All Scheduled Programs
What’s on the horizon:
Ecology-based Landscape Practice
A 7-part Virtual Intensive Course for Professionals
Live July - August, 2025
Individual Sessions:
Landscaping with Nature:
Turning Battles into Partnerships
A 4-part Virtual Intensive Course for Home Gardeners
Live September - October 2025
Individual Sessions:
Meadow Making:
A Brains Over Brawn Approach
A 4-part Virtual Intensive Course for Home Gardeners
Live September - October 2025
Individual Sessions:
NDAL In the Field:
Upcoming In-Person Program for Professionals
Free Q&As!
Garden Chats with Larry
Get your questions answered by Landscape Designer Larry Weaner. Ask anything related to ecology-based gardening and landscape practice.
Where: Instagram Live
When:
Friday, August 8th, 2025
Friday, November 7th, 2025
6:00 - 6:30 PM ET
Meadow Making:
A Brains Over Brawn Approach
A 4-part Virtual Intensive Course for Home Gardeners
RECORDINGS
Previously Held:
(Recordings available for 3 months from live date)
Landscaping with Nature:
Turning Battles into Partnerships
A 4-part Virtual Intensive Course for Home Gardeners
RECORDINGS
Previously Held:
(Recordings available for 3 months from live date)
Ecology-based Landscape Practice
A 7-part Virtual Intensive Course for Professionals
RECORDINGS
Individual Sessions:
(registration open and recordings viewable for 3 months)
Native Perennials: Flower Border or Functional Ground Layer (Spring Virtual Series)
Larry Weaner, FAPLD
Perennials have long been planted for the beauty of their flowers, but in the wild they are a functioning part of virtually every ecological system. Their roots hold soil in place. Their seeds provide food for birds. Their flowers provide crucial nectar for pollinators while their stems and leaves host insect eggs (including declining Monarch butterflies). Finally, when planted as a dense ground layer, they can reduce the most time-consuming aspect of garden maintenance....weeding. In this presentation you will learn how to use seed and live plants to create perennial compositions that enhance the aesthetic, practical, and ecological character of any landscape.
Category: Home Gardener & Professional
Fee: $35
Lawn to Meadow: Transition with a “Light Touch” (Spring Virtual Series)
Larry Weaner, FAPLD and Sara Weaner Cooper
No chemical use, no hauling, no digging, no smothering - no early-stage ugly phase.
Sounds too good to be true.
Yet by gradually applying a series of light touch actions, you can achieve this organic transition without breaking your back, sparking ecological angst, or infuriating your neighbors. These actions can include timed mowing, selective height cutting, pH manipulation, and organic herbicide application.
In this session, Sara will discuss her lawn to meadow conversion (featured in The New York Times, 2024), including 2025 updates and plans, illustrating a homeowner’s perspective. Larry will explore case studies exemplifying the technical underpinnings behind this approach, from a landscape designer's perspective. This brains over brawn approach can transform the experience of creating residential meadows from daunting to uplifting.
Category: Home Gardener & Professional
Fee: $28
Breaking the Grass Ceiling (Part Two): A Historic Cemetery Reckons with its Lawn Legacy (Spring Virtual Series)
Sara Evans and Jenna Webster
Rural cemeteries were among the first public landscapes in America to adopt expansive formal lawns, a legacy with far-reaching ecological, social, and financial consequences. Today, in the face of the climate crisis, The Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn is working to adopt compelling alternatives, from less resource-intensive grass species to testing strategies for low native meadows. Learn the benefits and challenges of these approaches, understand what it takes to steward these dynamic plantings in a cultural landscape, and see how they could have applications beyond cemeteries.
Fee: $42
Breaking the Grass Ceiling (Part 1): Native Lawns and Low Growing Meadows (Spring Virtual Series)
Dave Kaplow
How do we create true native habitat that is compatible with an urban and suburban environment? This lecture focuses on meadow/lawn hybrids, and how they can be used to create natural areas that are also accessible for frequent human use. Dave will emphasize the use of both cool and warm season grasses as the foundational species, as well as the broad leaf perennials that can visually and ecologically complement them. Illustrated applications will range from native lawn on residential properties, to the open areas surrounding business plazas and shopping areas, to the fields and meadows of public parks.
Fee: $42
Into the Weeds: How to Garden Like a Forager (Spring Virtual Series)
Tama Matsuoka Wong
Many a gardener, flower lover, or backyard farmer hates that most dreaded of garden chores: getting rid of weeds. Tama Matsuoka Wong offers a new approach to many plants deemed undesirable: manage them, turn them into delicious food, teas, structures....in other words reap their abundance. A self-described "failed" gardener turned garden contrarian, she looks to cues as to what plants grow wild naturally in situ and, besides that, sells many pounds of invasive weeds to markets and chefs. On a more personal level, she will share with you the "why" of her latest book Into the Weeds: How to Garden Like a Forager (Hardie Grant North America 2024): why weeds sit at the juncture of our food, environment and health, and how to use the most common weeds that grow around you.
Fee: $42
Prescribed Fire as a Foundational Landscape Tool: From Campus to Residence (Spring Virtual Series)
Native Grasslands Restoration: Is Fire Needed?
Bert Harris, Ph.D.
Burning on the Run: Prescribed Burns in the Small Scale Landscape
Fritz Reuter
Fee: $58
Ecology and Beauty: DIY Strategies for Creating a Landscape Full of Life (Spring Virtual Series)
Sarah F. Jayne
As the biodiversity crisis deepens, what you do matters. If you are eager to boost the ecological value of your own landscape or a community space, this fast-paced, practical workshop is for you. We’ll look at beginner to advanced strategies and resources for protecting the wildlife on your property; making room for ecologically beneficial plants; choosing the specific plants that your local caterpillars, native bees, and birds require for survival; procuring plants on a budget; and designing and caring for attractive plantings with wildlife in mind, all while ensuring community acceptance for a more natural landscape. Along with a detailed handout, you’ll come away inspired and empowered to fill your landscape with life.
Fee: $42
At Home With Nature: Beauty, Ecology, and Experience
Larry Weaner, FAPLD
Even on the smallest residential property, sharing garden decisions with nature changes everything. In this eye opening presentation, Larry will illustrate how an ecology-based, brains-over-brawn approach to home landscaping can reduce management needs, increase desirable wildlife habitat, and enhance the visual and intellectual experience of being in your yard.
FREE SESSION