Weekend Reading 9/22/23

Welcome to Garden Center magazine's Weekend Reading, a weekly round-up of consumer garden media stories meant to help IGCs focus marketing efforts, spark inspiration and start conversations with consumers.

This week: Glow-in-the-dark houseplants, an infestation of an invasive species, and three stories about how food and medicinal gardens build health and maintain cultural ties.

Here Come the Glow-in-the-Dark Houseplants, WIRED

Startup Light Bio has created a bioluminescent petunia using mushroom genes and plans to start shipping the plants next spring.

Spotted lanternfly infestation in Ohio, Dayton Daily News

Pamela Corle-Bennett shares information about the spotted lanternfly and the sooty mold that grows on the honeydew excreted by the invasive insect species.

Could gardening help with Eastern Kentucky food insecurity?, Lexington Herald Leader

For Indigenous communities across North Carolina and the United States, native gardening expands from a simple act of planting local species to an essential practice.

How gardens enable refugees and immigrants to put down roots in new communities, PBS NewsHour

Gardening and community gardens can be ways for immigrant and refugee communities to supplement their pantries by growing their own food, especially culturally appropriate food that is not readily found in grocery stores or farmers’ markets. It also helps people send literal roots down into a new place while allowing them to share their heritage foods with their children. And it ultimately provides a chance to be outdoors and normal for a moment in spite of what brought them to this country.