Since starting to produce this podcast in November 2015 all the way through May 2023, it’s been a wonderful ride to learn about gardening from so many great people. I’ve truly enjoyed interviewing and getting to know so many folks through this podcast, but all good things must end. And it is time to put this podcast into the compost heap. It’s time to cultivate some other projects I’ve got going and maybe some day there will be another incarnation of The Garden Path Podcast. I truly thank everyone who has listened or been interviewed over the years!
You can still find me writing about gardening at the In the Weeds newsletter:

Thanks for the wonderful gardening conversations!

Today’s episode features a return guest, Nancy Lawson! Nancy was first on the podcast in November of 2017 to talk about her book The Humane Gardener. Nancy’s book said so much of what I was already thinking and really pushed me to think harder when it came to looking at the garden landscape as an ecosystem. When I found out she was writing a new book I was ecstatic. That new book is Wildscape: Trilling Chipmunks, Beckoning Blooms, Salty Butterflies, and other Sensory Wonders of Nature. The book is such a delight and I hope it will have you wandering around your yard with new eyes, and ears and nose and mouth—taste? Lol anyway, I hope it will make you approach your landscape in a different way. We have a delightful conversation about the book, as well as writing the book during the height of the pandemic. Talking with Nancy is always wonderful and there are so many things to learn from her!

I am excited to bring this episode to y’all, an interview with Amy Martin, a writer and researcher from Dallas who is currently compiling a biography on Texas environmentalist Ned Fritz. Now, you may be asking, who the heck is Ned Fritz? And I was right there with you up until last spring when I read his book Realms of Beauty about the Wilderness Areas of east Texas. His writing cracked me up and was so relevant to today that I was sad to see that Ned had passed away in 2008 after a half century or more of environmental activism in Texas for places and things you may or may not have heard of. I heard Amy Martin give a talk to the Dallas Sierra Club back in January and knew I needed to interview her for the podcast. More people need to know about Ned Fritz and what he stood for, how much he fought to protect Texas land and water and why we need more Ned Fritz’s more than ever.

Way back in 2018 I had today’s guest on to talk about his book, A New Garden Ethic. Today Benjamin Vogt is back on the podcast to talk about his latest book, Prairie Up: An Introduction to Natural Garden Design. A lot has changed in the last five years in regard to native plants in gardening and I think Benjamin has driven some of that change. Prairie Up is the garden design book that many of us have been looking for. An approach for native plant enthusiasts that is both attainable and manageable, contrary to so many other beautiful garden design books out there. As you’ll hear me say in the interview, the book blew away my expectations and I think even the most experienced native plant gardener will be able to find something to take away from both the book and the conversation.

Today’s guest is Michelle Lay, a native plant gardener in Austin, Texas. Michelle and I have been Instagram acquaintances and friends over the last few years and I’ve enjoyed seeing her central Texas native plant garden evolve. Michelle has the same passion for conversation and protection of the environment that I do and we talk a lot about that in our conversation. We chat native plants, the Native Plant Society of Texas, the sadness that comes with seeing our open spaces bulldozed for development, and Michelle’s own recent experiences rescuing plants from a development. We pack a lot into the episode and there’s a lot to learn! Let’s hear what Michelle has to say!

Happy 2023 everyone! Spring is trying to spring here but like every year in Texas we brace ourselves for a surprise freeze in February, so I’m not getting too antsy about the growing season yet. But almost! Today’s episode is a fun one and a little bit different than how I normally conduct a podcast. I was feeling overwhelmed from some other projects and not in the mood for my usual interview style episodes and opted to be a bit more relaxed with this one with an Instagram friend, Bonnie Semmling. You may know her over there as @Bonntany and she always shares wonderful botanical finds from her home state of New Jersey and anywhere else she travels. I’ve learned a lot from her over the last couple of years and know I will be learning a lot from her in the coming years! Bonnie works in an herbarium and it’s a subject I’m fascinated by and so we talk about that, how she got into botany as a career, and her recent travels to Texas. We got deep a few times on issues like plant blindness, conservation measures in both states and throughout the country…it’s a great conversation and I had fun chatting with Bonnie! Plus, I now have some plants to go look for!

I’m a voracious reader and read anything from paper books to kindle books and listen to my share of audiobooks. Rather than list the abundant garden and natural history books I read this year I summarized my two favorites in this podcast: Saving the Wild South by Georgann Eubanks and The Natural Habitat Garden by Ken Druse. One is a classic that is still very relevant and the other is new but is an instant classic. Let me know what you read this year!
Show Notes:
+Georgann Eubanks website
+Ken Druse website
+On Texas Nature Substack
+The Garden Path Podcast Substack

This episode is more or less a recording of a blog post I wrote a few weeks ago regarding the stark divide in native plant media versus what is available for sale in the nursery industry. A summary of the issues...The Issues at Hand

• A diverse and locally native plant landscape for the home gardener is not easily within reach to the majority of home gardeners.
• Nursery stock to create a diverse home landscape for gardeners on the scale touted by native plant enthusiasts doesn’t exist and is consistently unsupported by the horticulture industry.
• Most homeowners will never delve into gardening, native or otherwise.
• Gardeners should be intensely focusing on preserving large, existing tracts of undeveloped land within the suburban/urban/wildland interfaces to counteract the shortcomings of native plant home landscapes.

Today’s episode is one I have been wanting to make for quite a while and I’m glad it finally happened, an interview with Leah Churner and Colleen Dieter from The Horticulturati, a garden and horticulture podcast based out of Austin, Texas. Leah and Colleen are both garden designers with extensive knowledge of the garden industry in and around Austin and produce what I find to be the most delightful garden podcast out there! It certainly isn’t a podcast only for gardeners in Austin or Texas because Leah and Colleen tackle issues in the industry from their most recent episode about problematic common plant names to Ammonium Nitrate and well beyond all of those topics. They make you think, laugh, and inquire more about the gardening life you lead. This is a longer episode than my usual podcast episodes but I hope that it gives you great insight into who each of them are and entices you to check out their podcast and hit subscribe.

Today's guest is Haeley Giambalvo from San Antonio, Texas. You may know her on Instagram as the person behind Native Backyards, the highly informative account that features native plants and native plant gardening advice focused on Texas. I have loved what Haeley has been doing since the very start of her account and have admired the effort she has put into the outreach and advocacy for native plants on her account. In addition, she has a website that delves into all this even more, complete with resources on where to find native plants in your region. In our conversation we talk about her entry to gardening with native plants, how and why she began the Native Backyards platform, and some of her favorite native plants to garden with. There’s a lot to learn from Haeley!

So, what is nature journaling you ask? It sounds simple, and it is—but there are many variations, but the most important part is to make it your own. In a blog post from the International Nature Journaling Week, also created by Bethann Burton, “Nature journaling is the practice of drawing or writing in response to nature”. In other words, we sit, observe, draw, and make notes on what we experience in nature. There are so many things to tell you about nature journaling so I will start by talking about my own nature journaling this last year and then delve into the who’s who of nature journaling and how you can get started on your own.

Welcome back to a new season of the podcast!

A few weekends ago I trekked to the Big Thicket to volunteer with the Watson Rare Native Plant Preserve. It was an excellent experience and I share some thoughts on my drive and from East Texas in this episode.

Jimmy Fike, an Arizona based artist who recently spent more than a decade photographing North America’s Edible and Medicinal Plants, produced gorgeous photographic prints of his subjects and turned them into a beautiful coffee table book. The prints are meticulously photographed, designed to allow the viewer to get an up close and personal view of the species displayed, supplemented with short narratives about each plant. In our conversation, Jimmy talks about how the project began and evolved through the decade+ of working on the project, his favorite species encountered, and how he photographs and works with each specimen.

A lot is going on in the spring garden: penstemons, pitcher plants, and more flower gardening! A short update on the garden is in this episode!

We're back in Florida today with my guest Kenny Coogan. Kenny is the author of the soon to be released book FLORIDA’S CARNIVOROUS PLANTS: UNDERSTANDING, IDENTIFYING, AND CULTIVATING THE STATE’S NATIVE SPECIES, Education Director of the International Carnivorous Plant Society and also sells carnivorous plants at some of Florida's various markets as well as occasionally online. Now, I have a fairly basic understanding of carnivorous plants and how they work but Kenny and his book take it to another level, bringing the knowledge straight to the beginning grower but also making it interesting enough for those who may already be growing or familiar with some of North America's or Florida's carnivorous plant species. While we talk about the book itself we branch out into other species that can be found worldwide as well as talk about the International Carnivorous Plant Society, the upcoming World Carnivorous Plant Day and it's associated photo contest. There's a lot packed into the episode and you'll have to be sure to check out the show notes for the episode for a discount code on your pre-order of Kenny's book as well as where to submit your own photos for the World Carnivorous plant day photo contest.

To get a sense of Florida and to begin that topic, today’s episode with Valerie Anderson, Director of Communications and Programming with the Florida Native Plant Society. You may have heard Valerie on a previous episode I’ve released on the podcast called Saving Split Oak Forest.

Sara Dykman embarked on her Butterbike Tour, leaving Mexico and following the monarch migration to Canada and back to Mexico in 2017.

Alright, we are finally back with some interviews for the next several episodes and I'm kicking off with a previous guest who is returning to the podcast, Christy Wilhelmi! You may know her from her Gardennerd podcast, or her Gardenerd website but if you don't, Christy is a gardener, garden coach, and author based in southern California. Over the last year she's had two new books debut, the first Grown Your Own Mini-Fruit Garden published by Cool Springs Press, and her latest, debuting this last week, Garden Variety, a fiction book published by William Morrow & Company. While I enjoyed her fruit garden books, a wonderful how-to for small space and home gardeners, I really enjoyed her fiction book and it was a kick to see her branch out and into the world of fiction. I'm an avid reader and just lapped the book up over the winter holidays! If you are at all interested in fruit gardening or gardening fiction, keep listening and hear what Christy has to say.

Green Cliff Brake fern, Cheilanthes viridis, is becoming a problem in the Houston area, or likely became a problem several years ago and folks are just now noticing. And the Jorō spider is a novel species to Georgia and several areas in the SE.