Being in the moment is a challenge in our busy, too-connected age, yet it is essential for appreciating and understanding the garden.   Poet Susan Brearley shares her practice for mindfulness: the on-the-spot composition of garden haiku.  Brearley, who has been teaching haiku workshops at the great Innisfree garden in Millbrook, New York, shares the basics of this classic Japanese poetic form, along with a look at the sensibility that traditionally informs it.

Do you hate the noise and stink of gasoline-powered blowers and mowers rampaging through your neighborhood?  Matthew Benzie of Indigenous Ingenuities in Doylestown, Pennsylvania is doing something about that.  He’s switched his maintenance crew to zero-emission, quiet, battery-powered equipment transported on a bicycle-powered cart.  He’s designing his landscapes for greener, sustainable maintenance too.  Learn about this revolutionary rethinking of the landscape business on this week’s episode.

Brooklyn’s famous cemetery builds on its heritage, becoming a community green space, an arboretum, and a center for environmental research

Matthew Shepherd of the Xerces Society details ways to get the garden ready for winter without harming over-wintering insects and other foundational wildlife

“Food Forests” are a central concept of Permaculture – in our discussion of his must-have new book, Sustainable Food Gardens, Robert Kourik details where Permaculture goes wrong, and explains how his book corrects the food forest for the North American landscape.

Looking to reconnect with nature?  Try Brooklyn Bridge Park, six concrete shipping piers on New York’s East River transformed into a series of vibrant ecosystems rich with native wildlife.  Director of Horticulture Rebecca McMackin describes how salvaged materials make this 85-acre, organically maintained landscape sustainable as well as beautiful. 

Dr. Josef Gorres of the University of Vermont discusses the environmental threat posed by invasive Asian Jumping Worms and the methods he is exploring for their control in our forests and gardens

Forest steward Adrian Ayres Fisher describes the profound impact that uncontrolled deer populations have on native woodlands and their ecology

Carol Bouska describes the process she and her three sisters have followed in transforming the family farm in northeastern Iowa into a model of regenerative agriculture.  They are sequestering carbon in the soil, reducing water pollution, and nurturing wildlife while also building community and reinforcing family ties.

Dr. Eric Watkins of the University of Minnesota discusses the university's program to create more sustainable lawns that support native bees and other pollinators