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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368 episodes
Updated Wednesday

Episodes368

Newest first

March 11 · 29 min
A Brazilian Genius of the last Century Created Invaluable Lessons for Today's Ecological Gardeners
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.
March 4 · 29 min
A British Horticultural Ecologist Challenges the U.S. Consensus
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.
February 25 · 29 min
Balancing your account in the soil seed bank
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.
February 18 · 29 min
A Tree's Perspective on Pruning
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.
February 11 · 29 min
O Canada ¬– A Garden Activist Enriches and Beautifies Lawns with Local Prairie Flora
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.
February 4 · 29 min
Creating Crops that Thrive in Your Garden
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.
January 28 · 29 min
Colorado Agrivoltaic Learning Center combines energy generation with agriculture for a double harvest
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.
January 21 · 29 min
The Missing Piece of Your Ecological Garden
Liz Koziol of the University of Kansas shares hew work with mycorrhizal fungi and native plants, and how a properly designed fungal inoculant can make your ecological garden more biodiverse, quicker to establish itself and more resistant to weeds.
January 14 · 29 min
An Antique Tool Brings New Knowledge of Native Plants
Herbariums, annotated collections of dried plant specimens first appeared in Italy almost 500 years ago. In today's Growing Greener, Lea Johnson, Director of Conservation at the Native Plant Trust discusses why they remain an essential tool for those who track and study native plant populations, and the new technologies herbariums facilitate.
January 7 · 29 min
How Your Garden Helped Drive the Deer Population Boom
Dr. Elic Weitzel of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History describes the thousands of years of association between deer and people, how they long ago came to prefer human-created landscapes, and why their population has exploded
Dec 31, 2025 · 29 min
Behold the Magic of Warm-Season Grasses
In a conversation recorded in December of 2019 Shannon Currey, a leading educator in the native plants industry, describes how the unique adaptations of warm season grasses make them winners in an era of climate change as well as invaluable in the late summer garden.
Dec 24, 2025 · 29 min
How Vermont sculptor Dan Snow has elevated the traditional New England wall into a powerful, locally rooted art form
In a conversation from January of 2021, Dan Snow tells how, using locally sourced stone, he expresses the intrinsic beauty of a site in bold constructions held together only by gravity, friction, and history.
Dec 17, 2025 · 29 min
Partnering with Goats to Maintain Biodiversity in Ecological Hotspot
Goats love invasive plants, says Elijah Goodwin, Director of Ecosystem Monitoring at New York's Stone Barns Center; and with careful timing and regulation the Center's herd is restoring ecological balance to its 80-acre campus and hundreds of acres of a famous nature preserve.
Dec 10, 2025 · 29 min
Seemingly non-invasive exotic garden plants can be ecological time bombs
Revisiting a conversation from August 2023 with Dr. Bethany Bradley of the University of Massachusetts, who describes how plants introduced from outside our ecosystems may remain quiescent for decades before turning invasive, and how climate change is threatening to explode this threat.
Dec 3, 2025 · 29 min
Snagged: How a Dead Tree Can Enrich Your Garden
Wildlife biologist Ken Bevis discusses the many benefits to biodiversity of "snags," standing dead trees, and how to incorporate them safely and aesthetically into our gardens.
Nov 26, 2025 · 29 min
Celebrate Thanksgiving with Pawpaws – a North American native fruit ideal for the home gardener
In a replay of a conversation from September of 2023, Sheri Crabtree of Kentucky State University describes the northernmost species of the tropical custard apple family, the pawpaw, which offers delicious tropical flavor, a creamy texture, and thrives in the backyard garden as far north as USDA Zone 5.
Nov 19, 2025 · 29 min
Start from Seed for a Special Relationship with Your Native Plants
William Cullina, a leading expert on the propagation of native plants, describes the special insights about a species' adaptations and ecology that starting from seed provides, and offers simple tips for success with this endeavor.
Nov 12, 2025 · 29 min
Coexistence with a garden nemesis
'Good fences make good neighbors,' especially, according to Vermonter Susan Shea, when it comes to gardeners and woodchucks. A nature writer and photographer, Shea details the extraordinary abilities of this native mammal, the important ecological and cultural roles it plays, and how to install a woodchuck-proof fence.
Nov 5, 2025 · 29 min
Edwina von Gal Closes the Loop
Everything that grows on your property – its "biomass" – should remain there even after death, says this award-winning garden designer and founder of the Perfect Earth Project. Fallen branches, leaves, even tree trunks as they decay reactivate a cycle essential to Nature's health, and are an opportunity for a different kind of beauty.
Oct 29, 2025 · 29 min
Pollinators of the Night
Overlooked by many gardeners, moths are actually more efficient as pollinators than bees and are the basis of the food chain for everything from bats and songbirds to grizzly bears

Growing Greener

A Brazilian Genius of the last Century Created Invaluable Lessons for Today's Ecological Gardeners

A British Horticultural Ecologist Challenges the U.S. Consensus

Balancing your account in the soil seed bank

A Tree's Perspective on Pruning

O Canada ¬– A Garden Activist Enriches and Beautifies Lawns with Local Prairie Flora

Creating Crops that Thrive in Your Garden

Colorado Agrivoltaic Learning Center combines energy generation with agriculture for a double harvest

The Missing Piece of Your Ecological Garden

An Antique Tool Brings New Knowledge of Native Plants

How Your Garden Helped Drive the Deer Population Boom

Behold the Magic of Warm-Season Grasses

How Vermont sculptor Dan Snow has elevated the traditional New England wall into a powerful, locally rooted art form

Partnering with Goats to Maintain Biodiversity in Ecological Hotspot

Seemingly non-invasive exotic garden plants can be ecological time bombs

Snagged: How a Dead Tree Can Enrich Your Garden

Celebrate Thanksgiving with Pawpaws – a North American native fruit ideal for the home gardener

Start from Seed for a Special Relationship with Your Native Plants

Coexistence with a garden nemesis

Edwina von Gal Closes the Loop

Pollinators of the Night