It’s not an either/or choice, native vs. introduced, for Claudia West of Phyto Studio when this leader of the ecological gardening movement develops a plant palette for one of her innovative landscapes. What she seeks, besides selections that serve the customers’ needs and delight the eye, are “high performing” species and cultivars that provide maximum benefits to the local ecosystem, regardless of place of origin.
An Invaluable New Gardening Tool
“Your Natural Garden,” Kelly D. Norris’ new book, is sure to be one of the most essential gardening tools of 2025. In this beautifully illustrated guide, Norris, who split his childhood between working in his grandmother’s garden and exploring the 40-acre prairie a quarter mile up the road, shares insights he has gathered from his hands in the dirt-experience, studies of plant science, and his work as a nationally renowned ecological garden designer.
Managing for Coexistence
Sports fields and swimming beaches are essential, but public parks can also play a crucial role in maintaining biodiversity. As Curator of Natural Resources for the Westchester County New York Park system, Leah Cass designs management regimes for thousands of acres of habitat, coordinating the needs of residents, wildlife, and more than a thousand species of native plants.
The Many Garden Benefits of Snow
The Nursery that Helped Shape the Native Plants Movement
Gardeners mostly didn’t focus on our native plants as such in 1988 when Steve Castorani and Dale Hendricks founded North Creek Nurseries to propagate them in bulk for distribution to retail nurseries. Learn how North Creek’s innovations in the years since have continued to shape and expand the native plants movement.
Using Native Grasses to Create an Environmentally Friendly Lawn
Eco Spirituality: “We must change”
One Family’s Definition of Regenerative Agriculture
Knowing Your Soil - Part 2
Join pioneering nurseryman and ecologist Neil Diboll for the second half of our conversation about how gardeners can familiarize themselves with the natural characteristics of the soil on their site and use that knowledge in selecting a community of adapted, self-sufficient native plants for their gardens.
Knowing Your Soil
Traditional gardening emends the soil to suit the needs of the selected plants; pioneering nurseryman and ecologist Neil Diboll takes the character of the soil on site as the foundation of garden design and key to the selection of an adapted, ecologically functional, and self-sufficient plant palette
A Dynamic Toolbox of Innovative Land Restoration Strategies
How Human Manipulation Affects the Relationship of Hydrangeas and Pollinators
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Garden activist and educator Cathy Ludden describes her encounters with hydrangeas and how transforming the flower heads to suit human aesthetics has proved both harmful and beneficial to pollinators
A Masterful Integration of Natives and Exotics
Richard Hayden, Senior Director of Horticulture at New York’s magical garden, the High Line, describes how it integrates North American native plants with carefully chosen exotic species to create a whole that delights human visitors while also supporting wildlife and providing a powerful reconnection with nature
Giving a Neater, more Domesticated Look to the Native Plant Garden
Many homeowners who admire the beauty and environmental benefits of native plants don’t care for the wilderness look of the typical naturalized native plant garden. Garden designer Britney O’Donnell shares tricks for designing and maintaining a more domesticated native plant landscape, one that fits better a neater suburban context
Will Nature Heal Itself?
Skeptics say that invasive species are not a serious threat to biodiversity, that “Nature will heal itself” despite the looming, man-made mass extinction. Today, paleobotanist Dana Royer describes the five mass extinctions of the past, and why recovery from such episodes typically took millions of years
