MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN

MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN episodes:

• 04.12.2024

  A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – April 15, 2024 -Hilton Carter on Propagating Houseplants

  I for one have a number of houseplants that would look a whole lot better right now if given a pinch or two or three, plus I could potentially enjoy the benefit of more plants from those trimmings, whether to......

  
• 04.05.2024

  A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – April 8, 2024 – Japanese Maples at Mr Maple

  I confess to something of a weakness for Japanese maples, and I suspect I’m not alone. Now, thanks to breeding work by experts like today’s guests, there are more and more varieties being made available that are suited to a......

  
• 03.29.2024

  Madeline Hooper on Staying ‘GardenFit’ – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – April 1, 2024

  You know how it goes, especially in those tempting first spring-like days: You’re barely out of bed before you’re out in the garden having at it. And then, by day’s end, your body’s screaming that maybe, just maybe, you overdid......

  
• 03.22.2024

  David Mattern on Container Design – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – March 25, 2024

  Wait! Before you find yourself at the garden center grabbing up every irresistible thing that calls out to you, figuring you can somehow find a role for it in this season’s container designs, think again: What’s your plan for this year’s seasonal......

  
• 03.15.2024

  Tim Johnson on Bio-Productive Gardens – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – March 18, 2024

  In a recent phone call, today’s guest, Tim Johnson, used the phrase “bio-productive gardens,” and it stopped me. What does he mean by that, I thought? And then he explained:  There are ways to manage our landscapes, he said, so......

  
• 03.08.2024

  Darryl Cheng on Collectible Houseplants – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – March 11, 2024

  Some people collect art, others collect vintage cars, or maybe stamps or coins. Darryl Cheng collects houseplants, and in his latest book, “The New Plant Collector,” Darryl suggests some gorgeous possibilities, with detailed guidelines for figuring out how to make......

  
• 03.01.2024

  Sam Hoadley on Amsonias – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – March 4, 2024

  Early on in making my garden decades ago, I bought a nursery pot of bluestar, or Amsonia, at a native plant sale, and planted it in a border here. It has never asked anything of me, never had any pests......

  
• 02.23.2024

  K Greene on Herbs – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Feb 26, 2024

  When shopping the seed catalogs, I realize I’m probably more likely to consider a tomato or pepper I haven’t grown before, or some unusual annual flower, than to try some new-to-me herb. But what a shame.  I need to modify that......

  
• 02.16.2024

  Rebecca McMackin on the Native Movement – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Feb 19, 2024

  Maybe more than any other topic, the use of native plants has consistently figured among the top garden trends in recent years. Just how popular is the movement toward a more ecological focus in the way we design and care......

  
• 02.08.2024

  Be a Better Bird Watcher – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Feb 12, 2024

  Watching birds lifts my spirits, as it has for decades, and who couldn’t use their spirits lifted right about now? But there’s another much bigger potential benefit, which is that sharing my sightings helps scientists understand what’s going on with......

  
• 02.02.2024

  Don Tipping on Diversity of Zinnias – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Feb 5, 2024

  What’s not to love about zinnias? Organic seed farmer and breeder Don Tipping of Siskiyou Seeds and I both vote an emphatic “yes” in favor of making zinnias a part of every garden year. But what goes into creating the......

  
• 01.26.2024

  Nancy Lawson Asks Is Your Yard Undergrown? – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Jan 29, 2024

  As she often does, naturalist and nature writer Nancy Lawson—perhaps known better to some of you as the Humane Gardener after the title of her first book—caught my attention the other day.  “My yard isn’t overgrown and neither is yours,”......

  
• 01.19.2024

  David Culp on Snowdrops – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Jan 22, 2024

  David Culp is a self-professed Galanthophile—a lover, and passionate longtime collector, of snowdrops in all their various incarnations.  He is also a host of the annual Galanthus Gala symposium, which happens the first weekend of March in Downingtown, Pa., and......

  
• 01.12.2024

  Ken Druse on Seed Planning – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Jan 15, 2024

  If you think nothing’s on the to-do list in winter, fellow gardeners—that we’re all meant to be dormant like the cannas in the cellar and the herbaceous perennials outside in the flower beds—well, think again.  Most of us in colder......

  
• 01.05.2024

  Matt Mattus on Sweet Peas – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Jan 8, 2024

  Every year when I get to the sweet pea listings in the seed catalogs, I think this is the year, the year I’ll organize some supports in the garden for them, and indulge in their unmatched extravagance of color and......

  
• 12.22.2023

  Uli Lorimer on Ecological Resolutions – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Dec 25, 2024

  Like everyone around this time of year, I get into a “looking back while looking ahead” combined mindset. Today I want to do just that, but with a sort of ecological filter, taking stock of how things in the garden......

  
• 12.15.2023

  Jennifer Jewell on Beloved Seed Catalogs – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Dec 18, 2023

  Ho-ho-ho: It’s seed season, among other festive reasons to celebrate in December. Today I invited a similarly seed-obsessed friend, Jennifer Jewell, to help me curate some seed-catalog recommendations you might not otherwise browse, and to talk seeds in general.  Jennifer’s......

  
• 12.08.2023

  New USDA Hardiness Zone Map – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Dec 11, 2023

  You no doubt have seen news that the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map was just updated, and that half the country once again got reclassified a half-zone warmer—just as many of us did after the previous update of the map,......

  
• 12.01.2023

  Seed Shopping with Turtle Tree – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Dec 4, 2023

  Let the seed-shopping season begin! The 2024 offerings are being loaded into seed-catalog websites, and the earliest print catalogs are already arriving in our mailboxes, as if to help soften the separation anxiety we may feel if we’ve already put......

  
• 11.17.2023

  ‘Gardening Can Be Murder’ Book – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Nov 20, 2023

  I don’t think I’ve read a mystery novel since the “Nancy Drew” books of my long-ago childhood, though I will confess to having watched more than a few who-done-it TV series over the years, most of them from the BBC. ......

  
• 11.10.2023

  Eric Lee-Mader on Milkweeds – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Nov 13, 2023

  Most of us may automatically think “monarch” after hearing the word “milkweed,” or vice versa. And that’s in fact a critical and intimate relationship, the one between monarch butterflies and native milkweed plants.  But the genus Asclepias offers sustenance to......

  
• 11.03.2023

  Ken Druse on Fall Cleanup – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Nov 6, 2023

  Yes, it’s time or almost time to do some raking, and to dig the dahlias to stash – time to perform the rounds of the so-called “fall cleanup” and put the garden to bed.  But today Ken Druse and  I want......

  
• 10.27.2023

  Byron Martin on Citrus Houseplants – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Oct 30, 2023

  Are any of your houseplants edible? A new book by the owners of the beloved rare plant business called Logee’s Greenhouses suggests that we make room for some delicious candidates among our potted indoor plants, including a range of citrus.......

  
• 10.20.2023

  Cornell’s Natural Lawn – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Oct 23, 2023

  Reducing the footprint of our lawns has been a key environmental message for gardeners in recent years, since lawns lack biodiversity, and involve huge amounts of pollution between fertilizers, herbicides and the gas used in mowing. But what to cultivate......

  
• 10.13.2023

  Brandywine Valley du Pont Gardens – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Oct 16, 2023

  It’s hard to think of another place so rich with major gardens as the Brandywine Valley in Chester County, Pennsylvania, and an adjacent portion of Delaware. Five of those gardens have a historic connection—a family connection—as they were all by......

  
• 10.06.2023

  The Wild-ish Garden of Margaret Renkl – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Oct 9, 2023

  My how times have changed. That’s what I keep thinking looking around my own garden in recent years, and I’ve been struck by the same thought over and over as I read “The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year,” the......

  
• 09.29.2023

  The Real Organic Project – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Oct 2, 2023

  When you shop for food—whether produce or meat or eggs—and see a label that says “organic,” what do you think that means? At its most fundamental level, I guess I always thought it meant vegetables grown on the fields of......

  
• 09.22.2023

  Ross Gay on the Garden’s Delights – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Sept 25, 2023

  The words joy and delight figure prominently in writer Ross Gay’s work – and so do moments he spends in his garden, and descriptions of his relationship to plants.  Is that a coincidence — that the garden is a main character......

  
• 09.15.2023

  Marianne Willburn on Overwintering Tropicals – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Sept 18, 2023

  It’s not time quite yet for what I call the mad stash – storing those non-hardy plants for the winter that we wish to keep alive for another year of service – but it is time to make some plans......

  
• 09.08.2023

  Brad Herrick on Jumping Worms – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Sept 11, 2023

  The question “What do I do about the Asian jumping worms that are destroying my soil?” has outpaced what was the most common thing I was asked year in and out for decades as a garden writer—the relatively simple challenge......

  
• 08.24.2023

  Linda Lipsen on Pressed Plants – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Aug 28, 2023

  I saw news of a new book called “Pressed Plants” recently, and it got me thinking about my grandmother, and one of the many crafts she enjoyed way back when. Grandma made what she called “pressed flower pictures,” bits of......

  
• 08.17.2023

  Claudia West on Immersive Landscapes – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Aug 21, 2023

  Maybe seven or eight years ago, in a conversation with landscape designer Claudia West, she said a sentence that has really stuck with me, as she explained her approach to selecting and combining plants.  “Plants are the mulch,” Claudia said......

  
• 08.09.2023

  Michael Judd on Food Forests – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Aug. 14, 2023

  The term food forest, from the permaculture world, sounds big—like if I suggested you start one, you’d probably say, “I don’t have room for a forest of any kind.” But today’s guest bets that most of us who garden have room......

  
• 08.04.2023

  K Greene on Shallots – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – August 7, 2023

  I saw a video reel on social media the other day of a harvest of shallots, and it made me realize that I haven’t grown those delicious little Allium bulbs in forever—and who knows why.  The harvest video was on......

  
• 07.26.2023

  Craig LeHoullier on Ripe Tomatoes – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – July 31, 2023

  Around this time each summer I look forward to the onslaught of fresh tomatoes—while at the same time hoping against hope that what I call “tomato troubles” don’t reveal themselves and get the upper hand.  I’ve been hearing from lots......

  
• 07.19.2023

  Ken Druse on Lost Plants – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – July 24, 2023

  We gardeners all know the experience of loss: of plants that don’t make it, for one reason or another—from a tomato felled by disease in a too-humid summer to a venerable old tree taken out by a nasty winter storm.......

  
• 07.12.2023

  Harnek Singh on Succulent Stars – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – July 19, 2023

  Succulents: You probably already grow some perennial ones in your garden, and perhaps others that aren’t hardy are among your favorite houseplants. But what if some of those indoor types started playing seasonal roles in the garden, too? That’s what......

  
• 07.06.2023

  Ethan Kauffman on Natives at Stoneleigh – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – July 10, 2023

  Can a historic formal space become the home to a forward-thinking landscape of native plants? The team at Stoneleigh, a five-year-old public garden on an old estate in Villanova, Pennsylvania, says the answer is an emphatic yes, and their horticultural......

  
• 06.27.2023

  Erik Keller on the Garden as Therapy – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – July 3, 2023

  No doubt all of you who are listening, all you gardeners, would agree that interacting with plants, and with nature, has a restorative benefit—that it has the undeniable power to lift us up and make us feel better.  That idea—that......

  
• 06.23.2023

  Ken Druse on Summer Edits – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – June 26, 2023

  Summer has just officially arrived … and with it a whole new to-do list of tasks aimed at keeping the garden going in the best possible shape all season long. We’re succession sowing vegetables, of course, as the spinach and......

  
• 06.13.2023

  Noah Charney on Reading Your Land – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – June 19, 2023

  How well do you really know the piece of land on which you live and garden, or the bigger landscape context it sits within—that forms your neighborhood, perhaps? A new book I’ve been reading called “These Trees Tell a Story:......

  
• 06.08.2023

  Nancy Lawson on Weed-Fighting Natives – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – June 12, 2023

  When I spoke to naturalist and nature writer Nancy Lawson recently about her adventures in wildscaping at her Maryland garden, there was one topic in particular that I wanted to double back to, and dig in deeper: her tactics for fighting unwanted......

  
• 05.26.2023

  Ken Druse on Primula From Seed – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – May 29, 2023

  I was remarking to my friend Ken Druse earlier this spring about a garden I’d just visited, and how the stands of primulas in it made me jealous, and crave more more more. But only a few primrose varieties are......

  
• 05.14.2023

  A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – May 1, 2023 – Jenks Farmer on Pineapple Lilies

  I am crazy about pineapple lilies – bulbs in the genus Eucomis – and though in my Zone 5 garden they aren’t hardy, I can’t imagine a growing season without pots full of them. In his South Carolina garden and......

  
• 05.04.2023

  A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – May 8, 2023 – Frances Palmer on Dahlias

  Some of us plant a row or two of annuals for cutting, but Frances Palmer has taken the phrase “cutting garden” to the most delightful extreme. From the first spring bulbs to the final asters of fall, ceramic artist Frances......

  
• 04.19.2023

  A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – April 24, 2023 – Nancy Lawson on Wildscaping

  Our human-centric way of looking at things in the garden and tasting, hearing, seeing and touching things is just one person’s opinion, and hardly represents the consensus of all the living creatures whose home it is.  Today’s guest is naturalist......

  
• 04.12.2023

  A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – April 17, 2023 – Owen Wormser on Meadows

  The time is approaching for my annual pass with the tractor through my little meadow on the hill above my house, the one time each year I really intervene in it, by mowing. Meadow making is an exercise in patience,......

  
• 04.05.2023

  A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – April 10, 2023 – Purdue Plant Doctor

  As a garden writer, I get a lot of questions every year basically asking this: What’s wrong with my (fill in the blank) plant? An accurate diagnosis is the critical first step before taking any corrective action…but how do gardeners......

  
• 03.22.2023

  A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – March 27, 2023 – Marianne Willburn on Tropical Edibles

  Marianne Willburn appreciates the bold and often vertical element that some favorite tropical plants add to her temperate garden. But maybe best of all are the ones that also provide that something extra: ingredients for cooking, which is her other......

  
• 03.16.2023

  A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – March 20 2023 – Ken Druse on Making More Plants

  The days are longer and the light is strengthening—triggers that don’t just start to wake up our plants, indoors and out, but also get us gardeners going. The signals have my propagation-mad friend Ken Druse starting more seeds each week......