How to Garden in a Changing Climate: Tips For Resilient Landscapes

Climate change is no longer a distant concern—it’s happening now, and gardeners are seeing the effects firsthand. From shifting planting zones to extreme weather events, adapting to these changes is key to maintaining thriving landscapes. 

In part one of our Program Priority Series we sit down with Mike Peronto to discuss climate change. In this episode, Mike covers:

• How the WSU Master Gardener Program is addressing climate change and its impacts on gardening
• Climate change educational resources and workshops
• Ways master gardeners educate communities about climate change and climate resilience
• Climate-friendly gardening practices for home gardeners
• Practical steps any gardener can take to future-proof their landscape
  

• Master Gardener’s Climate Change Priority
• Climate Change Impact
• Climate Related Resources
• Contact your local Master Gardener Program to Find Master Gardener Speakers Bureau
• Cultivating Resilience in a Changing Climate – The Evergreen Thumb

[00:00:00] Erin Hoover: Welcome to The Evergreen Thumb, your go-to podcast for up-to-date research-based horticulture and environmental stewardship knowledge to help you grow and manage your garden. Produced by Washington State University Extension Master Gardener Volunteers and brought to you by the Master Gardener Foundation of Washington State.

[00:00:16] I’m your host, Erin Hoover, a WSU Extension Master Gardener since 2015 and a certified permaculture designer and modern homesteader.

WSU Master Gardener volunteers are university-trained community educators who have been cultivating plants, people, and communities since 1973. Are you ready to grow? Let’s dig into today’s episode.

[00:00:35] The WSU Extension Master Gardener program empowers individuals with research-based horticulture knowledge to address key sociologic and environmental challenges. By equipping people with essential skills, we help mitigate these challenges and demonstrate that everyone has a role in building healthy, resilient communities.

WSU Extension Master Gardener Program’s Program Priority Series

Over the course of the next year, I’ll be hosting a nine-part series exploring the WSU Extension Master Gardener Program’s nine program priorities, how they impact our communities, and how you as gardeners can integrate them into your own practices.

[00:01:13] These priorities go beyond simply growing plants. They provide a framework for tackling critical issues such as food security, climate change, and environmental stewardship. Each episode will spotlight one priority covering topics like local food systems, pollinator health, water conservation, wildfire preparedness, and more.

[00:01:30] We’ll hear from experts at WSU and master gardeners who are applying these principles in real-world settings, along with practical advice to help you make a difference in your own garden.

The first program priority we’re going to talk about this year is climate change.

 The Master Gardener volunteers help mitigate climate change by providing the community with practical skills for growing resilient landscapes.

[00:01:53] Sustainable landscape practices offer significant public value by reducing carbon footprints and various types of pollution. These practices lower greenhouse gas emissions, conserve water, enhance soil health, and support biodiversity. Additionally, sustainable landscapes act as carbon sinks, absorbing and storing carbon dioxide, which helps mitigate climate change.

[00:02:15] Overall, they contribute to a cleaner, healthier environment and promote a more sustainable future.

Guest Introduction

My guest today is Mike Peronto. Mike is a master gardener in Pierce County who joined the program in 2017 after a career in the private sector. Initially, he focused on growing food in master gardener demonstration gardens and in community gardens.

[00:02:37] Over time, he became increasingly concerned about climate change, and in 2022, he started a group within the Pierce County Master Gardeners focused on climate change. Then, in 2023, as an outgrowth of a presentation at the Advanced Education Conference, he started a statewide climate change group called CATs, or Climate Action Teams, a statewide group of Master Gardener volunteers who work together to create climate change-related content for use by Master Gardeners throughout Washington.

[00:03:04] Alright, Mike, thanks for joining me today. Welcome to the show.

[00:03:08] Mike Peronto: Thanks for having me.

[00:03:10] Erin Hoover: So, to start off, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and your, uh, work with the Master Gardener program?

[00:03:17] Mike Peronto: Uh, well, I’m a Master Gardener volunteer out of Pierce County. I live in Gig Harbor. I joined Master Gardeners in pretty much the classic way, after I retired, was, uh, had always been interested in gardening and was looking for something to do and, uh, joined the program through King County before I moved, moved down here and, uh, have been a Master Gardener since 2017.

About the Master Gardener Program’s Climate Change Priority

[00:03:42] Erin Hoover: Alright, so you’re here today to tell us a bit about the Master Gardener program’s climate change priority. So, can you tell me about its main objectives and why the focus on climate change?

[00:03:56] Mike Peronto: To do that, probably step back a little bit and even go to the Master Gardener mission. The mission itself talks about teaching and about horticulture and environmental stewardship.

[00:04:09] Okay, so the core of what we’re about is teaching things, garden-related things on environmental stewardship, and if you think about it in that context, uh, climate change is the single most important, uh, environmental stewardship crisis that we’re facing right now, so not surprisingly that when the coordinators got together and established priorities for the program, they set, uh, climate change as one of the top nine priorities.

[00:04:38] Uh, I tend to think it’s number one. The biggest amongst many, um, and, and the goals of it really, they talk about, uh, teaching, uh, resilience in our landscaping efforts.

So, staying true to the Master Gardener mission with gardening, environmental science, and big talk about, uh, resilience because our rapidly changing climate is, uh, really, uh, you have to garden in new ways to be able to deal with our changing climate.

[00:05:09] Erin Hoover: Definitely. So, and in a lot of ways, I kind of think of climate change as kind of like the, not the blanket, but kind of like the over, you know, you can almost tie all of the other priorities back to climate change in some way.

[00:05:23] Mike Peronto: Beautiful. Yeah. You said it, yeah, overarching kind of thing.

[00:05:28] You think about it, like, another priority is pollinators. You know, today, how do you talk about pollinators unless you also talk about the stress on pollinators due to climate change, right? Another one is wildfire preparedness. You know, you used to think about that as, well, that’s an eastern Washington kind of thing, but with what we’re living through and the fires in L.A., you realize even in Western Washington, uh, the public is very interested now in “how should I landscape in such a way to protect my home from fires?”.

[00:05:46] So you cannot really deal with any of the other eight priorities without, uh, to be relevant, you have to be current on what the changing climate is doing to all of those priorities.

Misconceptions Around Climate Change and Gardening

[00:06:07] Erin Hoover: So what are some of the misconceptions or the, the knowledge gaps that you see, uh, about climate change and gardening?

[00:06:16] Mike Peronto: Listen, I give a presentation called The Resilient Yard, not surprisingly, and I’ve presented it many times, and it’s not so much that people don’t know any of this stuff, it’s the cumulative effect of, oh, “there are so many things, little things that I’m doing wrong or could be doing better in my yard”, and it’s the role effect of, “oh, I never really thought about it this way, and what you’re saying makes a lot of sense”.

[00:06:43] So, it’s not so much that people don’t have gaps, it’s that, I think, habitually, they’ve always kind of done gardening one way, and they’ve never really stopped to think, “Hey, is there a better way to do this given our changing climate?”.

Climate Change Educational Resources and Workshops

[00:06:55] Erin Hoover: So, what are some of the educational programs or workshops that are often offered in the various Master Gardener programs?

[00:07:03] Mike Peronto: There are several things. Uh, the first one I would point to is our Speakers Bureau. So, uh, we use a Speakers Bureau program to reach out to the public and give presentations on topics of interest. I believe every county has a Speakers Bureau and, uh, many of them have climate change presentations as part of their, uh, programming.

[00:07:25] So that’s one. We backed him up. I’m part of a group of volunteers called Climate Action Teams or CATS, and part of what we’re doing is finding presentations around climate change that we’re offering up to the various Speakers Bureaus across the state so that they will have a deeper library of content.

[00:07:46] So getting somebody or a master gardener out to talk to your organization or through your public library is one way to access that resource.

Another important one and easy to get at is, um, in on our state website, mastergardener.wsu.edu. There is a page under climate change, climate-related resources, and another one under those program priorities, and if you go on either one you get a nice summary list of resources about things both WSU is doing and things that you can do about climate change.

Ways Master Gardeners Educate Communities about Climate Change and Climate Resilience

[00:08:22] Erin Hoover: What are some of the other ways Master Gardeners engage in their communities to promote climate resilience and education about climate change?

[00:08:30] Mike Peronto: Really, it’s, you know, it’s happening at different rates in different counties. There are several programs that we use to communicate with the public. One is demonstration gardens, and you’re seeing more garden talks in the demonstration gardens about climate-related stuff.

[00:08:49] We also have youth gardening programs, and I know here in Pierce County, they have climate changes to topics that they use for the training that next generation of gardeners, and, um, Ask a Master Gardener clinics, places where people can go and get answers to their questions. They’re improving their content there on climate-related subjects as well.

[00:09:12] Erin Hoover: And just off the top of my head, a thought too, I know in some counties, master gardeners have worked with, um, local agencies to create education gardens like xeriscape gardens and rain gardens and things like that as well.

[00:09:25] Mike Peronto: Exactly. Yes. There’s a lot. And it’s a big topic. There’s a lot to cover.

Climate-Friendly Gardening Practices for the Home Gardener

[00:09:31] Erin Hoover: So, what are some climate-friendly gardening practices homeowners can implement in their own gardens to get some, you know, first steps to adapting to climate change?

[00:09:42] Mike Peronto: Like I said, there’s a lot of stuff, and some of it, you ask what they can do, probably the biggest thing you can, is stuff you can stop doing. Uh, number one, on my list is stop using gas power tools.

People don’t realize just how the gas power tools are made with lightweight, what’s called single-stroke engines, which are terribly inefficient at burning gasoline.

[00:10:08] And so they, they spew out climate warming gases at a much higher rate than automobiles do. And we’re fortunate here in Washington that our electric rates are low and in most suburban yards, there are electric power tools that will more than get the job done. And so, people can do a huge amount of good for the environment just by abandoning their gas-power tools and switching over to electric.

[00:10:36] I was just reading the numbers. I think in King County alone in 2020, there was 500 million pounds of CO₂ were generated by just their yard tools. So if everybody in King County alone, Uh, would desert and go electric, you’d save 500 million pounds, and this is gas! Gas is light, it floats! How much, you know, 500 million pounds is a lot to pull out of the atmosphere.

[00:11:03] So that would be number one. Then when it’s like, “What actively can I do?” The big lesson there is going back to our schooling, um, and this may be one of those gaps of knowledge that you talked about, but, um, most people don’t realize that photosynthesis is the process of taking a climate-related gas, CO₂, out of the atmosphere, converting it into nutrients for the food and depositing it back into the leaves, trunks, branches of plants and back into the soil where it’s in a permanent, non, um, climate warming form.

[00:11:41] So, what does that mean? Just by simply planting plants, you’re doing a lot for cleaning up the, uh, CO₂ that’s out in the atmosphere today.

So I put that number to stop using gas power tools, Start planting stuff, and then the third one is take care of your soil, and then the big way to do that is by adding compost and then especially in the hot months, uh, adding a mulch to both retain moisture and to, uh, retard weed growth so that you don’t have to pour more chemicals into the soil to deal with the weeds.

[00:12:16] So that’s probably the big three.

[00:12:17] Erin Hoover: Well, and I know in recent years, battery-powered tools have really come a long way. We got a battery-powered chainsaw, and my husband cut down a 30-foot-tall cherry tree with it, you know, I mean, it took a couple of charges, but he probably needed a break at that point anyway.

[00:12:35] Mike Peronto: Yeah, and that’s pretty hardcore. Most, you know, suburban yards aren’t all that big and don’t have 30-foot cherry trees to take down, so your mowers, your edgers, your blowers, battery-powered, will do it just fine for all but the largest yards.

Challenges that Gardeners can Expect to Face due to Climate Change

[00:12:51] Erin Hoover: So what are some of the more pressing challenges that gardeners in Washington state can expect to face due to climate change?

[00:12:58] Mike Peronto: We’ve touched on some of them already. The, again, people, especially in western Washington, if you thought you were safe from wildfires, that’s all of a sudden not such a safe thing anymore, right? I would characterize it more; the climate is changing so rapidly that there are no safe answers anymore. So, the pressing challenge is that you have to continually adapt because the climate is continually changing.

[00:13:28] If you think, you know, it used to be like, go to a master gardener and say, “Oh, just plant native plants. Oh, you’re covered with native plants.” Well, the climate’s heated up enough that those plants that are native now, well, they became native to us when it was, the climate was a lot cooler. So they’re under stress.

[00:13:48] You’re seeing stuff like, um, you know, Western red cedars are dying off at alarming rates, and what do you do? Well, uh, what the Seattle Parks Department is doing is they’re looking three to six hundred miles to the south for their native plants and, and, uh, sequoias and transplanting them up here. So even a simple thing like, oh, just plant natives and you’re covered, you’re, nothing completely covers you anymore.

[00:14:14] And so you continually have to adjust your gardening tactics because it’s getting warmer and warmer. That’s the pressing thing is you have to continue to learn, which is good for master gardeners because it gives us something to continue to teach.

[00:14:28] Erin Hoover: Yeah, right. So, and that makes me think of too is with the change in the USDA gardening zones, that’s kind of an indication.

I mean, because now Washington spans from like, I think zone 3A to 9A now, you know, the coast is over as zone 9 now. So, you know, that is warmer.

[00:14:51] Mike Peronto: And remember, most of that is calculated by looking back either 20 or 30 years and doing the averages for that. Most people planting now, they want to plant for where it’s going to be 10 years from now.

[00:15:02] So, but that’s, that’s the challenge, right? You don’t want to get too far out there because then you plant something from Southern California and it struggles up here too because it’s not hot enough. That’s part of that, you know, continuing, continuing to adapt.

Steps Gardeners Can Take to Make Their Gardens More Climate Resilient

[00:15:17] Erin Hoover: Yeah, so what are some of the easy action steps gardeners can do to make their gardens more climate resilient?

[00:15:24] Mike Peronto: So, I did touch a little bit on it, but what I encourage people to do is just focus on the basics. You don’t have to learn a ton of stuff, uh, and the basics start with taking care of your soil. Because if you do a good job of taking care of your soil, everything will grow better in it and you’ll give it the best possible chance of surviving, and thriving, right?

[00:15:45] And so the taking care of the soil, back to adding compost. Don’t add chemicals, add compost, add, you’re trying to add organic matter, so that the critters in the soil have things to eat, and those critters in the soil, their job is to make the soil better and better for you. So, that’s kind of number one.

[00:16:06] Uh, number two on the soil is the mulch. Again, especially in hot months. You want to make sure the soil is covered because it gives you two winds, it saves you on water, and it blocks weed growth, so again, you don’t have to add chemicals to the soil. Now you’re getting a little, so that’s the simple stuff.

[00:16:24] Then as you plant, do lean towards natives. I don’t take what I said before as dissing natives at all. Most natives have, are adjusted to the climate, but just sample with some natives a little south of here and salt them into your mix. And the big thing that people need to think about a little bit differently is within your beds, you want to plant in a way that, the leaf canopy grows together.

[00:16:50] Because if you can plant close enough together that all the plants grow together, then they’re providing the shade to the soil that the mulch used to give. And they’re saving you on the water and on the weeds. But the other thing they’re doing is they’re maximizing the exposure to the sun, which maximizes photosynthesis, which sucks the most CO₂ out of the air and puts it back into a form that doesn’t warm the planet.

[00:17:17] So take care of your soil and plant densely and, uh, your yard will be much more resilient than it is today.

Climate Action Teams

[00:17:25] Erin Hoover: So, can you tell us a little bit more about the climate action teams that you mentioned before?

[00:17:29] Mike Peronto: Sure. A number of Master Gardeners joined exactly because they’re concerned about the climate.

[00:17:35] And the way we got started, was we put together a presentation called The Resilient Yard that we gave at one of our advanced education conferences, and at the end, we just asked a simple, uh, pastoral forum, hey, would you like to join a statewide group, uh, that deals with climate change? And that’s a little bit different for Master Gardeners because we’re organized by county usually, and so all of the participation is usually county-specific.

[00:18:01] You know, greenhouse gases don’t stop at the borders. So we said, let’s try a statewide kind of organization. Um, uh, we expected maybe six to 12 people to sign up that first time, 36 people actually signed up. So it’s like, all right, we’re onto something here. And so, we’ve, uh, formed a, a group that meets monthly via Zoom and, um, the goal of the group is to take those deliverables that we have today that are related to climate change and enhance them and make them available.

[00:18:35] Some of the smaller counties have trouble. They don’t have enough volunteers that can really tackle a lot of these projects, but by putting uh, our resources together, we can come up with some very comprehensive presentations and things like that to supplement their efforts so that they get a better climate change offering more quickly. ˙

That’s what CATs is about, improving the content that we supply to the various counties so they can take a bigger bite out of climate change more quickly.

[00:18:54] It’s kind of interesting, uh, we had to do a little bit of pioneering there. Since we are creating statewide presentations, the program director, uh, Jennifer Marquis, had always wanted to have the, in effect, a peer-reviewed, uh, product.

[00:19:20] And we’d never been able to pull that off before. But for these presentations, we got together with, uh, other WSU professors who were concerned about the climate and they agreed to proofread and then validate the science in these presentations. So we, last year, pioneered this whole process to become, uh, our slang is badged.

[00:19:42] So we actually badge the presentations that they’re, uh, WSU Extension Master Gardener approved content that’s now available statewide.

It’s been interesting, been a lot of work. Uh, there are currently five presentations that are badged and available for all the counties to use. With more on the way, we’ll keep going.

[00:20:04] Erin Hoover: Well, and that sounds like, that’s a great resource, like you said, for some of the smaller counties or, you know, I mean, just for the sharing of knowledge so that we can get that out there and to the public and share it.

[00:20:15] Mike Peronto: You know, again, there’s a big difference because of the mountain range between eastern and western Washington.

[00:20:21] So, we also kind of pioneered presentation, like, again, my resilient yard, I gave you the emphasis on compost because I’m western Washington. Well, when you make that presentation in eastern Washington, it’s like there’s, uh, the soils aren’t as rich, and they don’t want you to be trying to turn them into western Washington soil.

[00:20:40] And so it’s more, you know, that the emphasis is tuned a little bit there, more towards native plants and less towards composting. So learning just, eastern and western Washington, the little changes that we’ve made to presentations on both sides of the mountain made us more aware of the varying climate across the state.

[00:21:01] So it’s been good.

Master Gardeners and Climate Change Education

[00:21:04] Erin Hoover: Is there anything else you’d like to add about climate change or, you know, the Master Gardeners and educating in climate change?

[00:21:11] Mike Peronto: Probably circle back to where I started, you know, uh, especially for master gardeners. If you’re joining, becoming a master gardener, you know, you probably want to join an organization with people with like interests, but also you probably, hopefully, wanted to make a difference with your time.

[00:21:29] And if you stand back and think about it, you know, where we sit with climate change is the single most important environmental stewardship topic for the rest of our lives. And if you want to dedicate, you know, a significant portion of your life to making a difference, I don’t think there’s anything that you can do that’s more important than that.

[00:21:49] So I would encourage you, if you care, you like any of this stuff, become a CAT, join the Climate Action Team, and, uh, we take all comers here.

All you have to do is go up to the, uh, mastergardener.wsu.edu website, look for CATS, and say, “I want in”, and you’re in.

Final Thoughts on Climate Change in the Garden

[00:22:09] Erin Hoover: Okay, any final thoughts about climate change in the garden?

[00:22:13] Mike Peronto: Yeah, I guess the last, the last piece would be a little bit of a pep talk. A lot of climate change discussions are kind of doom and gloom about how big the problem is, how bad it is, and things like that. Um, I think that the Master Gardener ethos from the outset isn’t to sit around and moan about it, it is what can you do and what actions can you take.

[00:22:34] And so all of our presentations that we put together are, “Here’s something that I can do to make an impact, however small, you know, that I have some control over”. I think that it’s that kind of attitude when multiplied across millions of people is the way that we’re going to get our hands around. The thing is focus on what you can do, focus on what’s practical, roll up your sleeves, and get off the couch and go do something.

[00:23:02] Erin Hoover: Well, thanks for joining me today, Mike. This is very informative.

[00:23:06] Mike Peronto: Thank you, Ron. Thanks for having me.

[00:23:08] Erin Hoover: Thank you for joining us on this episode of The Evergreen Thumb, brought to you by the WSU Extension Master Gardener Program volunteers and sponsored by the Master Gardener Foundation of Washington State.

[00:23:19] We hope that today’s discussion has inspired and equipped you with valuable insights to nurture your garden.

The Master Gardener Foundation of Washington State is a nonprofit organization whose primary purpose is to provide unifying support and advocacy for WSU Extension Master Gardener programs throughout Washington State.

[00:23:38] To support the Master Gardener Foundation of Washington State, visit www.mastergardenerfoundation.org/donate.

Whether you’re an experienced Master Gardener or just starting out, the WSU Extension Master Gardener program is here to support you every step of the way. WSU Extension Master Gardeners empower and sustain diverse communities with relevant, unbiased, research-based horticulture education.

[00:24:03] Reach out to your local WSU Extension office to connect with master gardeners and tap into a wealth of resources that can help you achieve gardening success. To learn more about the program or how to become a Master Gardener, visit www.mastergardener.wsu.edu/get-involved.

If you enjoyed today’s episode and want to stay connected with us, be sure to subscribe to future episodes filled with expert tips, fascinating stories, and practical advice.

[00:24:30] Don’t forget to leave a review and share it with fellow gardeners to spread the joy of gardening.

Questions or comments to be addressed in future episodes can be sent to hello@theevergreenthumb.org.

The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed by guests of this podcast are their own and do not imply endorsement by Washington State University or the Master Gardener Foundation of Washington State.