Growing Greener

Tom Knezick of Pinelands Nursery, one of the largest producers of native plants in the U.S., tells how his family’s business has mastered growing natives from locally collected seed, producing plants that are genetically diverse and regionally adapted. The nursery industry as a whole claims this is too difficult and labor intensive; Tom describes how Pinelands has succeeded.

Dr. Matthew Kleinhenz of Ohio State University describes the ancient history of “biostimulants,” and how contemporary researchers are identifying natural bacteria and fungi that help crops cope with the extreme weather events of climate change

When automotive engineer Shubhendu Sharma met Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki, Sharma found the cause he had been looking for. Today, Sharma’s company Afforestt is the global leader in creating Miyawaki’s transformational tiny forests

Shubber Ali, CEO of Garden for Wildlife, a new venture of the National Wildlife Federation, describes how his company makes it almost effortless to order site-adapted, locally native plants that provide the maximum benefits for wildlife.

Lady Bird Johnson put native plants on the map with her program to plant wildflowers alongside our nation’s highways in the 1960’s. Her legacy, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, continues to play a key role by providing gardeners with extraordinary and free online resources about selecting and growing native plants in every U.S. state.

As the first Executive Director of Homegrown National Park, Brandon Hough talks about his unconventional journey to conservation, and how this non-profit makes it easy for homeowners to find plants that give the maximum boost to the local ecosystem while also, at least in Brandon’s case, relieving eco-grief.

Coordinator of the New York Botanical Garden’s Gardening Education Program, Daryl Beyers has developed a fresh approach to teaching the fundamentals of the craft, one that not only provides a strong foundation for novices to go on and build their own skills, but which has proved valuable to experienced practitioners who want to move beyond the old-fashioned, often environmentally harmful practices they may absorbed at the beginning of their careers.

Annuals offer unique advantages for the ecological gardener, growing fast to stabilize disturbed soils, and providing quick color for new plantings. In this conversation, master plantsman Ethan Dropkin of Larry Weaner Landscape Associates shares his pick of the best native annuals native to eastern North America.

In 2015 landscape architect Thomas Rainer and his professional partner Claudia West stirred the gardening world with their best-selling book, “Planting in a Post-Wild World.” Now Rainer shares his arguments for thoughtful optimism regarding gardening and its potential impact on our ecological challenges.

In the 1990’s Lauren Springer helped pioneer a new, regionally focused gardening style in Colorado, an “undaunted garden” that celebrated the Rocky Mountain landscape and the plants, native and introduced, that were at home there. In this conversation, Springer recalls those times and details how her design style has continued to evolve, and what comes next.