A Way To Garden

of flowers and us: ‘flora culture,’ with christin geall

Margaret — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 20:11:28 +0000

I’VE BEEN DIGGING into a diverse and compelling collection of essays in a recent book that’s centered on the subject of flowers—everything from topics like their breeding, to which species we covet most of all, to some of the downsides of the massive floral industry, including ubiquitous plastics used in propagation and flower arranging, or how the branding of plants has limited the palette. The author, Christin Geall, calls the book “Flora Culture: How Flowers Shape Our World” an abecedarium (yes that’s a word), since the entries are arranged alphabetically. She also calls it a manifesto. She made time recently to tell us some of the tales within in. Christin Geall’s work focuses on the intersections of nature, culture, and horticulture, and her latest book, “Flora Culture: How Flowers Shape Our World” (affiliate link) is no exception. (Above, a photo she took of a collection of cultivars of tulips and more from her garden.) Plus: Comment in the box near the bottom of the page for a chance to win a copy of “Flora Culture.” Read along as you listen to the June 15, 2026 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to […]

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elise howard’s adventures in native-plant gardening

Margaret — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 16:15:48 +0000

WHEN ELISE HOWARD and I talked on the show in March, her new book, “Plant This, Not That,” was just out. The popular book offers basic guidelines for selecting and using native plants, and specific substitutes for non-natives you may wish to replace. Once spring arrived, Elise Howard got back to making a garden around the weekend home in Western Massachusetts she and her husband bought in 2025—not just deciding what to grow, but thornier topics like tackling invasives and all the rest of what goes into rethinking a landscape with ecology in mind. I wanted to check back in and hear how the implementation of the book’s principles and plant choices is going for her in real time, because Elise is practicing what she preaches. And like for all of us, that means being confronted with some tricky questions to puzzle out along the way. Elise Howard, a literary agent, began learning about natives more than 15 years ago as a volunteer at Riverside Park in New York City. Her book, “Plant This Not That” (affiliate link), offers 200ish examples of swaps for plants that have proven troublesome or just don’t do much in the name of supporting biodiversity, […]

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the hummingbird-red flower connection, with harvard’s patrick mckenzie

Margaret — Sat, 30 May 2026 10:17:25 +0000

IF YOU’VE EVER posted a photo on the massive community science project called iNaturalist and wondered how such contributions get used in research… well, today’s guest is here to tell us about one especially stunning example. It involves 1.6 million such crowd-sourced observations, and the timing of the migration of hummingbirds in Eastern North America. You’ve probably heard it said that hummingbirds love red flowers, and scientists in the Hopkins Lab at the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University took a much closer look at that connection thanks to all that community data, and the use of artificial intelligence to sort through it all. One of the Harvard scientists, a post-doctoral researcher in the plant evolution lab named Patrick McKenzie, part of the team at Dr. Robin Hopkins’s lab, is here to explain what they learned and how. Patrick has written that, “Quiet hours in the sun, meditating with the bugs, plants, and birds, are my inspiration as an evolutionary biologist.” He is always on the lookout for patterns—and then asking himself why each pattern unfolds—like the why of red flowers and hummingbirds, for example. Besides his extensive training in plant evolution, Patrick is a keen birder, and I was glad for […]

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