Garden Ecologies is a podcast series that explores innovative ecological practices at UBC Botanical Garden, and some of the insights and pleasures to be gained from taking a more experimental and open-ended approach to gardening.
Each episode centres around a conversation with a horticulturist who works in a particular area of the garden, exploring their philosophy, the approach they take to gardening, what practices they use, and how their work relates to the garden’s role as an educational space. Listeners will hear about practices such as creating pollinator meadows, chop-and-drop, and living mulches, and the lessons horticulturists have learned in the process of implementing those practices.
Garden Ecologies is hosted by Alison Tucker, a recent graduate in Environmental Science at UBC and work-learn student at UBC Botanical Garden. Join her for a series of thoughtful conversations exploring gardens and gardening from a new perspective.
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Dig Into the Episodes
In this introductory episode, Alison introduces UBC Botanical Garden and discusses the role that the horticulturists who work there have in ensuring that the garden is both ecologically healthy and sustainably maintained. She proposes to listeners that the ecologically beneficial practices they use, can be useful to home gardeners, not only as a way to increase the well-being and sustainability of their gardens, but also as a means of developing a closer connection to nature, and a greater understanding of what is happening in their gardens. She characterizes this kind of gardening as a kind of experimental process that produces new knowledge—knowledge that can be highly nuanced and difficult to communicate, but also enormously enriching for your gardening practice.
Creating Pollinator Meadows with Scott Ferguson. In this episode, Scott describes the process of turning the lawns among the front entrance gardens into pollinator-friendly meadows as well as the difficulties that he encountered and the approach he has taken to dealing with them. He and Alison also discuss the visual “messiness” of meadows, and the aesthetic strategies he has employed in response to people’s expectations about what a botanical garden should look like.
Low input gardening in the David C. Lam Asian Garden, with Andy Hill. In this episode, Andy describes the evolution of maintenance practices in the Asian Garden, and in particular, the ecological benefits of practices such as “chop-and-drop.” He explains how carrying this simple practice to its full expression has the potential to change a garden in profound ways, as well as bring unexpected pleasures to the gardener.
Ecological practices of Attunement in the Food Garden, with Linda Layne. In this wide-ranging episode, Linda describes the numerous ways in which her artistic background provides her with practical and perceptual skills useful to organic gardening. Paying attention to plants, and perceiving the educational opportunites they present at different stages in their lifecycles, enables her to cultivate a garden space that is both visually and ecologically vibrant. She and Alison also discuss practices such as the cultivation of living mulch and letting vegetables flower and go to seed.
Recreating a Garry Oak Ecosystem at UBC Botanical Garden, with Ben Stormes. In this episode, Ben describes his approach to cultivating a garden that authentically reflects a Garry oak ecosystem. He explains some of the specificities of the ecosystem, and how its care necessitates a different approach than other garden areas, as well as some of the strategies that he has employed to discourage the establishment of weedy species not endemic to that ecosystem. He and Alison also discuss the importance of paying attention to seasonal cycles, and being able to work in a way that is responsive to observed conditions.
Conversations That Grow Wild
As the leaves start to change here at UBC Botanical Garden, it feels like a particularly good time to launch our first ever podcast series. Though the episodes were crafted over the spring and summer, its theme is one that lends itself to the slower pace of autumn gardening, when growth is less frantic, crops are being harvested and some of the weeds at least, have dried up or been shaded out.
Garden Ecologies was conceived as an opportunity for listeners to reflect on some of the challenges and learning opportunities that go along with ecological gardening practices. Each episode is based on an interview that host Alison Tucker conducted with Garden horticulturists about the ecologically beneficial practices they employ in different garden areas, asking them to discuss what they had learned in the process, and how those practices expand what is entailed by the work of gardening. Not unlike a walk through the Garden itself, the resulting conversations are thoughtful and meandering, and full of interesting perspectives on familiar plants and garden tasks.
Alison is a recent graduate of UBC’s Environmental Science program and she joined me in May as a work-learn student interested in podcasting. In our planning for this series, we started from the idea that gardening can be considered a form of research. We meant this in two senses. First, in the basic sense that gardening always involves a certain amount of observation, and the refinement of one’s tools, techniques and timing based on the results they generate over time. Second, particularly in botanical gardens, which are spaces of research and education, horticulturists have a responsibility to care for plants in a manner that produces high levels of ecological well-being in a reliable way. As climate change leads to greater fluctuations in temperature, more frequent storms, and recurring drought conditions, UBC Botanical Garden horticulturists must maintain an attitude of continuous study and experimentation in order to ensure the areas under their care continue to thrive.
We put this idea of gardening-as-research to several of the garden’s curators and horticulturists, and then asked them to speak with Alison about what they had learned from their experiments with particular practices and/or the evolving care of specific garden areas. It was fascinating to hear their responses, which were deeply thoughtful and carefully articulated but not always straightforward. Horticultural work is neither simple or entirely systematic—it depends on bodily labour, and draws on a surprising range of practical and perceptual capacities as well as botanical, climatic and ecological knowledge. Consequently, what Botanical Garden horticulturalists have learned in the process of cultivating particular garden areas is highly nuanced and multilayered. For example, in the first episode, which explores the topic of pollinator meadows, Alison and horticulturist Scott Ferguson discuss the difficulty of controlling the way wildflowers and weeds interact, and how ecological practices can produce beneficial effects without being 100% successful. From the perspective of the bees, it is better to try and partially fail, than to remain limited to methods which guarantee controlled outcomes.
Each episode of Garden Ecologies contains useful information about ecological gardening practices, and raises intriguing themes related to the process of implementing them. For example, different ways of listening to plants; the tension between accommodating and challenging aesthetic expectations; and the unexpected pleasures that come from putting nature first. These topics make for a sometimes challenging, but also highly rewarding listen.
I am very proud of Alison’s work on this project, and invite you to give the podcast a listen. The conversations she recorded will give you a new perspective on the work taking place in UBC Botanical Garden, and perhaps also give you some new ideas about what you might be able to do in your own garden—whether it exists in your backyard, on a balcony, or in your imagination (for now). As the climate changes, and so many things seem to be getting worse, there has perhaps never been a better time for taking concrete but thoughtful action to make the world a better place.
Written by:
Erin Despard
Associate Researcher
UBC Botanical Garden
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