My New Project — The Plants We Eat

By Jeff Gillman

The logo!

I love stories, and my favorite stories, as you might guess, are true stories about plants. One of the things that I’m best known for here at the UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens is telling random stories about some odd tidbit or another to students trapped in my classes or visitors locked into garden tours, but recently I found a new way to share my collection of those eclectic plant stories: Podcasting. Not only do I get to talk about all the things that I love to talk about, only those people who really want to hear about them have to listen. It’s a win-win!

Recording the podcast!

From apples and artichokes to digitalis and peyote, our world is full of amazing plants that we interact with on a daily basis. This greenery can sustain us, intoxicate us, cure us of disease, and even kill us.

I have had the opportunity to read about and work with an incredible variety of plants, but the ones that I find most fascinating are those we ingest as food or medicine, and that’s what this podcast is about. From toxic honey made from Rhododendrons to the incredible photosynthetic efficiency of sugar cane and the natural genetic modification of sweet potatoes there are an incredible number of stories that the plants around us have to tell, but if you’re just interested in growing these plants then we have you covered there too. I am doing these podcasts with a friend of mine, Cindy Proctor, who loves to talk about how to grow these plants, so there’s plenty of that in the podcast as well.

Rhododendron from which Mad Honey is made

So to make a long story short, we would love it if you would take the time to listen to our podcast. You can find it on the podcast app on your iPhone or on Sound Cloud, or here at the Botanical Gardens website.

And since we’re new at this we would love it if you would let us know what you think. You can comment on the blog post here, or on the post on Facebook, or feel free to write to me at jgillman@uncc.edu.

Published by

Linda Chalker-Scott

Dr. Linda Chalker-Scott has a Ph.D. in Horticulture from Oregon State University and is an ISA certified arborist and an ASCA consulting arborist. She is WSU’s Extension Urban Horticulturist and a Professor in the Department of Horticulture, and holds two affiliate associate professor positions at University of Washington. She conducts research in applied plant and soil sciences, publishing the results in scientific articles and university Extension fact sheets. Linda also is the award-winning author of five books: the horticultural myth-busting The Informed Gardener (2008) and The Informed Gardener Blooms Again (2010) from the University of Washington Press and Sustainable Landscapes and Gardens: Good Science – Practical Application (2009) from GFG Publishing, Inc., and How Plants Work: The Science Behind the Amazing Things Plants Do from Timber Press (2015). Her latest effort is an update of Art Kruckeberg’s Gardening with Native Plants of the Pacific Northwest from UW Press (2019). In 2018 Linda was featured in a video series – The Science of Gardening – produced by The Great Courses. She also is one of the Garden Professors – a group of academic colleagues who educate and entertain through their blog and Facebook pages. Linda’s contribution to gardeners was recognized in 2017 by the Association for Garden Communicators as the first recipient of their Cynthia Westcott Scientific Writing Award. "The Garden Professors" Facebook page - www.facebook.com/TheGardenProfessors "The Garden Professors" Facebook group - www.facebook.com/groups/GardenProfessors Books: http://www.sustainablelandscapesandgardens.com

3 thoughts on “My New Project — The Plants We Eat”

  1. Today I listened to WPR and was introduced to Jef Gillman and the world of plants and discussion of organic etc.Later I went to his and Ciny Proctor’s podcast. I am totally captivated by the podcast discussions.

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