Joseph Tychonievich, a garden writer and backyard plant breeder and passionate flower grower, has gone on a bit of a sunflower binge, declaring it his personal Year of the Sunflower. He and I chatted recently about the best of the old and new Helianthus, some favorite catalogs for sunflowers and many other easy flowers—and also about growing sweet peas, which apparently are also front-and-center on Joseph’s wish list this year.
You may recall previous confessionals from Joseph, about his “issues,” shall we say, with gladiolus and hollyhocks. He is the author of books on backyard plant breeding and also rock gardening, among his many botanical interests. Our interview is another episode of the A Way to Garden annual winter seed series, when I virtually shop the catalogs with various expert friends and get growing advice, too. 
Today’s guest is a plant ecologist whose work, she says, is driven by this question: “All of the wild diversity of life on earth...
I wish that when I was a college freshman, a course like Harvard’s seminar called “Tree” had been part of the curriculum, because since...
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