We’ve all heard the environmentally conscious advice: The way we used to clean up our gardens – extra-tidy, but to within an inch of its life for every unseen beneficial creature out there trying to tuck in for winter – is not the best practice.
I’m learning and evolving my approach as I go the last few years, reading up about guidance like “leave the leaves” and cutback strategies like “chop and drop” and more. And asking experts for help, including today’s guest, Uli Lorimer, director of horticulture at Native Plant Trust.
Uli, author of “The Northeast Native Plant Primer,” has made native plants his career. In 2019 became director of horticulture at Native Plant Trust, America’s oldest plant conservation organization, founded in 1900 as the New England Wild Flower Society, and before that he was longtime curator of the Native Flora Garden at Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
Today’s guest returned from a 1979 trip visiting English gardens inspired to do some garden-making of his own. His canvas was a northwestern Connecticut...
I met today’s guest, Helen O’Donnell, at a plant sale a couple of springs ago, before the pandemic scuttled most such big public events....
We may know one when we see it, but what word best describes an ecological landscape? Compared to traditional, more formal gardens, such native-plant-forward...
