radio podcasts Archives - A Way To Garden

garden-design ideas from george schoellkopf of hollister house

margaret — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 18:09:40 +0000

GEORGE SCHOELLKOPF returned from a 1979 trip visiting English gardens inspired to do some garden-making of his own. His canvas was a Northwestern Connecticut hillside and not the Cotswolds, and the home he just purchased wasn’t a grand manor house, but a simple 18th-century farmhouse. Nevertheless, George brought the feel of an English garden to life at the place that became Hollister House, which today is a much-visited destination garden, and also the site of a rich offering of educational programs throughout the season, including the popular Garden Study Weekend early each September. In the gardens at Hollister House in Washington, Conn., he has contrasted the formal and informal, made room-like spaces to explore, and experimented with a wide-ranging palette of plants over the years. George will be talking about the making of Hollister House on Saturday, Sept. 6 at the annual Garden Study Weekend there, along with several other noted speakers on a diversity of topics. Some of the design ideas that went into the garden’s making were what we talked about together recently. Read along as you listen to the July 14, 2025 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to […]

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the genius of crows and ravens, with dr. john marzluff

margaret — Fri, 04 Jul 2025 19:38:39 +0000

A COUPLE OF RAVENS have been shouting at each other across the garden each day this spring-into-summer, and their loud-mouthed antics reminded me of a somewhat less bawdy conversation about crows and ravens that I had a decade ago on the podcast with ornithologist Dr. John Marzluff—a conversation I want to reprise. Possessing large brains for their body size, a knack for social networking that requires no internet connection, and keen powers of observation, crows and ravens are among the big personalities of the bird word. They are also what Dr. Marzluff calls, “black-feathered practitioners of lifelong learning,” and from him I learned about the capacity of their avian brains and the range of things it allows them to do–from the funny to the daring, much of it almost unbelievable. Dr. Marzluff is a renowned ornithologist and urban ecologist, and professor emeritus of wildlife sciences at the University of Washington. He is author a number of books, including ones about his area of particular expertise, the corvids—crows, ravens, jays and their relatives. Around the time that we recorded this conversation, I had just read the book he created in collaboration with illustrator Tony Angell called “Gifts of the Crow: How […]

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beeches under pressure, with bartlett’s beth brantley

margaret — Sat, 28 Jun 2025 13:53:09 +0000

A BIG OLD copper beech tree is a focal point of my garden, and each time I look out the window at it admiringly these days, I feel the same love and gratitude I always have for its grandeur, but also a deepening twinge of worry. These are increasingly tough times for beeches, both European ones like my copper beech, and on a far bigger environmental scale, the precious native beech trees of our Eastern North American forests. I’m joined for this podcast by Beth Brantley of Bartlett Tree Research Laboratories, who’s speaking July 18 on the future of beeches at the annual in-person and virtual Woody Plant Conference at Scott Arboretum at Swarthmore College. Beth, whose doctorate is in plant pathology, is the Northeast Research Scientist with Bartlett Tree Research Laboratories, providing support to Bartlett Tree Experts’ regional offices; conducting arbor culture research; and sharing her knowledge through teaching and presentations. Beech leaf disease, one of the newer challenges facing beech trees today, is a particular interest of Beth’s, and she told me more about that and other pest and pathogen pressures facing these important trees. (Above, striping from beech leaf disease evident in beech leaves; photo from Bartlett […]

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