Growing Greener

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

Veteran investigative journalist Carey Gillam introduces her award-winning book, "Whitewash: The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer, and the Corruption of Science," sharing its account of the collaboration between chemical manufacturer Monsanto and governmental agencies to cover up the disastrous health hazards of the omnipresent weed killer, Roundup

Dan Mabe, founder of AGZA, the American Green Zone Alliance, has taken on one of the bitterest impasses of contemporary suburbia. So many residents hate the noise and fumes of gas-powered landscape equipment, and its unsustainable thirst for fossil fuels. Landscape maintenance contractors reply that they cannot provide the services their customers demand at a price they will pay without it. AGZA has developed analytical tools that can help owners reduce the carbon footprint of their landscape by a half or even more. It also works with landscape industry professionals to help them explore alternate tool systems, cleaner burning or battery powered, that can enable them to accomplish maintenance goals at less environmental cost and typically far more quietly. Listen to Dan describe how AGZA resolves the conflicting dynamics.

#NoMowMay is an international movement that has been gaining widespread popularity in the United States. Its goal is to persuade gardeners to stop mowing their grass during the month of May so that lawn weeds such as dandelions and white clover may flower and provide early spring pollen and nectar for insect pollinators. A laudable impulse, but Dr. Sheila Colla of York University and her colleagues biologist Heather Holm and native plants stalwart Lorraine Johnson have published an article in Rewilding Magazine detailing why this isn't the best means of fostering native pollinators in North America

If each of us enriched our personal landscape with native plants, making it hospitable to pollinators, birds, and other wildlife, what an immense cumulative impact we would have! In Saving Nature One Yard At A Time, veteran naturalists and gardeners David Deardorff and Kathryn Wadsworth show us just how we can accomplish that, while also joining together to boost the ecological health of our communities as well. Framed as a series of stories profiling individual animals and plants, this book is as entertaining as it is informative, and is thoughtfully designed to apply no matter where in the continental United States you happen to garden

Colleen Murphy-Dunning, director of the Urban Resources Initiative, describes how Yale University's School of the Environment partnered with the New Haven community to design and implement a very successful program to enhance the urban ecosystem in a way that directly benefits residents while also educating students.

Director of Horticulture at the Native Plant Trust in Framingham, Massachusetts, and former Curator of Native Flora at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Uli Lorimer has written a new book, The Northeast Native Plant Primer, 235 Plants for an Earth-Friendly Garden. An outstanding introduction to gardening with native plants, it is especially relevant for residents of the northeastern United States but has much to offer to gardeners in other regions of the country as well. In our conversation, we explore such matters as what is a native plant and why species-type native plants are better for the "earth-friendly" garden

Dr. Toni DiTommaso of Cornell University explains how familiarity with the ecology of weeds can help a gardener control their impact on the garden without resorting to toxic chemicals, and shares the web address of a free book-length guide to the subject