Getting more people to participate in healing the ecosystem takes spreading awareness of both the problems and the solutions. My guest this week, Basil Camu, does just that in his new book “From Wasteland to Wonder: Easy Ways We Can Help Heal Earth in the Sub/Urban Landscape.”  Basil is the “chief vision officer and wizard of things” of Leaf & Limb, a tree care company that refuses to remove living trees, and the leader of Pando Project, a nonprofit that collects native seeds, propagates them and gives away the saplings. In “From Wasteland to Wonder,” he identifies how individuals and ..read more

Gardening goes deeper than growing your own food and enhancing the beauty of your surroundings — it can support your local ecosystem and contribute to the healing of our planet. This is the ethos shared by the gardeners, educators such as Dr. Doug Tallamy and ecology experts who will join me on May 8th for the inaugural Ecological Gardening Summit. This online event, which will run from noon to 4:30 p.m. Eastern, will feature talks from entomologist Dr. Doug Tallamy of the University of Delaware, pollinator conservationist Emily May of the Xerces Society, ecological horticulturist Rebecca McMa ..read more

The Ecological Gardening Summit begins Wednesday, May 8, online, at noon Eastern time, and to prepare, I am sharing some of the principles that inspired this inaugural event. This week, I am revisiting my past podcasts with Rebecca McMackin, who will present “Adventures in Ecological Horticulture” during the summit. Rebecca will join the summit to enlighten us on the importance of creating sustainable habitats for plants, insects, and wildlife. She is a garden designer who holds master’s degrees in both environmental biology and landscape design. She encourages inviting biology into the garden ..read more

You’ve heard me say many times that what I love about gardening is there is always more to learn. Gardening keeps us on our toes and constantly presents opportunities to refine our methods. I decided to check in with gardeners in my Online Gardening Academy™ about their top takeaways from this past gardening season and what changes they will make in 2024. The Online Gardening Academy offers courses in beginner fundamentals, seed starting, tomato growing, pest, disease and weed management, organic vegetable gardening and more. I reached out to a number of active students from around the country ..read more

To attract a greater diversity of pollinators to a garden, there’s nothing better than native plants. In this encore episode, pollinator conservationist Heather Holm joins me to discuss the benefits of fostering the mutually beneficial relationship between native plants and the pollinators they coevolved with. Heather is a biologist and award-winning author from Canada who now lives in Minnesota. She wrote her first book, “Pollinators of Native Plants: Attract, Observe and Identify Pollinators and Beneficial Insects with Native Plants,” based on her experience practicing ecological horticultur ..read more

New York Times gardening columnist and “A Way to Garden” podcast host Margaret Roach — who is a repeat guest on “The joegardener Show” and a fan favorite — is back again, on the heels of being presented with the prestigious Scott Medal from the Scott Arboretum at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. She shares how she came to be the renowned garden writer and podcaster she is today and her reflections on how gardening can benefit us as well as wildlife. The Scott Medal recognizes an outstanding person in the field of horticulture, which Margaret Roach certainly is. The Scott ..read more

Life has thrown Steve Kaufer some curveballs, but with some smart pivoting and serendipity, he’s become a successful seed breeder and seed farmer, earning the moniker “Sunflower Steve.” He joins me on the podcast this week to share his story and explain how a volunteer sunflower that grew in his field in 2007 set him on a new path years later. Steve is the proprietor of Sunflower Steve Seed Co. in western Wisconsin, close to the Minnesota border. He had been raising cut flowers on his farm since 2000, but in the past couple of years, he has been raising ..read more

Mastering succession planting takes knowledge and practice, but it’s not that tall of a task. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll enjoy the benefits of an extended growing season and a greater harvest. To help you make the most of your garden space, this week I am reprising my conversation with Meg Cowden, the founder of Seed to Fork, an expert in succession planting. Meg is an organic gardener in Minnesota’s Minneapolis-Saint Paul area, where the growing season is relatively short. She overcomes this challenge through season extension and succession planting practices, yielding an abundance o ..read more

It’s time once again for my annual check-in with Craig LeHoullier, also known as NC Tomatoman, an heirloom tomato and straw bale gardening expert as well as a dwarf tomato breeder. I always look forward to catching up with Craig and finding out what new and exciting things he has going on in his garden and beyond. Craig is now in his fifth year living in Hendersonville, North Carolina, and before that, he lived for 28 years in Raleigh, which is also in North Carolina but offers a much different gardening environment. I’ve been fortunate to visit him and his ..read more

Pesticide regulations are designed to reduce the harm that pesticide use has on humans and wildlife, but they are not intended to eliminate all risks and ecological damage. To explain how gaps in pesticide regulations fail pollinators and other beneficial insects, pollinator conservation specialist Emily May of the Xerces Society joins me on the podcast this week. Emily holds a master’s in entomology (the study of insects) from Michigan State and a bachelor’s in biology and environmental studies from Middlebury College in Vermont. She has studied pollinator habitat restoration, bee nesting hab ..read more