WHEN WAS THE last time you made room in your vegetable garden for something a little out of the ordinary that you’d never grown or maybe even tasted before? I don’t know of anyone who speaks out more passionately or eloquently in behalf of exceptional vegetable varieties than Lane Selman, who’s introduced an ever-widening audience—myself among them—to many of her favorites over the years, like distinctive peppers and an expanded palate of winter crops, including a delicious diversity of radicchio. Now Lane has a cookbook coming out in September, too, called “Radicchio: A Celebration of the Beloved Italian Vegetable” (affiliate link), about a crop many Americans didn’t know much about not so long ago, but do now, partly thanks to her. Whether in her work as a professor of practice at Oregon State University and the Culinary Breeding Network that she founded in 2012, or through the popular celebratory event she organizes to showcase standout organic varieties, Lane Selman brings stakeholders together to collaborate—plant breeders, chefs, farmers, and even just us eaters—in the name of educating all involved and improving quality in vegetables, fruits, and grains. She’s co-hosting an event Aug. 30th in Cold Spring, N.Y., and another Oct. 24th […]

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IDON’T RECALL who tipped me off to the Amphibian and Reptile Conservancy’s email newsletter, but I am glad that I found it and signed up. Those of you who are longtime listeners or readers of A Way to Garden know that I have, shall we say, a “thing” for frogs … so maybe it’s no surprise that I was delighted to discover an organization that is implementing a network of on-the-ground conservation projects around the U.S. in behalf of imperiled amphibians, as well as for reptiles. The non-profit Amphibian and Reptile Conservancy’s mission is to identify and conserve the highest-priority places for amphibians and reptiles, in support of these important animals. I contacted its executive director, conservation biologist JJ Apodaca, to ask him if some of that deep conservation expertise his team applies in their work could be sort of distilled for us gardeners, so that we can create landscapes that are more hospitable to these essential members of the food web, whose needs we too-often overlook.  I got some helpful suggestions—and also learned some astonishing facts about amphibians, especially salamanders. Read along as you listen to the Aug. 3, 2026 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the […]

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TRIGGER WARNING: Today’s segment will include mention of irresistible hydrangeas and may prompt severe plant-shopping binges in susceptible individuals. You’ve been warned. My guest is Adam Wheeler of Broken Arrow Nursery, a retail and mail-order destination for exceptional plants in Connecticut, where an extravagant array of unusual hydrangeas representing more than just your average species are part of the portfolio. There are hydrangeas with gold leaves (like H. serrata ‘Mountain Mania,’ above), or variegated ones, and every imaginable flower form, and even a wider range of flower colors than you may know about. Adam Wheeler joined Broken Arrow in 2004, where he is the production and horticulture manager. Part of Adam’s role is to be on the lookout for great plants to add to the assortment, and in recent years the genus Hydrangea has included an increasingly long list of such possibilities. He joined me on the podcast to suggest some favorites to consider, and how to prune and otherwise care for them. Read along as you listen to the July 27, 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 Spotify (and browse my […]

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ARE YOU A FOLLOWER of fashion—houseplant fashion, that is—seeking out the latest variety that everyone’s after, perhaps the “it” plant that’s been splashed across social media?  Or was each houseplant in your care carefully chosen because it’s a perfect match for the light and other indoor conditions you can offer it? Whatever your criteria, emotional or practical or otherwise, how do you know what’s the right houseplant for you? It’s a question that August Laska and his team at The Old Yew Plant Shop are asked all the time. August and I headed inside from the summer heat of the garden to talk houseplants. He didn’t exactly intend to end up with so many—not just the ones in his house, but two whole New York City stores full of them. Like a lot of people, the former corporate marketing coordinator got into plants during the pandemic, but I suspect few others got in quite so deep as to prompt an entire career change like August’s. His two branches of The Old Yew Plant Shop, in the West Village and on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, offer retail and mail-order plants and pots and other gear, as well as design […]

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I CALL THE phenomenon tomato troubles: the yellow-spotted foliage that falls off, or the plant that produces all those misshapen fruits. And yes, the attack of the hornworms, too, when you wake up to a lot of missing leaves one day. Or all of the above. A few years back I checked in with the tomato man himself, Craig LeHoullier, author of the book “Epic Tomatoes,” to see what we can do even under such high-summer pressures to bring in that delicious harvest, and since I’m hearing from listeners already this year about tomato troubles of their own, I thought it was a good time to revisit Craig’s advice. Craig gardens and grows tomatoes in Hendersonville, N.C., these days, after many years in Raleigh before that. He’s a proponent of the straw-bale gardening method, which he also wrote a book about. He’s an avid canner of his fresh produce and teaches an online Epic Tomatoes course with his friend and mine, Joe Lamp’l. He shared his key strategies for tomato success, and explained the different tomato troubles you might be facing and what’s behind them. And learn the provenance of ‘Cherokee Purple,’ the beloved purple heirloom that Craig named, and […]

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LEA JOHNSON is a plant ecologist whose work, she says, is driven by this question: “All of the wild diversity of life on earth is here, with us, right now. How can we take it with us into the future?” It’s a compelling question, and one that can motivate not just scientists like Lea, Director of Conservation at Native Plant Trust in New England, but also native-plant gardeners like us. She talked to me about where conservation and gardening intersect, and some of the challenges and the possibilities we face together. Lea joined Native Plant Trust, the nation’s oldest native plant conservation organization, in 2025, as its Director of Conservation. At the Massachusetts-based nonprofit, she manages various conservation and restoration initiatives, including the monitoring of rare and endangered species; a rare plant seed bank with over 10 million seeds, and the Trust’s seven native plant sanctuaries in New England. She also oversees the leading botanical resource GoBotany—one of my favorite reference websites. Read along as you listen to the July 6, 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 Spotify (and browse my archive […]

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I KNOW, it feels like we just planted the vegetable garden moments ago. But a close look around as summer really takes hold quickly reminds us that our work is never done… Some crop or other is reaching the end of its run, making room for a succession sowing of more of that same thing or something else altogether, or maybe of a weed-suppressing, soil-building cover crop—some of which are actually edible, too, (like the winter-hardy field peas, above) in what’s perhaps the cleverest season-extending scheme of all. Mastering the art of stretching the harvest season is my topic today with Doug Muller of Hudson Valley Seed Company. Doug is co-founder and managing director of the mail-order seed business and retail store, based on its organic farm in Accord, N.Y., and I was pleased to speak to him and get some inspiration on succession sowing and creative cover cropping—because yes, there’s still time for lots more possibilities out there. Read along as you listen to the June 29, 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 Spotify (and browse my archive of podcasts here). […]

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THE RECENTLY PUBLISHED book “Madoo: The Making of an American Garden,” reminded me of the power of certain key design strategies that can make all the difference—ones that proved to be formative elements in the highly distinctive garden that is Madoo, in Sagaponack, Long Island, which visitors often use words like “magical” to describe. Madoo was created starting in the 1960s by the late painter and poet Bob Dash, and the book’s authors join me today to talk about some of those garden-making tactics he used and that the garden team there keeps using—like how important it is to consider inside-out views from key windows, and how flourishes of colorful paint (including on the welcoming element of carefully placed garden seating) can unite a landscape’s many elements. My guests today are Alejandro Saralegui, executive director of the Madoo Conservancy since 2009, and Kendell Cronstrom, a longtime magazine editor (left to right, in the photo below), who have co-authored the book, “Madoo: The Making of an American Garden” (affiliate link). Plus: Comment in the box near the bottom of the page for a chance to win their new book, “Madoo.” Read along as you listen to the June 22, 2026 edition […]

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I’VE BEEN DIGGING into a diverse and compelling collection of essays in a recent book that’s centered on the subject of flowers—everything from topics like their breeding, to which species we covet most of all, to some of the downsides of the massive floral industry, including ubiquitous plastics used in propagation and flower arranging, or how the branding of plants has limited the palette. The author, Christin Geall, calls the book “Flora Culture: How Flowers Shape Our World” an abecedarium (yes that’s a word), since the entries are arranged alphabetically. She also calls it a manifesto. She made time recently to tell us some of the tales within in. Christin Geall’s work focuses on the intersections of nature, culture, and horticulture, and her latest book,  “Flora Culture: How Flowers Shape Our World” (affiliate link) is no exception. (Above, a photo she took of a collection of cultivars of tulips and more from her garden.) Plus: Comment in the box near the bottom of the page for a chance to win a copy of “Flora Culture.” Read along as you listen to the June 15, 2026 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to […]

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WHEN ELISE HOWARD and I talked on the show in March, her new book, “Plant This, Not That,” was just out. The popular book offers basic guidelines for selecting and using native plants, and specific substitutes for non-natives you may wish to replace. Once spring arrived, Elise Howard got back to making a garden around the weekend home in Western Massachusetts she and her husband bought in 2025—not just deciding what to grow, but thornier topics like tackling invasives and all the rest of what goes into rethinking a landscape with ecology in mind. I wanted to check back in and hear how the implementation of the book’s principles and plant choices is going for her in real time, because Elise is practicing what she preaches. And like for all of us, that means being confronted with some tricky questions to puzzle out along the way. Elise Howard, a literary agent, began learning about natives more than 15 years ago as a volunteer at Riverside Park in New York City. Her book, “Plant This Not That” (affiliate link), offers 200ish examples of swaps for plants that have proven troublesome or just don’t do much in the name of supporting biodiversity, […]

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