can embrace them—not eliminate them. Since I intentionally make room for various natives called “weed,” I knew I wanted to talk her. On the evening of Wednesday, Nov. 11, Renee is giving the Zoom webinar called “Weed by Name, Native by Nature,” and in our conversation she offered some of her takeaways about these too-often-maligned plants. Read along as you listen to the Nov. 2, 2026 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts […]

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I’VE NEVER HAD a rock garden, I confess, but a book about a modern and extreme form of the art caught my attention when it was published. It’s called “The Crevice Garden: How to Make the Perfect Home for Plants from Rocky Places,” and its authors joined me in a conversation in this reprise edition of the podcast about why you might want to make room for one, and the plants it can support. Colorado-based Kenton Seth and Paul Spriggs from British Columbia are garden designers with a particular specialty in rock gardens. When the pair appeared on the popular Garden Masterclass webinar series, British host Noel Kingsbury said this in his way of introducing them: “Rock gardening will no longer elicit a yawn because this is the future.” We did a “New York Times” garden column together a few years ago, and I wanted to learn more. I was so glad to talk with them in 2022 to give us a peek into this brave new world. (Above, from the book, part of a crevice garden at Denver Botanic Gardens.) Plus: Enter to win a copy of the new book by commenting in the box near the bottom of […]

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THERE’S POWER in numbers. That’s what the horticulture team at Stoneleigh, the historic estate turned native-focused public garden in Villanova, Pa., seems to be demonstrating time and again with its highly creative approach to using woody plants. Yes, planting a sumac or a viburnum shrub will attract hungry birds in fall. But what if you combined 10 carefully selected species of fruiting shrubs into swaths of songbird thickets, as Stoneleigh  has been doing, offering not just a fall feast here and there, but cover and nesting habitat, too? Elsewhere, hedges and trees are paired with vines to up the beauty and the diversity within their shared footprint—and certain shrubs are planted not one to a hole but as strategically designed clump plantings, with three closely related bare-root specimens positioned together to grow into one mass that shows off all of their slightly different features. Stoneleigh’s director, Ethan Kauffman, and I talked about songbird thickets and clump plantings and other imaginative ways the gardeners there are using native trees, shrubs and vines and that we can, too. Stoneleigh opened its gates in May 2018 as a project of the nonprofit conservation organization called Natural Lands. Rather than being daunted by the […]

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‘WE’RE SO GOOD at pretending the things around us are known and boring, or imagining that the worthwhile things are far away,” says Sam Jaffe, at the start of the documentary film “The Extraordinary Caterpillar.” Sam begs to differ, however, and in the film, as in his work as founder of The Caterpillar Lab, a non-profit educational and research organization, he shows us just how extraordinary—and essential to all of us—they are, and how a diversity of them are right there to discover in our own backyards. It’s a good time of year to focus on caterpillars, as we gardeners make decisions each fall that can support—or threaten—their survival over winter, and so that’s what I did recently: talk caterpillars, with Sam. Plus: With Sam, and Homegrown National Park’s Doug Tallamy, and other caterpillar experts featured in the film, I’m moderating a webinar conversation on Weds. Oct. 14 at noon Eastern—and if you sign up you’ll receive a limited-time link to watch the film in the days leading up to the event. All the registration details are here; how you can host a private group screening is detailed at this link. Drawing on his education in ecology and evolutionary biology […]

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ONE LATE-AUGUST DAY, Nancy Lawson—or “The Humane Gardener,” as she is perhaps better known—was making a video about a spicebush swallowtail butterfly when something just beyond it in her Maryland yard caught her eye. A green heron was visiting a small pond Nancy had created not long ago—her first such encounter with the bird.  (That’s one of her backyard ponds, above.) When I saw that video on Instagram it made me think of the late-March morning when I’d stood up from my desk and the familiar view into the backyard included something very unfamiliar bobbing around my own little water garden: a pair of wood ducks. Every day in the garden is loaded with the potential for such surprises, and the resulting sense of awe. Nancy is here today to talk about some of the wonders large and ever-so-small we have each been privileged to witness, and some of the garden-management tactics we use that increase the chances of such encounters by welcoming more life to the garden. Nancy Lawson is the author of “The Humane Gardener,” a naturalist and habitat consultant based in Maryland. Nancy promotes animal-friendly planting strategies, and in another of her books, called “Wildscape,” she challenged […]

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IN THE INTRODUCTION to her latest book “A Forest Language,” Hannah Fries acknowledges a fascination with the words we use to talk about trees—organisms she calls the backdrop of her life. From our human vocabulary of forest ecology and botany Hannah has collected some of her favorite arboreal terms to fill the new volume, ones referred to in its subtitle as “Words That Illuminate the Astonishing World of Trees.” Do you know pitch from sap, for instance, or heartwood from sapwood? What’s a burl, a snag, a nurse log, a lenticel? In “A Forest Language,” Hannah brings to life the many layers of meaning she found within each word in its own little essay, and she joined me to talk trees. Hannah grew up among the trees of New Hampshire and now lives in western Massachusetts. She is a poet, an executive editor at Storey Publishing, and the author of an earlier inspirational book about trees called “Being with Trees.” (Affiliate link.) (Photo of Hannah, below, by Susan Quinn.) Plus: Comment in the box near the bottom of the page for a chance to win a copy of “A Forest Language” (affiliate link). Read along as you listen to the […]

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I LOOK AROUND the garden and I see it happening everywhere, on so many different plants: seed is forming. Seed is the start of most everything we grow, yet most of the seed we gardeners and even more important the nation’s farmers plant originates elsewhere—often very far away from our home soil—and many of us who garden know relatively little about seed except how to order more for the coming growing season and sow it. Now, while there’s perhaps still time to save some for next year or to share with a friend, and well before the seed catalogs arrive loaded with temptations galore, I thought it a good time to think about where our seed comes from, and reflect on how we gardeners can each do our small part to support a healthy seed system. I met today’s guest, Bill Braun, when I was working on a recent “New York Times” garden column about seed saving. Bill is an organic seed farmer and co-founder of the non-profit Freed Seed Federation in Dartmouth, Mass., which describes itself as a “farmer-run nonprofit dedicated to the preservation, adaptation, and diversification of place-based seed”—in his case, specifically seed for the Northeast U.S.  I […]

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WHAT MAKES a tree or shrub exceptional – something worthy of introduction into the nursery trade, and eventually maybe making its way into your garden? There are many pathways a plant can travel to get there, including one unique one from the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. As part of its 150th anniversary celebration in 2022, the arboretum announced its Arnold Selects program for identifying and launching such potential treasures, each with its own provenance or story to tell, inspired by the arboretum’s vast and historic living collections. I wanted to know what catches the eyes of the modern-day experts there and why. I asked Chris Copeland, Manager of Plant Production at the Arnold Arboretum, who did his Bachelors, Masters and Doctoral degrees at UMass-Amherst. His role at the arboretum includes a focus on the Arnold Selects program that each year distributes extraordinary woody plant selections to nurseries that it partners with, in the hopes that more gardeners will in time come to know these special plants. Read along as you listen to the Sept. 14, 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 […]

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WHEN I HEARD that today’s guest, who’s been a guiding force in educating organic farmers, was finally publishing a book specifically for gardeners, I was thrilled. I’d been following Jean-Martin Fortier since his first handbook on biointensive organic market farming came out more than a decade ago, and even gone to hear him speak at farming conferences—then done my best to translate and distill his advice and apply it to my own garden size and conditions. Now JM, as he is known, has done all the translating from farm to backyard scale for all of us, within the pages of his latest book, “In Your Garden: The Complete Guide to Home Vegetable Gardening” (affiliate link), and those who grow edibles at home can benefit from every last insight he shares, from soil and bed prep, to crop spacing and succession schedules, and exacting details on how to have the greatest success with each crop. Quebec-based JM Fortier has been farming for about 25 years, and has popularized his method of highly efficient small-scale market farming with two how-to manuals, “The Market Gardener” and “The Winter Market Gardener,” which have sold more than 300,000 copies. In addition, more than 10,000 farmers […]

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IS A GREENHOUSE in your future? I’ve never had one, and I have always been not-so-secretly jealous of friends who do—whether to propagate their seedlings in late winter into spring, or grow more tropicals and other “houseplants” than fit in their house, or who knows what. A new book by horticulturist Leslie Halleck called “Home Greenhouse Revival: Growing Year-Round Foliage, Flowers & Food” (affiliate link) is a tempting look at what can be accomplished inside a backyard greenhouse, and details which architectural style, building materials and mechanical systems match which climate regions – and also match the particular kinds of plants you wish to grow. Leslie, a self-described “professional plant geek who is good at botanical business,” has worked in many facets of the horticulture industry since receiving her masters in horticulture from Michigan State University.  Her consultancy company, Halleck Horticultural, offers support to green industry businesses, plant entrepreneurs and home growers alike, and since 2020 she’s been teaching online courses in horticulture, botany and business through UCLA Extension. Plus: Comment in the box near the bottom of the page for a chance to win a copy of the new book. (Photo above by JLY Gardens; photo below of Leslie […]

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