After a surprise snow day reschedule, Metro Hort Group hosted its 30th Plant-O-Rama last Thursday morning at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Every year, hundreds of horticultural professionals descend on BBG for this symposium, trade show, and career fair. It is the signature event of Metro Hort, a member-based organization for horticulture professionals in the tri-state area.
This year’s symposium included keynote speeches by celebrated horticulturalist and author James Hitchmough and Green-Wood Cemetery‘s Joseph Charap and Sara Evans, its vice president of horticulture and director of the Living Collections, respectively. The symposium closed out with a panel discussions on the topic of “Gardens: Nurturing Plants, Communities, and People” with leaders from four of New York City’s horticulturally focused non-profit organizations: Andrea Parker of Gowanus Canal Conservancy; Jennifer Beaugrand of The Bronx is Blooming; Lisa Bloodgood of North Brooklyn Parks Alliance; and Tonya Gayle of Green City Force. All of it was wonderfully inspiring.
Here are seven ideas to steal from this annual event:
1. Aim for hyper-diversity.
Horticulturalist, author, and emeritus professor of horticultural ecology at the University of Sheffield James Hitchmough kicked off the day with a lecture titled “Evaluating the Complexity and Diversity of Designed Herbaceous Plantings.” While many American ecological horticulturalists are focused on native plants, Hitchmough is more concerned with creating “hyperdiversity” in gardens to support biodiversity. He believes species-rich landscapes that include both native and non-invasive exotics can look exciting throughout the growing season and can reduce the seasonal hunger gaps for generalist invertebrates.
2. Use color as a “trojan horse.”
Hitchmough’s advice for persuading more people to appreciate a naturalistic planting style is to use color as a “trojan horse.” In his research Hitchmough once grew a meadow in a public park and quizzed parkgoers about their feelings about the naturalistic planting at different stages of blossom. Park goers were much more likely to admire the wilder style when it included an abundance and variety of color. Tip: One of the ways that Hitchmough achieves hyperdiversity and continuous color is by planting what he calls an “understory” to the herbaceous layer of his gardens that blooms earlier in the season.
3. Lean on native “weeds.”
Evans revealed that she often finds herself choosing native plants that are considered “weedy,” like little bluestem, because she’d rather be taming an overenthusiastic native than an invasive outsider like mugwort. It’s also an extremely cost-effective tactic. Elsewhere, Evans is paying attention to volunteer plants: When Clatonia virginiana popped up in a lawn area, they roped it off from mowing and after several years of blooming and setting seed, the spring ephemeral has spread to form drifts.
4. Plant baby trees. Baby old trees.
Much of the beginning of Joseph Charap and Sara Evans’s lecture about their innovative practices at Green-Wood Cemetery was about meeting the cemetery’s canopy loss. Charap and Evans point out that, too often, as older trees reach the end of their lives, there are no other trees in line to take their place (in both domestic and public landscapes). The team at Green-Wood is planting young trees on a massive scale, mostly bareroot because they are cheaper, easier to plant, and more successful than other young trees. They are also babying their oldest trees by creating root protection zones and branch props for aging limbs. It’s a two-pronged approach that any gardener could copy.
5. Plant for the future.
Hitchmough encouraged gardeners to look ahead to climate predictions for 2060 when planning gardens, especially when selecting long-lived perennials and trees. Charap and Evans are thinking much the same way at Green-Wood, where they are engaged in assisted migration for trees whose native range is further south, including Pinus palustris, Quercus virginiana, and Quercus nigra, which have all been planted at Green-Wood.
6. Reconsider clonal shrubs.
The Green-Wood team are also fond of another category of plants that are often considered thuggish in the garden: Clonal shrubs. The native Rosa virginiana, for example, has proved useful along slopes that are more challenging to maintain; sassafras thickets have the advantage of outcompeting weeds. These plants might not be right for a quarter acre, but if you have a large landscape that needs filling, give clonal shrubs another look.
7. Shrub up your rain garden.
The final panel discussion focused on ensuring that urban green spaces remain community-focused and accessible to all, while also providing pathways to meaningful employment. The conversation wasn’t geared to the home gardener, but it seems plant people can’t help but offer useful tips. Our ears perked up when Andrea Parker, executive director of the Gowanus Canal Conservancy, mentioned her organization likes to plant their street-side rain gardens with lots of shrubs. She noted that too often rain gardens are planted with perennials that go dormant in winter leaving the rain gardens looking untended.
See also:
- Plant-O-Rama 2025: 7 Big (And Small) Ideas to Steal From Metro Hort’s Annual Gathering of Garden Pros
- Green-Wood: Rewilding Civic Lawns, Tombs Optional
- Out With the Old: 7 Bad Gardening Habits to Break Now
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