A Way To Garden

THE OPENING PAGES of Timothy Pakron’s about-to-be-released cookbook aren’t pictures of plates of food, but rather gorgeous flower photos – some dreamy cosmos, followed by a double-page spread of silvery mountain mint, or Pycnanthemum, gleaming against a moody dark background. That all makes sense, because the cookbook is titled “Garden Variety: Plant-Focused Recipes Inspired by My Garden,” and his garden is a color- and flavor-filled space in his New Orleans backyard with 12 big raised beds that he’s now transitioning to what he calls more of a food forest. Timothy, who is known to many of his followers as Mississippi Vegan – the title of his popular 2018 cookbook, his Instagram handle and also the url of his website – describes himself as “a vegan from Mississippi living in New Orleans.” Besides developing his signature recipes, he’s a photographer and food stylist—and also a gardener, thanks to his father to whom he dedicated the new book in thanks for giving his son his green thumb, he says. I learned many new things—about some herbs I’d never even heard of that I could even grow in a pot, like pandan plant, and also that rice can be baked in the oven […]

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RATHER THAN digging in, let’s wade into our topic this week—because the subject is water lilies. How did I know so little about these incredible plants? If you follow any botanical gardens on social media, you’ve probably seen how the giant tropical Victoria water lilies, with their massive pads, have gone viral in recent summers thanks to a competition called the “Waterlily Weigh-Off” that tests how much weight those ingeniously designed leaves can bear without sinking. One participant, New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, has been cultivating and stewarding and showing off these dramatic plants since long before the virtual rivalry began. Marc Hachadourian, Director of Glasshouse Horticulture there and also a leading expert on orchids, filled me in about both the tropical and hardy species in NYBG’s collection—and what all the fuss is about—and also some of the secrets of how aquatic plants work, anyhow. The story of the water lily is a fascinating one, whether you grow them or not. NYBG is currently staging an exhibit called Flower Power, and a display of tropical water lilies outside the conservatory is just one part of that show. Read along as you listen to the Aug. 17, 2026 edition […]

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WHEN WAS THE last time you made room in your vegetable garden for something a little out of the ordinary that you’d never grown or maybe even tasted before? I don’t know of anyone who speaks out more passionately or eloquently in behalf of exceptional vegetable varieties than Lane Selman, who’s introduced an ever-widening audience—myself among them—to many of her favorites over the years, like distinctive peppers and an expanded palate of winter crops, including a delicious diversity of radicchio. Now Lane has a cookbook coming out in September, too, called “Radicchio: A Celebration of the Beloved Italian Vegetable” (affiliate link), about a crop many Americans didn’t know much about not so long ago, but do now, partly thanks to her. Whether in her work as a professor of practice at Oregon State University and the Culinary Breeding Network that she founded in 2012, or through the popular celebratory event she organizes to showcase standout organic varieties, Lane Selman brings stakeholders together to collaborate—plant breeders, chefs, farmers, and even just us eaters—in the name of educating all involved and improving quality in vegetables, fruits, and grains. She’s co-hosting an event Aug. 30th in Cold Spring, N.Y., and another Oct. 24th […]

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IDON’T RECALL who tipped me off to the Amphibian and Reptile Conservancy’s email newsletter, but I am glad that I found it and signed up. Those of you who are longtime listeners or readers of A Way to Garden know that I have, shall we say, a “thing” for frogs … so maybe it’s no surprise that I was delighted to discover an organization that is implementing a network of on-the-ground conservation projects around the U.S. in behalf of imperiled amphibians, as well as for reptiles. The non-profit Amphibian and Reptile Conservancy’s mission is to identify and conserve the highest-priority places for amphibians and reptiles, in support of these important animals. I contacted its executive director, conservation biologist JJ Apodaca, to ask him if some of that deep conservation expertise his team applies in their work could be sort of distilled for us gardeners, so that we can create landscapes that are more hospitable to these essential members of the food web, whose needs we too-often overlook.  I got some helpful suggestions—and also learned some astonishing facts about amphibians, especially salamanders. Read along as you listen to the Aug. 3, 2026 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the […]

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TRIGGER WARNING: Today’s segment will include mention of irresistible hydrangeas and may prompt severe plant-shopping binges in susceptible individuals. You’ve been warned. My guest is Adam Wheeler of Broken Arrow Nursery, a retail and mail-order destination for exceptional plants in Connecticut, where an extravagant array of unusual hydrangeas representing more than just your average species are part of the portfolio. There are hydrangeas with gold leaves (like H. serrata ‘Mountain Mania,’ above), or variegated ones, and every imaginable flower form, and even a wider range of flower colors than you may know about. Adam Wheeler joined Broken Arrow in 2004, where he is the production and horticulture manager. Part of Adam’s role is to be on the lookout for great plants to add to the assortment, and in recent years the genus Hydrangea has included an increasingly long list of such possibilities. He joined me on the podcast to suggest some favorites to consider, and how to prune and otherwise care for them. Read along as you listen to the July 27, 2026 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify (and browse my […]

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ARE YOU A FOLLOWER of fashion—houseplant fashion, that is—seeking out the latest variety that everyone’s after, perhaps the “it” plant that’s been splashed across social media?  Or was each houseplant in your care carefully chosen because it’s a perfect match for the light and other indoor conditions you can offer it? Whatever your criteria, emotional or practical or otherwise, how do you know what’s the right houseplant for you? It’s a question that August Laska and his team at The Old Yew Plant Shop are asked all the time. August and I headed inside from the summer heat of the garden to talk houseplants. He didn’t exactly intend to end up with so many—not just the ones in his house, but two whole New York City stores full of them. Like a lot of people, the former corporate marketing coordinator got into plants during the pandemic, but I suspect few others got in quite so deep as to prompt an entire career change like August’s. His two branches of The Old Yew Plant Shop, in the West Village and on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, offer retail and mail-order plants and pots and other gear, as well as design […]

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I CALL THE phenomenon tomato troubles: the yellow-spotted foliage that falls off, or the plant that produces all those misshapen fruits. And yes, the attack of the hornworms, too, when you wake up to a lot of missing leaves one day. Or all of the above. A few years back I checked in with the tomato man himself, Craig LeHoullier, author of the book “Epic Tomatoes,” to see what we can do even under such high-summer pressures to bring in that delicious harvest, and since I’m hearing from listeners already this year about tomato troubles of their own, I thought it was a good time to revisit Craig’s advice. Craig gardens and grows tomatoes in Hendersonville, N.C., these days, after many years in Raleigh before that. He’s a proponent of the straw-bale gardening method, which he also wrote a book about. He’s an avid canner of his fresh produce and teaches an online Epic Tomatoes course with his friend and mine, Joe Lamp’l. He shared his key strategies for tomato success, and explained the different tomato troubles you might be facing and what’s behind them. And learn the provenance of ‘Cherokee Purple,’ the beloved purple heirloom that Craig named, and […]

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LEA JOHNSON is a plant ecologist whose work, she says, is driven by this question: “All of the wild diversity of life on earth is here, with us, right now. How can we take it with us into the future?” It’s a compelling question, and one that can motivate not just scientists like Lea, Director of Conservation at Native Plant Trust in New England, but also native-plant gardeners like us. She talked to me about where conservation and gardening intersect, and some of the challenges and the possibilities we face together. Lea joined Native Plant Trust, the nation’s oldest native plant conservation organization, in 2025, as its Director of Conservation. At the Massachusetts-based nonprofit, she manages various conservation and restoration initiatives, including the monitoring of rare and endangered species; a rare plant seed bank with over 10 million seeds, and the Trust’s seven native plant sanctuaries in New England. She also oversees the leading botanical resource GoBotany—one of my favorite reference websites. Read along as you listen to the July 6, 2026 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify (and browse my archive […]

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I KNOW, it feels like we just planted the vegetable garden moments ago. But a close look around as summer really takes hold quickly reminds us that our work is never done… Some crop or other is reaching the end of its run, making room for a succession sowing of more of that same thing or something else altogether, or maybe of a weed-suppressing, soil-building cover crop—some of which are actually edible, too, (like the winter-hardy field peas, above) in what’s perhaps the cleverest season-extending scheme of all. Mastering the art of stretching the harvest season is my topic today with Doug Muller of Hudson Valley Seed Company. Doug is co-founder and managing director of the mail-order seed business and retail store, based on its organic farm in Accord, N.Y., and I was pleased to speak to him and get some inspiration on succession sowing and creative cover cropping—because yes, there’s still time for lots more possibilities out there. Read along as you listen to the June 29, 2026 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify (and browse my archive of podcasts here). […]

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THE RECENTLY PUBLISHED book “Madoo: The Making of an American Garden,” reminded me of the power of certain key design strategies that can make all the difference—ones that proved to be formative elements in the highly distinctive garden that is Madoo, in Sagaponack, Long Island, which visitors often use words like “magical” to describe. Madoo was created starting in the 1960s by the late painter and poet Bob Dash, and the book’s authors join me today to talk about some of those garden-making tactics he used and that the garden team there keeps using—like how important it is to consider inside-out views from key windows, and how flourishes of colorful paint (including on the welcoming element of carefully placed garden seating) can unite a landscape’s many elements. My guests today are Alejandro Saralegui, executive director of the Madoo Conservancy since 2009, and Kendell Cronstrom, a longtime magazine editor (left to right, in the photo below), who have co-authored the book, “Madoo: The Making of an American Garden” (affiliate link). Plus: Comment in the box near the bottom of the page for a chance to win their new book, “Madoo.” Read along as you listen to the June 22, 2026 edition […]

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