The Garden Mixer: A Gardening Podcast

They’re deer resistant, drought resistant, and boredom-resistant — and they’re not without controversy. Ornamental grasses might be the magic texture your garden has been missing all these years.

Whether you want to ‘blur and merge’ as per Grasses for Gardens and Landscapes author Neil Lucas, or ‘punch and soften’ as per the more violent of your two co-hosts, Marianne Willburn — using ornamental grasses strategically can help your garden relax and sway into summer, filling gaps, feathering edges, and giving you three-season architecture without the bagworms.

Join Leslie and Marianne as they share with listeners their top ten ornamental grasses and discuss why they are willing to risk censure and scorn for more than one of them.

Plus, Marianne confesses to a criminal act. And it’s not displaying her bare over-50 arms either.

Leslie’s criminal act this week is using the term “Tips and Tricks” before Marianne takes a sip of something that can help her cope with hearing it.

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Be sure to hit the subscribe button so we can keep you smiling while you hit the mess [your garden] out there.

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Garden Mixer |Podcast on Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Full Show Notes at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Garden Mixer Podcast’s Substack⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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You’d like to go on vacation. Your family wants you to go on vacation. But you don’t know how to leave your garden. So you don’t go on vacation.

Wrong answer.

You NEED a vacation. You just need to prep your garden and make it Vacay-Ready.

This week Leslie and Marianne dive into what it really takes to leave your garden without the guilt. From prepping your plants to prepping your mindset, they want to help you take a break without sacrificing your blooms.

Whether you’re heading to the beach or taking a long weekend right in the middle of the growing season, you can come home to a thriving garden. With the right prep, your beans will be just fine.

All this plus the puzzling but indisputable link between testicles, armpit hair, and tomatoes.

It's another wildly inappropriate episode of The Garden Mixer, so carpe your diems and get that garden Vacay-Ready!

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Be sure to hit the subscribe button so we can keep you smiling while you hit the mess [your garden] out there.

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Garden Mixer |Podcast on Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Full Show Notes at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Garden Mixer Podcast’s Substack⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Welcome back! The girls are rested, refreshed, reenergized, and ready to tackle the overgrown gardens that await them with the tools they love this week.

From can't-be-without pruners to surprising new finds, Leslie and Marianne dish the dirt on the implements that help them dig it.

Are brand names important? What’s a seckie? How do you pronounce Okasune? And what on earth is Marianne’s problem with the hori-hori and will the woman ever let it rest?

Apparently not.

Also up for discussion — herons, rabbits, the elusive golden shovel, and why these hard-working gardeners aren’t eating breakfast these days. Yep, it’s a random mix of wonderful and we’re so glad you’ve joined us.

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Be sure to hit the subscribe button so we can keep you smiling while you hit the mess [your garden] out there.

⁠⁠⁠⁠The Garden Mixer |Podcast on Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠

Full Show Notes at ⁠⁠⁠⁠The Garden Mixer Podcast’s Substack⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Waaaayy back when this podcast was just Leslie doing Into the Garden with Leslie, Marianne was a frequent flyer even though she was just a guest at that time. In this episode, Marianne and Leslie team up with Scott Beuerlein to talk about their "Dear Gardener" correspondence on Garden Rant.

Next week Leslie and Marianne, are back, tanned rested and ready for the summer garden and they will be talking about tools!

This week we reach into the archives to bring you the first ever time Leslie interviewed Marianne on her podcast Into the Garden with Leslie. You can tell by the stilted convo and awkward silences that we didn't really hit it off, and we've been faking it ever since.

Actually, we hit it off so well that as an apt preview of what was to come, we go completely off of whatever topic Leslie had planned and roam all over the garden.

Marianne and Leslie are taking a scheduled summer break, so there are no notes on Substack that correspond to this episode, and no video version either.

We do this because we know that absence makes the heart grow fonder. Back soon!

This week the girls mix dry humor and deep honesty with Doug Oster, Emmy award-winning garden broadcaster & author from Pittsburgh. This, unbeknownst to Marianne, makes him a Yinzer — and that does not mean he enjoys a Yingling from time to time.

For years, on television, radio, newspapers and social media, Doug has been an outspoken champion for organic gardening, and for the passion and personality of ordinary gardeners and the gardens they tend.

They'll discuss the importance of independent garden centers in helping to cultivate that personal touch, and dip into the changing demographics of gardeners across the nation from the perspective of three gardeners who have WAY too much dirt under their fingernails.

They’ll also touch on how garden media has changed, and which changes feel embraceable. (Hint: Leslie’s embracing everything.)

Join them as they go deep and sometimes a little dark — because killing the deer that just wiped out your lilies is going to leave you in a Game of Thrones frame of mind.

Deer. It’s what’s for dinner. At least at Marianne’s.

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Be sure to hit the subscribe button so we can keep you smiling while you hit the mess [your garden] out there.

⁠⁠⁠The Garden Mixer |Podcast on Spotify⁠⁠⁠

Full Show Notes at ⁠⁠⁠The Garden Mixer Podcast’s Substack⁠⁠⁠

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Follow us on Instagram ⁠⁠⁠@thegardenmixer⁠⁠⁠

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So. The garden is chaotic and you’ve either got guests coming, or you’re in danger of having an ever-so-mini breakdown each time you glance outside. How can you make it Bikini-Ready in a fairly short space of time?

The answer: you can’t. But you can definitely make it look decent in a one-piece.

This week, spurred on by one too many Ad-stagram promises to change your skin, hair, and body just in time for summer; AND an impending visit to Leslie’s garden by Marianne, the girls discuss some truly miraculous quick fixes to have you feeling better about the plant combos that didn’t gel, the deer ravaged hostas, and the obscene amount of ostrich fern taking over the beds.

You’d be surprised how much chaos can be contained by a few focused minutes and a bit of garden Spanx.

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Be sure to hit the subscribe button so we can keep you smiling while you hit the mess [your garden] out there.

⁠⁠The Garden Mixer |Podcast on Spotify⁠⁠

Full Show Notes at ⁠⁠The Garden Mixer Podcast’s Substack⁠⁠

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Follow us on Instagram ⁠⁠@thegardenmixer⁠⁠

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This week we decided to come clean and admit that, based on some of the amazingly detailed emails we’ve received since starting The Garden Mixer, our listeners are very much smarter than we are.

We’re dipping into a few of these [surprisingly polite] messages to bring their plant picks, techniques, and general wisdom to everyone.

Featured:

Garden writer Kathy Purdy from Upstate New York,

Paul Westervelt, Head Grower at Saunders Bros. in Virginia,

Tim Calkins, plantsman & galanthophile also from Virginia.

Matt Mattus, Senior Director of Horticulture for AHS

Are our listeners smarter than us? Oh hell yes.

(That should help to earn our explicit rating.)

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Be sure to hit the subscribe button so we can keep you smiling while you hit the mess [your garden] out there.

⁠The Garden Mixer |Podcast on Spotify⁠

Full Show Notes at ⁠The Garden Mixer Podcast’s Substack⁠

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Socials – Pick Your Platform:

Follow us on Instagram ⁠@thegardenmixer⁠

Indulge us on TikTok ⁠@the.garden.mixer⁠

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This week, the girls welcome Linda Vater to the Mix and try to stay focused on important topics like Marianne’s new topiary snail.

Linda Vater is a blogger, garden designer, stylist andlifestyle influencer with a penchant for grabbing shears and a gin and tonic and going after defenseless shrubs who don’t know how much they’re going to love their new look.

She has gardened for decades in Oklahoma City and is nationally known for inspiring others to shine a garden lens on everything from what’s for dinner to what you’re picking up at a thrift store.

Topiary, downsizing, and seeing the extraordinary in ordinary plants are all in the mix this week with Linda.  Join us!

_______________________________________

Be sure to hit the subscribe button so we can keep you smiling while you hit the mess [your garden] out there.

The Garden Mixer |Podcast on Spotify

Full Show Notes at The Garden Mixer Podcast’s Substack

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Socials – Pick Your Platform:

Follow us on Instagram @thegardenmixer

Indulge us on TikTok @the.garden.mixer

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This week we're mixing up indoor/outdoor lines with a #houseplantvacation.

Do you allow your hard-working houseplants a little time off during the growing season to be the plants they were born to be? Just as we could all use a little time soaking up the sun, getting the drinks in, and feeling fresh air on our faces, our houseplants could too.

What a shame that time outside doesn’t make us look years younger like our plants.

Marianne shares her thoughts as the author of Tropical Plants and How to Love Them, and Leslie shares her desperation as someone who wants a clean & beautiful house at the beginning of spring.

Subscribe at The Garden Mixer Substack for full show notes, links and laughs.