HOW DO SOME 90-minute distractions from dreary headlines sound right about now, with each session offering an updated, ecologically smarter look at an essential garden subject? For nearly four years, my Virtual Garden Club has operated on a subscription model, where members purchased access to a whole semester of classes at a time. This spring I have something new in mind: I’ll be hosting monthly 90-minute workshops you can buy individually (or sign up for all three at a 14 percent discount!). Attend your choice(s) live, or watch the recorded version for a month afterward, at your leisure. I’m ..read more

ANYONE WHO has heard of, or even better visited, Chanticleer Garden in Pennsylvania knows that it’s home to some of the country’s most exceptional examples of horticultural creativity and innovation. A multi-year biodiversity survey of the Chanticleer property has revealed that it’s also home to more than 1,000 species of insects, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and even fish, who apparently all agree that it’s quite the attractive and compelling space, a garden’s biodiversity and how it can inform us to fine-tune our plant choices and horticultural practices is our subject today. I spoke with Bi ..read more

WE’VE ALL HEARD about what plants and other features figure into making a garden for the birds, or a pollinator garden. But what about a frog garden? I’m crazy about frogs and would like to think my place is one such habitat. So I was delighted to get an email recently from today’s guest, Jim Sirch, with the subject line “gardening for frogs.” Yes, please, I thought, and got to talking with Jim about how to be more amphibian-friendly in the way we create and care for our home landscapes. Jim is a trained naturalist and vice president of the Connecticut Horticultural Society, who recently retir ..read more

IF ANOTHER HOUSEPLANT dropped all its leaves for several months each year, you’d think you killed it. But with some of Ken Druse‘s and my favorite indoor companions, from Bowiea to Jatropha and more, a regular dormant period is just part of their lifecycle. And even if all their leaves are missing in action for a while, these curious plants’ sculptural, swollen bases are still there to admire—water- and nutrient- filled structures that are also the plant’s secret to survival. Ken and I are fans of what are sometimes called fat plants—some of which are technically classified as caudificorm (hav ..read more

THE SIGHT OF Eastern bluebirds rates high on my happiness scale, so I say bring them on. But what makes a place look like inviting habitat to these charismatic birds, encouraging them to maybe stick around during breeding season? And if your site meets with their approval, and a pair perhaps shacks up in a nest box you provided, how can you then be a good bluebird landlord? Those and other bluebird-centric questions were the topic with expert birder Julie Zickefoose, a writer, artist, naturalist and wildlife rehabilitator who lives on an 80-acre wildlife sanctuary in the Appalachian foothills ..read more

ONE OF THE TALLEST perennials in my garden is New York ironweed, Vernonia noveboracensis. But basically my knowledge of the genus starts and ends there—or at least it did until just recently when Mt. Cuba Center, the renowned native plant garden and research institution, published the results of its four-year trial of a range of ironweeds, powerful plants that pollinators love and deer generally don’t. Sam Hoadley, the manager of horticultural research at Mt. Cuba Center in Delaware, joined me to talk about what he and the team there learned in their multi-year trial of native ironweeds. I alw ..read more

YOU PROBABLY KNOW the popular Seed Savers Exchange catalog, which this year features 600 varieties of seed to choose from and supports the beloved nonprofit preservation organization by the same name, which in 2025 is turning 50 years old. But maybe you haven’t clicked around in Seed Savers’ online seed swap, that’s simply called The Exchange, where homegrown open-pollinated seed for more than 14,000 unique varieties is offered this year. Some of it from Seed Savers’ own vast collection, and others from hundreds of individual gardeners all over the country and beyond. It’s the ultimate seed ra ..read more

HAVE YOU ever replied, “I don’t know; that’s just the way I’ve always done it” when someone asked why you performed a certain garden task in a particular way? Sometimes we stay stuck even when there’s evidence there’s a newer, better version to try. Old habits die hard. Here’s how one friend, Matt Mattus, explained it in a recent social media post that caught my eye: He wrote: “It’s hard to change, especially when a method becomes a nostalgic ritual.” Indeed. Matt and I talked about some of our nostalgic rituals that we cling to, and others we’ve surrendered in favor of new-and-improved versio ..read more

ANYBODY IN THE MOOD for something just plain pretty at the moment? Something to search the seed catalogs for, choosing among the many wildly colorful varieties, and then get ready to sow something hopeful and bright? Well me, too. So after I saw a photo of a bed of snapdragons the other day from last year’s garden of Joseph Tychonievich, I thought they might be just the thing to bring us all some delight. Joseph Tychonievich is here to entice us further and tell us how to grow them, and which ones to look for especially. Joseph is a writer, a plant breeder, and of course a gardener and the cre ..read more

HOW’S WINTER shaping up where you are so far or more to the point: How’s the winter garden looking? What’s your view out the window this time of year, and could it be improved with some strategic enhancements, creating a true four-season garden no matter where you are? That was the subject of a recent chat I had with Warren Leach, the author of a new book called “Plants for the Winter Garden: Perennials, Grasses, Shrubs and Trees to Add Interest in the Cold and Snow.” Warren, a nurseryman and landscape designer, is based in Rehoboth, Mass., where he and his wife operate Tranquil Lake Nursery ..read more