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.”

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