Growing Greener

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