Growing Greener
Tom Christopher
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.
2d ago
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
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
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
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
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
'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
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
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
