Linking About: Podcasts for gardening to, the loss of nature words and colors ...

My plan for today is to play a little hooky and go with a friend to the last-ditch sale at our favorite plant nursery, with a stop at Hudson Valley Seed Co for some bulbs. Bulbs have never been part of my gardening life, but neither has winter, and I want to plant a few crocus bulbs under the big birch tree out back, where I’ll be able to see them pop up in late winter — just when I think I can’t stand the anticipation of spring for one more minute. So if this plan comes to fruition, I’ll have ample garden chores for this weekend and I’ve rounded up some things to listen to while I’m at it. I’m sharing those below along with some other great reads and links to explore.

I hope you’ll also be puttering around in your (or a) garden somewhere this weekend — if you’re in NYC or the Hudson Valley, I recommend Manitoga! — and wish you happy gardening. See you back here next week—

• Unearthed: The Need for Seeds is a 3-part podcast from and about Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank (the largest wild seed bank on earth), hosted by Cate Blanchett, who I could listen to all day about anything.

• Walk on the Wild Side is another 3-parter — conversations with three voices from the ecological gardening movement about the biodiversity crisis and the gardening world’s response to it — but I think we’ll want to be looking at this one! Currently available is just the first ep, with ecological horticulturalist Rebecca McMackin, who is either everywhere these days or the algorithms of the internet just know I’m into her and follow me around feeding me everything they can find about her. (Or both.)

• Speaking of which, McMackin apparently shadowed Piet Oudolf throughout the design and planting process of the new Calder Gardens in Philly (which is on my Field Trips list) and is doing an online talk about it next Thursday for Gardens Illustrated. (There’s a door charge for that one)

• “Discovering that forests are losing their colours was frightening and revelatory. It felt like we were uncovering a hidden dimension of how species respond to environmental change, a dimension that had remained invisible until then, but is incredibly rich.”
— As forests are cut down, butterflies are losing their colours, The Guardian

• IF YOU ONLY CLICK ONE LINK: ‘Older dictionaries had lots of flower words because children lived in semi-rural environments, but that wasn’t the case anymore, the head of children’s dictionaries at Oxford University Press explained when the words first disappeared. But the anxiety over the loss of nature language points to a bigger question, once posed by the naturalist Robert Michael Pyle: “What happens to a species that loses touch with its habitat?”’
— The words we use to talk about nature are disappearing. Here’s why that matters, Grist

• Where No Trees Grow, Fresh Strawberries All Year Round, The New York Times (Gift Link)

• The plants you need to bring fiery colour into the autumn garden, House & Garden

• And one perfect planted pot for the moment.