oaks: the most powerful plant of all, with doug tallamy

Every year, Better Homes & Gardens celebrates the movers and shakers, authors and bakers, designers and makers who push the design envelope in ever-beautiful ways. They're called Stylemakers, and this year we're highlighting nearly 40 of our favorite creative thinkers, dreamers, and doers. Here, you'll find a bit about each 2023 Stylemaker, plus their current projects and passions.

The harvest video was on Hudson Valley Seed’s Instagram account, and one of that New York-based organic seed company’s co-founders, K Greene, talked with me about growing shallots and their more commonly grown cousin, garlic. He also shared some other ideas for succession sowing of edibles whose planting time still lies ahead—whether for fall harvest or to over-winter and enjoying in the year ahead. Read along as you listen to the Aug. 7, 2023 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) o

I invited my favorite fruit expert, Lee Reich, author of many exceptional garden books, including “Grow Fruit Naturally” and “Weedless Gardening” and “The Pruning Book,” to come talk figs on my public-radio show and podcast. (I’m giving away a copy of “Grow Fruit Naturally;” enter by commenting in the box at the very bottom of the page.)I often refer to Lee as “the unusual fruit guy,” because one of his first books I read was “Uncommon Fruits Worthy of Attention.” Lee lives with blueberries and paw paws and medlars and kiwis and of course figs and more not far from me, across the Hudson in New Paltz, New York, on what he calls his farm-den (as in half-farm, half-garden) loaded with unusual fruits.Learn wh

These non-native “ladybugs,” introduced by the Department of Agriculture to help combat certain agricultural pests, have made themselves right at home in America—and in my house, too. In fall, the south-facing side of the exterior can be teeming with patches of them, as they look for places to tuck into and overwinter. The USDA imported lady beetles from Japan as early as 1916 as a beneficial insect, to gobble up unwanted pests on forest and orchard trees, but it was probably later releases, in the late 1970s and early 80s in the Southeast, that took hold. Today, multicolored Asian lady beetles have made themselves completely at home around the United States, easily adapting to regions as diverse as Louisiana, Oregon, and mine in New York State.

Research from the nearby Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York, reveals how acorns initiate a complex series of ecological chain reactions. And not just the obvious ways, like feeding turkeys or chipmunks or deer, but in influencing Gypsy moth outbreaks and tick-borne disease risk, and even the reproductive success of ground-nesting songbirds.Dr. Rick Ostfeld, a disease ecologist from Cary Institute, helped me understand what–both seen and unseen–is going on with those tiny acorns and their mighty, wide-ranging influences. Read along as you listen to the Oct. 19, 2015 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).my q&a on acorns’

Yes, you could simply separate seeds from the pulp and skip the smelly-gooey-gross part of the process. But that part–the natural act of fermentation that’s happening in the jars in the photo below–helps break down germination-inhibiting compounds such as the gel sac around tomato seeds, and can also reduce some seed-specific diseases.let’s save some tomato seeds:Select a few of your best-looking mature fruits from each of your healthiest-looking plants. The variety must be

You can order the plan, a pdf, from Wave Hill’s shop. My pairs were adapted from there–made in cedar, not pine; the arms slightly longer; the wood slightly thicker and so on–and a savvy carpenter can adjust the angle of the seat and back before screwing everything together, to be more upright or less so. Follow the plans to the letter…or have some fun with them. Order the Wave Hill chair plan by calling the Wave Hill Shop at 718.549.3200 x 249, or email jenahb at wavehill dot org.Want them painted? My expert woodworking neighbor recommends using Benjamin Moore Aura exterior on top of an oil-based primer to help stop any tannin bleed (assuming that the material is cedar, which is the best choice if you plant for long life of the chairs, or to leave them outdoors in winter). If there are knots, use oil-based Binz primer on the knots only.You may recall my recent interview

Even in the week of July 7, Ken says, he notes 15 or 16 options on his sowing calendar, and that’s in our shared USDA Zone 5B, where frost can arrive around the start of October. Gardeners in zones with longer frost-free seasons have even more time, and opportunities.  Admittedly Ken starts fewer things each week now, but even through September, he’s starting multiple new plantings—and he makes November sowings of spinach and mache for extra-early spring harvest.“Sow now what?” as Ken asks (tee hee). The list is long, including peas, carrots, lettuce, broccoli, bok choy, Chinese cabbage, mibuna and mizuna, tatsoi, kale, collards, cauliflower, kohlrabi, swiss chard, scallions and more. You can even sow more bush zucchini (especially if your early crop is looking tattered or mildewed from tough weather); ditto with cucumbers. Bush beans are high on Ken’s list. It’s a great moment for bush types for dry beans, he says, which benefit from generally drier fall weather at their harvest ti

Maybe a half-dozen years ago, Ken and I were speakers on the same program at a big cooperative extension winter conference about halfway between his place in Accord, New York, and mine. The schedule prevented us from attending the other’s presentation, but somehow in the vast conference hall we gravitated to each other, and have been friends since, swapping not just garden visits and lectures at each other’s places, but also swapping seed.The links to the audio podcast of our most recent conversation (detailed below) are the box at the bottom of the story, if you prefer to listen.Browse the 2014 HVSL catalog online now Inquire about Seed Library membership benefits my q&a with ken greeneQ. I think it was 10 years ago–in 2004–that the original version of the Seed Library–got started, when you were working at a traditional book library, yes?  A.  The form and the way that we’re doing things has changed a lot in 10 years, but the heart and the reason th

Entomologist Doug Tallamy and his wife have spent 14 years coaxing back to life 10 acres of what had been farmland for nearly four centuries: achieving more diversity by adding layers to its once-flat botanical architecture. Today 54 species of birds nest on their Delaware property, and acorns the couple planted have become 20-foot trees–so many that now editing is required.Tallamy, professor in the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware-Newark, has been called the “guru of the habitat gardening movement.” He is co-author with Rick Darke of a recent book, “The Livin

That means more and more I’m layering native plants into my landscape, but which ones among the ones tagged “native” do the very best job? You’ve probably heard the word “nativar,” as in a cultivar of a native plant, but what does it mean and how effective are these often showier cultivated varieties at supporting wildlife? I asked Doug Tallamy, professor of entomology at University of Delaware and author of “Bringing Nature Home” and “The Living Landscape,” to help me understand more about this important subject.We talked about what a cultivar change–bigger flowers, maybe, or colorful leaves, or smaller overall stature–actually does to a plant from the point of view of insects. And I learned about a beta version of

It’s a staggering number. That would be a lot of holes to dig, or drill, as the Garden begins to enhance and expand its historic Daffodil Hill display first planted in 1920.What didn’t surprise me was the involvement of Brent Heath, a longtime bulb merchant and daffodil hybridizer himself, who’s acting as an adviser in the ambitious undertaking. Brent, whose grandfather began the family bulb business in 1900, joined me on my public-radio show and podcast from his B