Get Growing Blog
Connecting people with the wonder, beauty, and value of trees and plants.
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March 6, 2026
How To Hand-Pollinate Vanilla
One of my favorite plants is the vanilla orchid and I am lucky to have a mature vanilla orchid in the Madagascar biome that flowers fairly regularly. When the vanilla...
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March 2, 2026
HF&G Builds on Rare Oak Conservation Work Through Collection, Propagation, and Collaboration
In the last week of January, I returned from a plant collecting trip through coastal Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina in search of bluff oak (Quercus austrina), an uncommon oak with a...
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February 11, 2026
Celebrating Women Scientists at Holden Forests & Gardens
On International Day of Women and Girls in Science, we’re taking a moment to appreciate the talented researchers advancing our understanding of forests, plants, and the ecosystems they support. From...
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January 16, 2026
Native Seed Libraries Now Open to the Public
The Holden Seed Bank is excited to share that a regional Native Seed Library program will officially open to the public on Monday, January 19, in 10 different locations across...
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January 12, 2026
10 Questions with Jessica Hudson, HF&G’s New VP of Development
Q: What excites you most about working for Holden Forests & Gardens?A: My excitement surrounding Holden Forests & Gardens is immeasurable. I am eager to experience the year-long beauty of...
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January 6, 2026
Life in the Winter Forest
Take a stroll through the forest at the Holden Arboretum on a cold winter’s morning — the trails are open year-round — and the quiet stillness might trick you into...
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December 19, 2025
New Study Reveals How Beech Leaf Disease Disrupts the Forest Ecosystem
As beech leaf disease continues to sweep across our region, the longer-term effects of the disease are starting to reveal themselves in the epicenter — right here in Lake County....
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December 5, 2025
What’s Happening Below the Forest Floor? Lessons Learned from Decades of Soil Data
Caring for our planet includes an assurance that our natural ecosystems have a diversity of living things, clean water, thriving plants, and resiliency to disturbance. Soils are instrumental to all...
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November 20, 2025
Know the Forest Pests That Live in Your Area: Holden Researchers Get the Word Out
Do you know what the symptoms of beech leaf disease look like? What about hemlock woolly adelgid — can you tell it from elongate hemlock scale, and did you know...
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November 11, 2025
What’s That Thing on the Emergent Tower? HF&G Tests New Forest Pest Monitoring Tool
If you’ve been to the Kalberer Emergent Tower at the Holden Arboretum lately — let’s be honest, who hasn’t (#fall) — you may have noticed something new: A pale purple...
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October 22, 2025
Newfound Garlic Mustard Aphid May Help, but Won’t Solve, Our Garlic Mustard Problem
In 2021, Rebecah Troutman — at the time Holden Arboretum’s natural areas biologist — was making her rounds and came across an insect she hadn’t seen before. It appeared to...
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October 17, 2025
Meet Samantha Worthy, Holden’s Newest Scientist
The forests at the Holden Arboretum are a patchwork of ecosystems — a mosaic of beech, oak, and hemlock stands that shift from one to another in the space of...
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September 17, 2025
Restoring Forests, Engaging Landowners, Advancing Science—All in One Place
A version of this article originally appeared on The Applied Ecologist. What would it look like to combine scientific research, public education, and ecosystem restoration all in one place? Less...
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September 8, 2025
Ongoing HF&G Study Tests a Novel Way to Give Urban Tree Plantings a Boost
Planting trees in cities can bring a host of benefits. They pull pollutants and carbon dioxide out of the air, cool neighborhoods, reduce stormwater runoff, and make streets more inviting...
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September 4, 2025
Moths on the Move
My job at Holden Forests & Gardens as the propagator is to produce and take care of baby plants. That often involves going out into the gardens and natural areas...
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August 28, 2025
Veterans Find Healing in the Beehives at Cleveland Botanical Garden
Our fascination with bees is as old as time itself. The Paleolithic cave art in Spain shows honey hunters perched on cliff faces 10,000 years ago. In ancient Egypt, the...
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July 30, 2025
Discover What Happens Behind the Scenes at Holden at the 10th Annual SEARCH Symposium
Curious about what goes on behind the scenes at Holden Forests & Gardens? The 10th annual Symposium for Ecological Research (SEARCH) offers a window into the real work happening across...
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July 17, 2025
It’s Poppin’: July 17
It’s summer! Did you enjoy the long holiday weekend? If you took time off from visiting our campuses, now is the time to come back, as our summer wildflowers are...
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July 3, 2025
It’s Poppin’: July 3
Happy 4th of July! There’s plenty to see out in the gardens this weekend, with milkweeds, black-eyed Susans, and a host of other mid-summer favorites in bloom. Cleveland Botanical Garden...
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June 20, 2025
It’s Poppin’: June 20
Hot and sticky weather arrived this week! This week I teamed with Angelica Vasilatos, Ferry Foundation curation intern at the Botanical Garden, to detail what’s poppin’ in Kirtland and Cleveland. ...
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