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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
weekly
Avg 29 min
English

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#377
Wednesday · 29 min
Ground-Breaking New Takes on Trees from the Oldest Arboretum in the United States
Ned Friedman, Director of Harvard's Arnold Arboretum discusses that institution's programs to preserve the DNA of tree species and populations threatened with extinction by climate change, helping trees flourish in an increasingly challenging environment, and how you can share in his passion for these extraordinary organisms by bonding with one tree.
#376
August 19 · 29 min
Welcoming Peter Rabbit back into the Garden
Amy Free, rabbit-lover and anthrozoologist, awakens Tom Christopher to the beauties and ecological importance of rabbits and shares how to host them without sacrificing your garden.
#375
August 12 · 29 min
Exploring – and Updating – Nature's Calendar
Theresa Crimmins, Director of the USA National Phenology Network, explains why knowing the timing of natural events such as the annual bloom of different flowers and the emergences of their insect pollinators is essential to good gardening and shares how climate climate change is disrupting natural collaborations that stretch back over millennia.
#374
August 5 · 29 min
The Garden Conservancy: Your Passport to Garden Visits and Education Nationwide
Horatio Joyce, the Garden Conservancy's Director of Public Programs & Education details the rich opportunities his organization provides to tour remarkable gardens in every region of the United States, and the innovative opportunities for gardening education it provides both in person and online.
#373
July 29 · 29 min
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.
#372
July 22 · 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.
#371
July 15 · 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
#370
July 8 · 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.
#369
July 1 · 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.
#358
June 24 · 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.
#367
June 17 · 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
#366
June 10 · 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.
#365
June 3 · 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.
#364
May 27 · 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.
#363
May 20 · 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.
#362
May 13 · 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.
#361
May 6 · 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.
#360
April 29 · 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.
#359
April 22 · 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.
#358
April 15 · 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.

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