Q: I have a 25-year-old podocarpus on the north side of the house. It gets morning sun and afternoon shade. Every spring I apply chelated iron, but the last few years it hasn’t seemed to help much.

Thomas Leo Ogren’s war on allergy-triggering plants spans almost three decades. Ogren has seen grown men laid low by a sniff of a flower, taken chain saws to allergenic male yew pines, and burned out ...

At a time of year when we often decorate with holly, mistletoe, pine, fir and spruce, it’s easy to overlook some of our most common evergreens: yews. In many Chicago-area neighborhoods and suburbs, ...