dreaded norway maples, good groundcovers (including sedges): shade-garden q&a with ken druse

This is the 12th of our monthly Urgent Garden Question Q&A shows, and we thank you for your support—and for your questions most of all. You can keep them coming any time in comments or by email, using the contact form, or at Facebook.

Read along as you listen to the Jan. 1, 2018 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).

Plus: Enter to win a copy of Ken’s newer shade book, “The New Shade Garden,” using the comment box at the very bottom of the page.

Q. As a backdrop for people, you’ve done two shade-gardening books, “The Natural Shade Garden” in 1907, or what year?

A. [Laughter.] That’s right.

Q. Yes, that’s right.

A. 20th century.

Q. No, see I can’t remember the year of “The Natural Shade Garden,” the first one.

A. Is it like ’92? [Laughter.]

Q. Yes, something like that. Then “The New Shade Garden,” which was what, just a year or so ago?

A. Yes, and that’s a totally different book.

Q. Yes, which really takes into account how much has changed on a more global scale, climate-wise and the reality of how we’re gardening today. Just quickly, what got you started on this as sort of a specialty? Did you grow up in a forest or something?

A. No. People think that I’m an expert, and I guess after I finish writing a book, I kind of am an expert; but I think of myself as a journalist, because I usually want to know