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.

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