Podcast · Leisure & Travel

Plants Always Win

by Sean Patchett and Erin Alladin · English · Leisure & Travel

A podcast where two Ontario gardeners dive down plant-fact rabbit-holes, answer audience questions, interview intriguing guests, and compete to bring you the most interesting stories and information. We care about ecologically sound gardening, strong human communities, and up-to-date science.

New episodes: Every two weeks
Typical length: 54 min
Latest: 27 Sep 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

27 Sep 2026 · 44 min

Ep 51 Our Top Plant ID Apps

These two free plant ID tools can help you level up your observation and identification skills, spot invasive species, and even engage in citizen science to track what is spreading in your area. If you garden, hike, or just want to know whether that weird thing in your yard is a native, a weed, or a problem waiting to happen, this episode is for you. Sean sends Erin to do a trial run of the apps he actually trusts, including the built-in photo matching tools on smart devices, iNaturalist, and EDD Maps. They explain why a confident-looking app result is not the same as a correct…

Play episodeWhatsApp Download

Earlier episodes 29 most recent

E50 · 18 Aug 2026 · 54 min
Ep. 50 Midsummer Cleanup: Rescue Your Neglected Garden
Reclaim your neglected garden! Sean and Erin share eleven steps to overcome the overwhelm and start your own midsummer garden cleanup, even when you’re short on time and energy.
E49 · 10 Jul 2026 · 36 min
Ep. 49 Community Urban Permaculture with Patrick Tohill
When a city dweller with no gardening experience gets pulled into leadership for a communal permaculture project, he starts using all his spare time to grow food and grow community in Toronto’s east end. This is Patrick Tohill co-founder of Garden@Kimbourne Community Permaculture Project.
E48 · 10 Jun 2026 · 59 min
Plants Are for Everyone with Jesse Thorn
Sean talks with Jesse Thorn about how gardening in LA compares to gardening in Ontario; about produce exchange and community food distribution organizations; and about access to green space, including majestic sequoia trees. The two of them even step into the roles of internet judge and expert witness to settle an age-old question: is a palm tree really a tree?
30 Apr 2026
Ep. 47 Are You Starting Your Spring Garden Right?
Spring is tiptoeing in and we want to set you up for the smoothest garden year ever. This week we’re recording live on location in Erin’s garden and examining what tasks she has already done, what’s next on the list, and what pressures to let go of. (Remember: don’t let perfect be the enemy of good!) The first order of business as winter ends is to prune woody fruit-producing perennials. We chat about currants, apples, and grapes—yes, grapes in zone 4b. Naturally that leads into propagation: cuttings, mound layering, and even air layering. Next we talk seed starting indoors and out and the…
E46 · 14 Apr 2026 · 42 min
Ep. 46 Ontario One Call
Are you breaking the law every time you plant a shrub? This week we welcome Ian Simpson, VP of Communications and Corporate Affairs at Ontario One Call. That’s the public safety administrative authority that makes sure your gardening project doesn’t end in a damaged gas line or ruptured water main. You’ll find Call Before You Dig services across Canada and the United States (search “One Call” for your province or “811” for your state), but Ontario is the one place where that call—or that click—is required by law. If you’re breaking ground, even by an inch or two, even out in the country,…
E45 · 27 Mar 2026 · 42 min
Ep. 45 Hydrangea Happiness with C.L. Fornari
For some of us, happiness is a hydrangea in full, glorious bloom. And if you’re not yet well acquainted with these flowering shrubs, who better to learn from than The Garden Lady herself? C.L. Fornari is the author of the upcoming 2026 book Hydrangea Happiness: Planting, Pruning and Blooming, among many others . She’s also a well-known gardening radio host and podcaster, appearing over the years as a contributor on NPR’s The Cultivated Gardener , as host of GardenLine on WXTK, as co-host of the podcast Plantrama , and today as the eponymous host of The Garden Lady on several NPR stations. We…
E44 · 16 Mar 2026 · 47 min
Ep. 44 Internet Plant Science with Dr. Vikram Baliga
The internet is a minefield of questionable plant hacks, rage bait, and—sigh—banana water. Good thing The Plant Prof is here to shed some science on the matter. Vikram Baliga, a.k.a. The Plant Prof, is a professor of horticulture and the host of the podcasts Planthropology and Deep Roots . He is that rare being in the world of science: an academic who has also honed the skill of communicating with non-academic audiences. As he says, public taxes pay for science research. The public deserves good, true scientific information. Today’s conversation ranges across education and misinformation in…
E43 · 10 Feb 2026 · 1 hr 11 min
Ep. 43 Rosemary vs. Lavender
In this versus episode, we bring you two of the nicest-smelling and slowest-growing plants in the garden. Sean gets us started with rosemary, which is known to science as Salvia rosemarinus (though some botanists may be surprised to hear that!). We learn how to grow this Mediterranean plant and how to help it handle a northern winter, even if that means bringing it indoors. One option, of course, is to take softwood or hardwood cuttings and root them for next year, and Sean gives us a crash course in doing that before moving on to the fascinating research being done on rosemary and…
20 Jan 2026 · 1 hr
Ep. 42 Landscape Design Fails
As the 2026 growing season waves tantalizingly on the far horizon, we’d like to help you prepare for a disaster-free garden. To do that, we’re sharing a few key landscape design principles…along with a whole heap of stories about landscape design fails. No garden is truly no-maintenance, but while ordinary weeding and pruning is one thing, fighting endlessly against the effects of a bad design decision is something else entirely. We’re talking about hardscaping installed in the wrong spot, poorly selected plants, ever-spreading invasive species…The list goes on. Sean shares some zingers from…
E41 · 19 Dec 2025 · 56 min
Ep. 41 Thoughtful Foraging with Gabrielle Cerberville
If you’re looking to build a relationship with the land that feeds you, you can start by embracing the wisdom of the Internet’s Mushroom Auntie. Gabrielle Cerberville, a.k.a. your new Mushroom Auntie, a.k.a. The Chaotic Forager, has spent her academic life collecting degrees in music. If you catch her in the forest, however, she’s more likely to be collecting mushrooms and plants for cooking and preservation. She’s known online as a mycologist and foraging educator, and—more recently—as the author of the book Gathered: On Foraging, Feasting, and the Seasonal Life – An Illustrated Adventure…
2 Dec 2025 · 47 min
Ep. 40 Nut Trees and Connection with Elspeth Hay
Feeding humanity doesn’t need to come at the Earth’s expense. Elspeth Hay is here to talk nut trees, ecosystems, and humans as keystone species. In 2019, Elspeth was a local food writer who felt despondent about humans’ need to tear up nature in order to feed ourselves. When she discovered that acorns are edible—that they had, in fact, once been a central pillar of an abundant North American food system—she was electrified. This week she joins Erin to talk about the book that resulted from her all-consuming research into that subject, Feed Us with Trees: Nut Trees and the Future of Food . If…
E39 · 25 Nov 2025 · 56 min
Ep. 39 Plant Evolution: Kid Q&A
Kids ask the best nature questions! For this episode, a class of elementary-school students prepared a list of questions about plants for Sean and Erin to answer. The best part, of course, is that these are questions few adults would think to ask, and they let our hosts explore all sorts of fascinating topics. How did plants come to be the way they are? Why did they evolve to have roots (or no roots!) and leaves and fruit? What makes one tree grow big leaves while another one has narrow needles? We talk evolutionary niches, the tree of life, food chains, and even how plants move water and…
31 Oct 2025 · 50 min
Ep. 38 Little Shop of Horrors
This episode is what happens when two people’s loves for venus flytraps, spooky season, and movie musicals collide. Yes, we’re doing nerdy Halloween horticulture by analyzing the representation of carnivorous plants in the classic musical Little Shop of Horrors— specifically the 1986 movie version. If you haven’t seen the show, don’t worry; we set the stage for you and save any late-story spoilers for the very end. For the most part, we’re interested in one question: based on our knowledge of real-world carnivorous plants, how reasonable were Seymore’s guesses when he first tried to care for…
8 Oct 2025 · 53 min
Ep. 37 Sunflower vs. Sunchoke
It’s the versus episode they said couldn’t be done.
30 Sep 2025 · 41 min
Ep. 36 Community Gardens with Jessica Letteer
This episode is for anyone who has ever daydreamed about starting a community garden and for anyone who needs the boost of a good-news gardening story.
23 Sep 2025 · 44 min
Ep. 35 Bat Ecology with Dr. Dana Green Part 2
Dr. Dana Green, a.k.a. "The Eyepatch Biologist" is back for part two! This free-flying conversation just couldn't be contained to a single hour.We plunge straight in this week with an urgent question: how do bats relieve themselves without dribbling on their own heads? From there the facts come thick and fast: microchiroptera (our local insect-eating, echolocating bats) vs. megachiroptera (bigger fruit-eating bats from other climates that don't echolocate); the truth about bats' sense of sight; and the unexpected songs of silverhair bats. Dana shares how to attract bats to our properties…
16 Sep 2025 · 55 min
Ep. 34 Bat Ecology with Dr. Dana Green, Part 1
Dr. Dana Green is a bat expert who is known online as The Eyepatch Biologist. As a science communicator, a pun connoisseur, and a woman who knows a good joke when it's staring her in the face, she says of herself, "What a wonderful bat advocate to go half blind."In Dana's interview with Sean, she tells us about her master's degree studying grasshopper mice (predatory, solitary, highly aggressive mice that howl) and her PhD in bat ecology, which she completed at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan. We learn about echolocation and other bat chatter, fact check Hank Green's viral video (Do…
9 Sep 2025 · 58 min
Ep. 33 Establishing Apples, Eradicating Horsetail & Fertilizing Flowers
Our gardens are winding down for the season, but our audience is putting on a growth spurt! This crop of new listeners has seeded our Q&A inbox with a flush of questions, which we love to see. And while we’d normally answer these at the end of our versus episodes, we currently have a backlog of recorded episodes and we don’t want folks to have to wait for answers. That means it’s time for another Q&A special!We start with questions inspired by Sean’s recent video about an apple tree sold with its graft and root flare buried well below soil level. If you want to understand how fruit trees are…
2 Sep 2025 · 41 min
Ep. 32 Home Composting with Delaina Arnold
Do you make compost at home? Do you delight in the experience? If your answer to either of those questions is no, this week’s guest is here to help.Delaina Arnold is the community programs manager with the Georgian Bay Mnidoo Gamii Biosphere, a UNESCO-designated “ecologically significant” landscape where people are striving to live in balance with nature. As part of that striving, the Biosphere launched a pilot project in 2025 to help people learn about home composting, to get started doing it themselves, and to troubleshoot any problems. Now we get to benefit from all that education, as…
26 Aug 2025 · 55 min
Ep. 31: Joyful Gardening with Chris Paul Rainbows
“I am very enthusiastic about [gardening]. I don't know if I'm that great at it. I'm not very knowledgeable. I can't really answer any of your garden questions, but I love getting my hands dirty.”Gardening is for everyone! We’ve interviewed plenty of experts on Plants Always Win who’ve mastered everything from groundcovers to home hydroponics, but every so often we like to bring you a less experienced guest who is already skilled in one crucial area: gardening with joyful abandon.In their day job, Chris Paul Rainbows is a speaker and strategist who helps organizations create spaces where…
12 Aug 2025 · 57 min
Ep. 30: Sassafras vs. Cola Nut
Are you finding yourself thirsty for a little soda pop this summer? How about for some botanical knowledge about soda pop’s history?In this plant face-off episode, Erin and Sean put some fizz into the competition with the plants behind two iconic flavours: the cola nut that gives cola its kick, and the sassafras that puts the root in root beer. Or, at least, the plants that did serve those roles before the advent of artificial flavouring. Erin takes the first swig with a dramatic overview of the North American Sassafras albidum, an aromatic tree with a long history of use for medicine, food,…
17 Jul 2025 · 40 min
Ep. 29 Climate Action with Lauren Saville
This week we’re celebrating the difference that can be made when a regional government supports its people and businesses in taking climate action. Get inspired by impactful local initiati...
25 Jun 2025 · 1 hr 16 min
Ep. 28 Cultivation Activism with Lorraine Johnson
This week we talk about the activism embedded in native plant gardening and the creation of pollinator habitat with Lorraine Johnson.Lorraine styles herself as a “cultivation activist”. It’s a term she came up with to describe the common purpose at the intersection of everything she does, from writing books to giving talks to supporting the fight against harmful grass and weed bylaws. This episode is for anyone who:* feels guilt or overwhelm when they think about gardening, native plants, and invasive species* feels anger or frustration about garden centres promoting invasive plants* needs…
17 Jun 2025 · 49 min
Ep. 27 Tomato vs. Pepper Part II
It’s Part II of the nightshade party!Sean and Erin plunge back in with tomatoes and peppers, covering cultural hi...
12 Jun 2025 · 1 hr 1 min
Ep. 26 Tomato vs. Pepper Part I
In this shady plant face-off, Sean and Erin explore two of the gardening world’s favourite nightshades: tomatoes and peppers. Both are members of the family Solanaceae, and have plenty of traits in common, so rather than splitting the episode in half our two hosts try a livelier approach this week, passing the stage back and forth to talk about their chosen plant’s botany, etymology, growing habits, and pest and disease management. Prepare for a wealth of interesting information (did you know the Spanish word for tomato references an old belief in their aphrodisiac qualities?) alongside…
4 Jun 2025 · 56 min
Ep. 25 Smart Hydroponics with Jennifer Holston
Smart hydroponics pioneer Jennifer Holston grows a living pantry in her home through all seasons. And so can you. When most of us hear the word “hydroponics,” we picture sprawling operations in a warehouse or basement, possibly constructed from home-drilled PVC pipes and buckets. We might also have a very specific idea of the kind of plants that are grown hydroponically. But over the last decade, attractive, compact, and easy-to-use home-scale hydroponic systems have become available. This week’s guest, Jennifer Holston, was an early adopter and she uses her bookshelf-sized indoor garden to…
27 May 2025 · 1 hr 4 min
Ep. 24 Serviceberry vs. Haskap
We’re berry excited for this extra delicious plant face-off. In this week’s shrub showdown, our hosts go head to ...
20 May 2025 · 1 hr 1 min
Ep. 23 Life, Death, & Master Gardeners with Cole Imperi
Cole Imperi is known for her trailblazing work in thanatology, the study of death, dying and grief. But she’s also a master gardener: someone who helps others learn how to make life flouri...
14 May 2025 · 46 min
Ep. 22 No Mow May…Debunked?
Every spring, the gardening and sustainability side of the internet explodes with posts: Practice No Mow May! Let your lawn bloom! Support pollinators! But does a lawn and garden initiative begun in the UK have the same environmental impact in North America? That’s the subject under scrutiny in this episode as we examine whether well-meaning horticulture advice can be exported around the world. This week, Sean comes armed with research while Erin is equipped with curiosity. Is practicing No Mow May in Ontario helpful, harmful, or neutral? Does a lawn full of imported dandelions somehow…

About Plants Always Win

Plants Always Win is a English leisure & travel podcast from Sean Patchett and Erin Alladin. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: Sean Patchett and Erin Alladin
Language: English
Category: Leisure & Travel
New episodes: Every two weeks
Typical length: 54 min
Latest episode: 27 Sep 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1785543002

RSS feed Apple Podcasts

More English leisure & travel

Take it with you

The Melo app keeps playing with the screen off, works in the car and on your watch, wakes you to your station, and browses the whole catalogue offline. Free, no ads, no account.