Pass the seed packs…and the popcorn. A new gardening-centric movie will be released on April 17th. Called The Gardener, it shares the story of a business executive who’s fending off a hostile takeover of her company while grappling with loss. She retreats to a rustic paradise where a mysterious gardener guides her journey of self-discovery and transformation against a verdant backdrop. Ahem: This is not to be confused with last year’s The Gardener, starring tough-guy Jean-Claude Van Damme.

Pivoting from entertainment to education, we love when learning goes to seed, literally. A class at Bennett College in Greensboro, NC, called “Gardening and Food Justice” teaches composting and crop rotation, as students get their hands dirty tending their own raised beds under the guidance of a Master Gardener. By the end of the semester, they’ve met with community leaders fighting food deserts, discussed profit margins (often very thin!) with local farmers, and packed boxes of fresh produce for in-need families. The combination of botany, civics, and road trips turns a patch of soil into a classroom, and a classroom becomes a garden where knowledge grows.

Soon, the school year will be over. Trying and failing to get a national parks reservation for Yellowstone or Yosemite for the summer break? We feel your pain. Why not go to the most remote and least-visited national park in the lower 48 states: Isle Royale National Park. It’s an archipelago of some 400 islands on western Lake Superior with 165 miles of back-country trails where you may see moose, wolves, and beavers. What’s the catch? It’s only reachable by ferry or seaplane from mainland Michigan and Minnesota. And if you’re planning to wow your friends with wilderness TikToks, know that cell phone coverage is spotty. But that might be a good thing if you’re serious about unplugging.

Speaking of our parks, Death Valley National Park in eastern California, which is usually a desolate landscape, is super-blooming this spring. Drenching rains in autumn (the same amount as typically falls in a year) have turbo-charged the landscape. Expanses of saturated yellows, pinks, and purples are expected to climb the mountainsides this month. Almost as good as the color play: the names of some of these native flowers, like gravel ghost and desert five-spot.

All those blooms will likely make pollinators happy, which brings us to some new research to ponder: Insects eavesdrop on plants. A recent study at Tel Aviv University found that, when plants are stressed (say, dehydrated), they emit ultrasonic communication. You might think of it as grumbling. And when bugs are nearby — moths looking for food for their young, for instance — they can pick up on this intel and choose to go elsewhere. A cool bit on news about how deeply interconnected nature can be.