Growing Greener

Tom Christopher

Your weekly half-hour program about environmentally informed gardening. Each week we bring you a different expert, a leading voice on gardening in partnership with Nature. Our goal is to make your landscape healthier, more beautiful, more sustainable, and more fun.

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20 episodes
Updated Wednesday

Episodes20

Newest first

Are There Microplastics in the Compost You've been Buying?
Rutger Myers of Eco-Cycle, a leader in promoting community composting programs for 50 years, discusses studies that indicate microplastics may be finding their way into the finished product and what you can do to prevent that.
Wednesday · 29 min
Do "Designed Ecosystems" Function Like Natural Plant Communities?
A school of European and English garden designers, and now American ones too, claim their "designed ecosystems" of plants gathered from all over the world provide similar benefits to natural plant communities of locally co-evolved species. Peter Adler, a plant ecologist at Utah State University, helps us explore the potential of such a practice.
July 22 · 29 min
The Facts about Fireflies
Texan Ben Pfeiffer discusses his personal crusade for fireflies and the remarkable facts about their strange and colorful life cycles in this return visit to a conversation from July 2020
July 15 · 29 min
New Cultural Perspectives on Ecological Gardening and How Your Lawn Can Transform Itself into a Native Meadow
Sara Weaner Cooper describes how New Directions in the American Landscape is incorporating indigenous American approaches into Ecological Gardening and how by adjusting the growing conditions in her lawn she caused it to transform itself into a meadow of native grasses and wildflowers without the use of herbicides or other unsustainable practices. A replay of a July, 2024 conversation.
July 8 · 29 min
Tim Clymer Uses Climate Battery Greenhouses to Farm Sub-Tropical Fruits in Pennsylvania
By storing excess heat from sunny days in the soil below his greenhouses, Tim Clymer keeps them warm on winter nights for a fraction the cost of conventional propane heat.
July 1 · 29 min
An Ecological Perspective on Tick-Borne Diseases
Dr. Rick Ostfeld of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies shares thirty years of research on the ecology of tick-borne diseases in North America, detailing why landscape treatments such as pesticide sprays are unproductive as well as environmentally destructive, and outlines a very different approach to this public health threat.
June 24 · 29 min
Citizen Scientists of iNaturalist Playing Crucial Role in Preservation of Biodiversity
Arya Natarajan of iNaturalist describes how that online platform's user community is playing a central role in monitoring changes in global biodiversity and the creation of climate resilient ecosystems
June 17 · 29 min
Charlie Nardozzi's New Book – an Ecological Update for the Kitchen Garden
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.
June 10 · 29 min
The Nurturing Nature Initiative – Botanical Gardens Unite To Address Climate Change
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.
June 3 · 29 min
What is Naturalism?
"Naturalism" is the dominant design style in ecological gardening, but what exactly is it? Is Naturalism just mimicry of nature, or does it allow for the designer to include aesthetic principles to please the human eye? Can it allow the gardener to enjoy favorite plants not indigenous to the area? Duncan Brine, co-proprietor with his wife Julia of design/build firm Garden Large explains how he has defined Naturalism to create some of the most celebrated new gardens of New York's Hudson River Valley.
May 27 · 29 min
"Veganic" Gardening
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.
May 20 · 29 min
A New Chapter in the Roundup Debacle
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.
May 13 · 29 min
Landraces – Customizing Vegetable and Fruit Cultivars to Flourish in Your Garden
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.
May 6 · 29 min
Are Alien Plants Superior at Supporting Insect Diversity in the 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.
April 29 · 29 min
The Million Orchid Project Turns Urban Areas into Sanctuaries for Critically Endangered Native Species
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.
April 22 · 29 min
Maine's Wild Seed Project Offers Education and an Example of Nationwide Significance
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.
April 15 · 29 min
Chemical Warfare from Invasive Plants
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.
April 8 · 29 min
Using Genetics to Avoid Spraying in the Vegetable Garden
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."
April 1 · 29 min
Make Your Lawn a Low-Maintenance Contributor to Biodiversity and Landscape Beauty
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.
March 25 · 29 min
A Gardener's Introduction to Fungi and Their Essential Support for Plants
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.
March 17 · 29 min

Growing Greener

Are There Microplastics in the Compost You've been Buying?

Do "Designed Ecosystems" Function Like Natural Plant Communities?

The Facts about Fireflies

New Cultural Perspectives on Ecological Gardening and How Your Lawn Can Transform Itself into a Native Meadow

Tim Clymer Uses Climate Battery Greenhouses to Farm Sub-Tropical Fruits in Pennsylvania

An Ecological Perspective on Tick-Borne Diseases

Citizen Scientists of iNaturalist Playing Crucial Role in Preservation of Biodiversity

Charlie Nardozzi's New Book – an Ecological Update for the Kitchen Garden

The Nurturing Nature Initiative – Botanical Gardens Unite To Address Climate Change

What is Naturalism?

"Veganic" Gardening

A New Chapter in the Roundup Debacle

Landraces – Customizing Vegetable and Fruit Cultivars to Flourish in Your Garden

Are Alien Plants Superior at Supporting Insect Diversity in the Garden?

The Million Orchid Project Turns Urban Areas into Sanctuaries for Critically Endangered Native Species

Maine's Wild Seed Project Offers Education and an Example of Nationwide Significance

Chemical Warfare from Invasive Plants

Using Genetics to Avoid Spraying in the Vegetable Garden

Make Your Lawn a Low-Maintenance Contributor to Biodiversity and Landscape Beauty

A Gardener's Introduction to Fungi and Their Essential Support for Plants