Neelam Patil, M.Ed., MFA, is a Climate Literacy and Science Teacher in the Berkeley public school system.  She was awarded TIME Innovative Teacher of the Year 2022 by TIME Magazine based on her work teaching children they can do something about climate change. Ms. Patil spearheaded the planting of the first Miyawaki schoolyard forests in North America in Berkeley, California.  While teaching her students about deforestation, they wanted to do something immediate and impactful. They demanded,...

Robert Lundgren has a Bachelor of Plant Science and Fine Arts minor from the University of Delaware, and a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania. He worked at landscape architecture firms, Olin and Andropogon and is now at Penn working as the University Landscape Architect within the Facilities & Real Estate Services Division, shepherding a variety of landscape projects on the 300-acre campus arboretum. He is an artist, an award-winning designer, and an avid...

Dave Muffly has been planting trees (especially oaks) in the Bay Area and other California locations for more than 30 years. Dave began his tree career when he received his undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering, at Stanford University. Moving from engineering to ecology, Dave managed native oak plantings at Stanford with the non-profit Magic, in a project that has yielded more than 4,000 established oaks in 40 years. Dave then branched into fruit trees, and urban tree plantings, with...

Daniel Hinkley is a plantsman, author, lecturer, nurseryman, and horticultural consultant.  He earned a B.S. in Horticulture and Horticulture Education from Michigan State University and an M.S. in Urban Horticulture at the University of Washington.  His first garden, Heronswood, near Kingston, Washington is now owned and operated by the Port Gamble SKlallam Tribe and is open to the public throughout the year.  Dan's current garden, Windcliff, is just a few miles from Heronswood. It sits on...

Mr. Al Key has been involved in the green industry for 30 years as an owner of DeepRoot Green Infrastructure, LLC. Together with his partners, he co-invented the SilvaCell® and has received several patents for his inventions which address trees and stormwater management in the urban setting. He has written for a wide range of publications, including the Journal of Arboriculture and Civil Engineering News. As Vice President, he established a representative network nationwide, set up major...

Doug Oster is Pittsburgh’s GardenGuru and is host of the popular radio show The Organic Gardener on KDKA radio every Sunday morning. He writes a gardening column for The Green Voice, the newsletter for Pittsburgh Earth Day. Oster appears on KDKA-TV’s Pittsburgh Today Live as a contributor. He’s also the host of the Talking Trees podcast for the Davey Tree Expert Company along with starring and producing In Doug’s Garden, a weekly television show for CBS/KDKA Streaming. Oster is proud to...

John Grimshaw has been interested in plants his entire life, as both gardener and botanist. He holds a first class degree in botany and a doctorate in the ecology of the forests of Mt Kilimanjaro from Oxford University. His Tanzanian connections remain important, and he’s proud to be an honorary elder of the Maasai community of Lerang’wa, Tanzania. African plants remain an important botanical interest, but he is fascinated by all plants and has grown a huge diversity in his gardens. He has...

Richard McCoy is a 30-plus-year green industry professional, American Green Zone Alliance (AGZA) Northeast Regional Representative and owner of Richard A. McCoy Horticultural Services Inc. established in 1995 and incorporated in 1998 as a conventional landscape company. McCoy’s company began a transition to become one of New Jersey's first completely organic, ecological, and low-impact land care companies in 2005. Currently, McCoy Horticultural offers organic lawn and land care solutions,...

Mark Richardson is the Director of Horticulture for the New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill in Boylston, Massachusetts. He leads a team of horticulture staff and oversees a living plant collection that spans sixteen distinct garden spaces, two conservatories, and over 100 acres of surrounding woodlands and wetlands. He has a passion for ecological horticulture and native plants, and he lectures on various topics including “How to Kill Your Lawn.” He is the co-author of the book Native...

Tim Boland is the Director of the Polly Hill Arboretum on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, West Tisbury, Massachusetts. Tim moved with his wife Laura and two children to the Vineyard in 2002. Before his move to the Vineyard, he was Curator of Horticulture at the Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Illinois.  A plantsman with wide-ranging interests, he is a nationally recognized author, photographer, and lecturer. Tim has an undergraduate degree in Landscape Horticulture and a master’s degree in...

Jason Ross is the Managing Publisher of Wood Central - the world's largest news platform for forest-based news!  Wood Central has more than 170,000 users, with over 75% of users under 45, and 47% under 35! We cover all the news on the Wood Central website, across all media channels that interest our users, with fresh content from across the world updated all day, every day. So whether it's the next generation of mass timber buildings, the carbon power in our lithium batteries, or even the...

Alec Charais is one of the most passionate people in horticulture today. Having grown up on a family farm, his love for plants grew into a rewarding career that today finds him collaborating with breeders and agents across the globe, searching for trees and shrubs that will beautify the outdoor living experience for everyone.   At Bailey Nurseries, a family-owned fifth-generation nursery with growing operations in Minnesota, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, and Georgia, Alec leads the marketing...

Hal and I talk about some of the highlights of the podcast thus far. We think you will enjoy the overview if you have never listened to our podcast before. Below you will find a short list of some of the podcasts that you might want to listen to or relisten to – to see how our guests are making a dent in the climate crisis by their positive actions. We are grateful to all of our guests for sharing their amazing work! And we thank our listeners for tuning in and for all of your wonderful...

Seth Lieberman co-founded Quiet Clean Philly; an all-volunteer organization dedicated to phasing out gas leaf blowers in the City of Philadelphia.  Seth’s activism and articles on the harms of gas leaf blowers have been featured in the Philadelphia Inquirer, WHYY’s Studio 2 and Radio Times, Channel 6 ABC Action News, The Chestnut Hill Local, The Weavers Way Shuttle, Planet Philadelphia, and The Jewish Exponent.  Seth is also active as part of a national network of municipalities seeking...

Ron Kinney is the production manager at Monrovia’s Oregon nursery. Ron has a degree in Ornamental Horticulture from California State Polytechnic University and has been in the industry for more than 30 years. Part of his role as production manager includes responsibility for tree production, both in containers and in-ground field production, at Monrovia’s California and Oregon nursery facilities.     Ron and his wife also manage and operate a 20-acre Hazelnut orchard in...

Ari Miller is the director of design at Hinge Collective in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a public interest design firm that puts community engagement and public participation at the forefront of their practice. As both a landscape architect and arborist, Ari has always advocated for the integration and restoration of natural systems in urban design. Over the course of his 17-year career, Ari has worked as an arborist at Morris Arboretum, as a green roof design specialist at Roofmeadow, and...

Steven Kiiskila is the Crop and Growing Team Manager at Arbutus Grove Nursery, located at the southern tip of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. Each year his team grows 15 million container seedlings composed of 18 or more species, primarily for reforestation throughout Western Canada and the Pacific Northwest. He has been involved in reforestation his entire career; from collecting seeds to organizing and monitoring tree planting programs, although his primary focus has been...

Joe Lamb, founder of the Borneo Project, is a writer, activist, and arborist living in Berkeley, California. His poetry and essays have appeared in Earth Island Journal, The Sun, Caliban, Wind, Orion, and other magazines. His work is also included in the anthologies The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart: A Poetry Anthology, Robert Bly et al editors, and Veterans of War/Veterans of Peace, Maxine Hong Kingston editor.  Joe has degrees in biology, ecology, and film. He has taught biology and...

Mark Krawczyk is an applied ecologist, educator, and grower with a background in permaculture design, agroforestry, natural building, traditional woodworking, and small-scale forestry. He co-owns and operates Keyline Vermont LLC, teaching, designing, and consulting for farmers, homeowners, and homesteaders. Since 2008, Mark has taught over 30 Permaculture Design Courses and been a specialist guest instructor in dozens more. He holds Diplomas in Permaculture Design and Education from the...

Asha-Lé Davis joined the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (PHS) as Trees Specialist in 2021 to pursue her passion for empowering people to grow tree canopy in their communities. Since joining, she has helped grow the PHS Tree Tenders program in Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery counties to over 60 active groups who have planted 3,000+ trees. She recently took on the role of facilitating the educational workshops within the program. Prior to her work at PHS, Asha-Lé was introduced to...

Paul Hickman is the founder of Urban Ashes a pioneering company that advocates for urban wood utilization. The company transforms fallen urban trees into valuable local resources. Urban Ashes designs, develops, and implements urban wood utilization for infrastructure in collaboration with municipalities, local organizations, and businesses to support the local community.   In addition to salvaging urban wood, Paul’s organization provides meaningful employment and business opportunities to...

David Teuschler is the Chief Horticulturist for Devil Mountain Wholesale Nursery. He established the nursery’s propagation program and currently directs the propagation and inventory teams for the company’s sixteen locations across California. David has worked in the nursery industry for three decades, including many years at Valley Crest Tree Company. While there, he served as Plant Health Care Manager for the Specimen Tree Division, Account Manager in the Estate Gardens Division, and, most...

Matthew Aghai is a dedicated reforestation expert, applied scientist, and executive leader at Mast Reforestation. He currently serves as the VP of Research and Development at Mast Reforestation, General Manager of Cal Forest Nurseries, and Advisor to Silvaseed Company. His recent work focuses on scalable solutions for mitigating climate change through the development of new initiatives to modernize the reforestation supply chain and connect reforestation initiatives with natural capital...

Kim Shearer is the Curator of Living Collections and Manager of the Haerther Charitable Trust New Plant Development Program at The Morton Arboretum. In her role as curator, Kim focuses on the development and maintenance of resilient living collections that provide a germplasm resource for researchers and plant breeders seeking to address the issues of climate change; while also working with the conservation community to identify priorities that can be addressed through collections curation...