In “The Continuous Vegetable Garden” Charlie Nardozzi applies lessons learned from ecologically-informed gardening to bring vegetable and fruit gardening into a new, more sustainable, and less laborious era.

Emma Grover and Dr. Mauricio Diazgranados discuss a new program from the New York Botanical Garden to unite the thousands of botanical gardens worldwide in devoting their shared knowledge and resources for a coordinated, plant-based effort to combat the consequences of global climate change.

Garden designer and maker Duncan Brine outlines the fundamentals of naturalistic design and how it can combine with a garden rewarding to people and to wildlife.

Are you troubled about supporting industrial agriculture and its mistreatment of animals by purchasing by-products such as manures and blood meal to maintain your garden’s fertility?  British gardener John Walker, an award-winning environmental writer, shares the techniques he has used to make his garden cruelty free, self-sustaining, and sustainable in a conversation first shared in May of 2023.

Award-winning investigative journalist Carey Gillam exposed the corruption and suppression of evidence involved in the Environmental Protection Agency’s original approval of the use of the herbicide Roundup and its active ingredient glyphosate on American gardens and farms.  In today’s conversation she details the on-going suppression of evidence of its harmful impact on human and environmental health and discusses how the case about Roundup currently before the Supreme Court is designed to deprive its victims of recourse, and why Donald Trump has made increasing its production a matter of national security.

In a conversation first shared in February of 2024, farmer and author Joseph Lofthouse describes how to foster  “landraces,” strains of vegetables and fruits adapted to the unique conditions in your garden.

James Hitchmough, an eminent British garden designer and former professor of horticultural ecology asserted on a previous episode that research confirms that gardens rich in alien plants support a greater diversity of insects.  Today, Matthew Shepherd of the Xerces Society, an organization founded to promote insect and invertebrate conservation shares a different understanding of the science.

Dr. Jason Downing of Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden turns rare orchid propagation into an educational adventure for Miami area students, beautifies the cityscape, and rescues native Floridian species from the brink of extinction.

In this week’s Growing Greener Heather McCargo, founder of the Wild Seed Project, describes its programs to encourage gardeners to grow native plants from wild-collected seeds to preserve genetic diversity in the garden and beyond, and how McCargo has embraced the evolution of her personal garden from meadow to biodiverse woodland.

One of the ways that invasive plants displace indigenous floras is “allelopathy.”  In a conversation first broadcast in February 2024, Dr. Susan Kalisz of the University of Tennessee Knoxville describes how many introduced plants actually poison the soil so that indigenous species cannot germinate or flourish in their former homes.

Selecting disease-resistant cultivars is an essential tool for avoiding the use of pesticides in the vegetable garden.  Plant pathologist Nicole Gauthier of the University of Kentucky explains how to identify cultivars appropriate to your region and your garden, and why “tolerance” may serve you as well as “resistance.”

As Dan Jaffe Wilder Wilder says “you can grow a lawn which is a whole bunch of green stuff.  Or you can grow a lawn that is a whole bunch of low-growing green stuff with some yellow, some blue, some white, some pink and some red mixed in. Which do you choose? “ Join the conversation with this native plant expert and learn how you can make your lawn not only colorful but also easier to maintain and supportive of the local wildlife and native flora.

Estimates of fungi diversity range into the millions of species, yet the vast majority remain unknown.  What is clear, says mycologist Gabriela D’Elia, is that your garden plants depend on the services provided to them by the indigenous fungi.

James Lord speaks of his mentor and inspiration Roberto Burle Marx, the painter, sculptor, musician, and botanist who found in Brazil’s native plants the basis for a new style of landscape architecture and a language to celebrate the distinctive beauty of his homeland.

Citing European studies, British horticultural ecologist James Hitchmough, a leader of the ecological gardening movement in his country, rejects the intrinsic superiority of native plants over exotic garden imports for supporting insect diversity in the garden.

A square foot of topsoil typically hosts thousands of dormant seeds deposited by previous floras.  Nathan Lambstrom of Lambstrom Garden Ecology discusses his research into how this “soil seed bank” can enhance or derail ecological restoration, and how to manage your “account” to benefit your garden.

Is your pruning aimed only at gratifying your aesthetics and needs?  Chris Roddick also views pruning from the plants’ perspective, promoting techniques that enhance their growth patterns and ecological function as well.

Travel with Growing Greener to Winnipeg, Manitoba to learn how Ash Burkowski is collecting seed from local prairie remnants to raise indigenous grasses and wildflowers that can be integrated into lawns, restoring populations of native flora while relieving homeowners of the need for fertilization and irrigation and reducing the need for mowing.

A replay of a February 2024 conversation in which Joseph Lofthouse, author of “Landrace Gardening” details how anyone can create genetically diverse vegetable and fruit crops that flourish in the local climate and soil with minimal inputs in just three years.

Byron Kominek knew the family farm needed a more profitable crop than hay to survive.  By installing  photovoltaic panels and growing crops underneath, he now supplies electricity to 300 neighboring houses while also producing food and hosting educational programs at what is now a popular learning center.