Growing Greener

For twenty years Cornell University horticulturists have been working on a blend of short-growing native grasses and wildflowers that could replace introduced turf grasses as the American lawn.  Today Todd Bittner, Director of Natural Areas at the Cornell Botanic Gardens details how his team is preparing to release onto the market a mix that flourishes without irrigation after establishment, without fertilizer, and pesticides, which requires mowing just once or twice a year, and can be installed by seeding or as sod.

Can our personal spirituality provide a path to a different, more positive relationship with Nature? In this conversation, first broadcast in December of 2024, Brother James Lockman of the Catholic Church's Franciscan Order describes how the beauty of Nature inspired his spiritual journey and how that led him to a life dedicated to restoring damaged ecosystems.

Gardeners habitually distinguish between "bad bugs" who feed on their plants and the "good bugs," the predators who feed on those herbivores.  As Aaron Anderson of the Xerces Society points out, you can't have one without the other and the goal should be encouraging a functioning, well-rounded insect community in your landscape.

Many British garden designers, and their admirers in the United States claim that plant biodiversity is the key to supporting the most diverse insect populations, and that introduced plant species are as effective or better than locally native ones.  A garden up the block from me in Connecticut suggests the fallacy of that claim.

Shawn Maestretti, principal of Studio Petrichor, a celebrated landscape design and installation firm in Altadena, California, describes his "conversation" with pocket gophers, generally reviled as a pest in western gardens, and how he has come to respect not only this native creature's right to share the landscape but also the invaluable role it can play as a soil engineer.