Too often environmentally conscious gardeners look for the “silver bullet” for our sustainability and resource issues, rather than contenting ourselves with what Kathy Connolly describes as “two percent solutions.”  Kathy, an in-demand natural garden designer and educator, is referring to small changes that cumulatively can have a big impact.  Listen to her describe her use of rain barrels as a convenient, inexpensive way to conserve drinking water, reduce energy usage, and make gardening more fun.

Late summer through early fall, according to Shay Lunseth, is the ideal time to put your lawn on a more environmentally friendly path.  Shay’s got advice about boosting the health of your grass without chemicals, reducing or ending inputs of fertilizer and water, and even making your lawn pollinator friendly

Biochar has been touted as a valuable soil amendment that fosters better plant growth and stretches fertilizer budgets.  Will Hessert and Javaughn Henry have also found in it a means to sequester carbon and confront global climate change.  Listen as Will describes how they are putting in place a project to convert municipal landscape waste into biochar on a grand scale

Starting native plants from locally sourced seed is the most economical and ecologically advantageous way to rewild domestic landscapes. In the past, though, this has been perceived as tricky and demanding, a process only for experts.  Anna Fialkoff, Ecological Programs Manager of the Wild Seed Project in North Yarmouth, Maine, describes how her organization makes starting native plants from seed affordable and easy, even for novices

Admirers of exotic garden plants have taken to claiming that their foreign-born treasures are just as good nutritionally for our North American pollinators.  Proponents of native plants insist that their flora supplies a better diet.  We ask Dr. Harland Patch of Pennsylvania State University for the facts

Managing water is the crucial task of the summertime garden, especially as climate change boosts the heat and the frequency of droughts.  Join Nancy DuBrule-Clemente, founder of the pioneering woman-owned landscape company and garden center, Natureworks, as she brings her organic gardening sensibility to bear on ways to reduce watering while weathering our warming summers.

Looking at plants is one thing; learning to truly see them is another.  Carrie Roy, Acting Curator of Art, introduces us to one of the world’s great collections of plant portraits, the Hunt Institute For Botanical Documentation in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and shares how the artist’s vision can delight and inform gardeners, changing the very way we see

Rebecca McMackin, a visionary horticulturist, has spent the last decade supervising the transformation of Brooklyn Bridge Park, 85 acres of abandoned shipping piers, into a complex of functioning ecosystems that serve as havens for wildlife and an accessible means for city dwellers to reconnect with nature.  Now she’s moving on to new adventures.  In our conversation she reflects on the accomplishments of Brooklyn Bridge Park’s remarkable horticultural staff, the acute need for such landscapes in a rapidly urbanizing world, and how gardening can influence not only our relationship with the natural world but also with each other.

Born in North America in the 1980’s, “Rewilding” has taken off in Europe, where it’s inspiring a return of broad tracts of marginal farmlands to functioning wild ecosystems.  In this episode Canadian journalists Kat Tancock and Domini Clark discuss their new online magazine, “Rewilding,” which introduces readers to the basics of this fascinating worldwide movement, while helping them to apply its dynamics to their own back yards

Krissy Boys, Natural Areas Horticulturist of the Cornell Botanic Gardens, describes her chance encounter with a naturally compact grass native across North America, and how that led her to create a biodiverse, wildlife friendly, and largely self-sustaining lawn of native grasses and perennials