A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach - September 6, 2021 - Julie Janoski Gives a Caterpillar Clinic

Today’s guest answers even more Urgent Garden Questions each year than I do, in her role as plant clinic manager at The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Illinois—including lots each summer and fall about caterpillars galore, from bagworms to gypsy moths and fall webworms. 

Visitors ask questions to Julie Janoski, the Plant Clinic Mangers, in the Plant Clinic near the Visitor Center at The Morton Arboretum.

Besides being an arboretum and public garden, The Morton is a world-class 1,700-acre research center, conservation and education organization, and it’s preparing to mark its centennial in 2022.

Last year, 17,000 questions arrived by phone, email, or in person at the plant clinic, questions representing consumers from 48 states. Julie is a former landscape designer who has managed the arboretum’s free plant clinic for three years, after volunteering there for five years before that. 

Julie and I talked about the most common questions we each get from gardeners, including ones about Magnolia scale and about all those hungry caterpillars and what to do to limit them next year.