The Garden Question

In between being a stay-at-home Mom, volunteer, writer, photographer, and speaker Meg Cowden has been a full-time gardener for 25 years.

Her first vegetable garden crop was tomatoes grown in 5-gallon buckets in the city. Now she gardens in the western suburbs of Minneapolis.

Her garden now is close to a quarter acre. Growing fruits, vegetables and  annual flowering plants.

Meg’s background in natural resource management led to her pursuit of succession gardening and interest in pushing the growing season on both extremes.

Her goal is to grow as much shelf stable food as possible for year-round consumption.

Meg’s website: Seed to Fork

Meg’s Book: Plant Grow Harvest Repeat: Grow a Bounty of Vegetables, Fruits, and Flowers by Mastering the Art of Succession Planting

Meg’s garden guild: The Modern Garden Guild

Jason Reeves knows plants and loves talking about them.

He is a research horticulturist and curator for the University of Tennessee Gardens, at the West Tennessee Ag Research and Education Center in Jackson.

He evaluates thousands of new and unique plants each year through out his imaginative garden art displays.

Jason travels the world speaking at gardening symposiums and serving as a contributing editor to “Fine Gardening” magazine.

While growing up on a farm he fell in love with the plant world.

He received his Master’s degree in Ornamental Horticulture and Landscape Design from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

His past experiences include work at the Opryland Conservatories, Missouri Botanical Garden, Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania, and in private gardens in New Zealand.

Facebook: Jason Reeves - in the Garden

                   UT Gardens Jackson

How would you like to impact the environment in a positive way with your garden? In this episode we talk with Dr. Andy Pulte about having fun and succeeding in a dynamic ecological vibrant garden.

Andy grew up in the nursery industry in Grand Island, Nebraska.

He received his Ph.D. in plant sciences from the University of Tennessee.

He is now on the faculty in the same department teaching, advising, and coordinating UT’s plant sciences undergraduate program.

You will find him feeding his passion for people and plants by traveling extensively and speaking regularly.

Over his career he has contributed to a variety of gardening publications and hosted a gardening radio show.

He is an internationally certified arborist.

Andy gardens with his family in a residential community north of Knoxville TN where he seeks out unusual plants for his home garden to inspire questions from those who visit.

The Southeastern Grasslands Institute

Dogwood Arts Trails & Garden

Learn plant Identification:

Plant Sleuth YouTube

Plant Sleuth Instagram

Pam Farley talks about what it takes to grow a high yield container food garden in this episode. Her successful methods has produce many a good meal for her family.

Since grade school Pam has been gardening and writing. 

These two interests collided in 2009, when she created the website BrownThumbMama.com. There she has documents her huge list of home and garden tips.

Millions of readers from around the world visit her site to learn about vegetable gardening, easy recipes, and making a nontoxic home.

Pam is the author of The First-Time Gardener: Container Food Gardening

In this episode we talk with Nancy & Pierre Moitrier about how they approach garden creation as a wife and husband team.

Why inspiring your garden soul is important to them as they design and build an outdoor space.

Bringing life to your garden by harvesting natural materials to build one-of-a-kind whimsical structures known as French Folly.

A whimsical world in the garden will open up to you as they talk about ole world antique troughs.  

Listen to the scheme of how these lost and forgotten common garden and farm items are artistically applied to the garden. 

When Noelle Johnson arrived in the desert she kill every plant she owned. She fancied herself a green thumb, but she wasn’t from around here, the desert.

She was determined to succeed and earn her B.S. degree in Urban Horticulture from Arizona State University.

For a few years she dodged golf balls from the tees and fairways while designing and caring for the plants around the course. Which included hundreds of trees, shrubs, perennials, and yes, even cactus.

Noelle is a horticulturist, landscape consultant, garden instructor, author, and popular speaker who lives and gardens in the Phoenix, AZ area.

She is now popularly known as AZ Plant Lady®.

Noelle teaches and inspires desert-dwellers of the many opportunities for creating and maintaining a beautiful outdoor space that thrives in a hot, dry climate in her new book Dry Climate Gardening.

Growing organic vegetables is Susan Mulvihill’s passion.

She has learned many lessons from her consistent gardening of 5 acres in Spokane, Washington with her husband Bill. Their large raised-bed garden yields some mighty fine edible crops.

Always curious and researching answers to their garden challenges. Susan loves sharing her findings through numerous outlets.

Her newest book The Vegetable Garden Problem Solver Handbook promises to be another best seller. The book will help you identify and manage diseases and other common problems on edible plants.

It is a great companion for her best seller The Vegetable Garden Pest Handbook. She is also the co-author of the Northwest Gardener’s Handbook.

Susan and Bill’s Garden has been featured on the popular public television program, “Growing a Greener World” (episode 809 and 1202), hosted by Joe Lamp’l.

Helping other gardeners be successful has driven Susan to produce and host over 400 episodes on her weekly YouTube channel Susan in the Garden.

She is the longtime garden columnist for the Sunday edition of The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington.

Been a Spokane County Master Gardener for over 20 years and is a nationally known Garden Speaker.

Her website can be found at SusansintheGarden.com and contains resources for organic pest control along with many other guides designed for gardening success.

Susan has been featured previously on The Garden Question Podcast in episode 047 - Developing Your Battle Strategy for This Year’s Bug Wars

Toni Gattone believes there is always another way to get it done with adaptive garden tools and mindset.

She believes that gardening is one of the healthiest activities for anyone.

In this episode we talk about how being resilient and resourceful are the keys to not giving up on gardening.

When to start and who needs Toni’s successful techniques in using adaptive gardening..

Toni Gattone is the author of the book:  The Lifelong Gardener: Garden with Ease and Joy at Any Age

Toni is a passionate gardener and entrepreneur with a passion to help people become resilient in their garden and their everyday lives.

She is a Master Gardener and frequently writes and speaks on topics of adaptive gardening and edible landscapes

In this episode we talk about the future of boxwood in the garden, a visit to Bunny Mellon’ Garden, and the return of the Norton Grape to Virginia with Pat Reilly.

Pat educates homeowners and landscape professionals. Teaching them how to select, care and thrive the plants of their gardens.

She is the horticulture outreach specialist for NewGen Boxwoods and Saunders Brothers, inc. and you’ll also find her at Merrifield Garden Center in Northern Virginia.

She has been an active Master Gardener volunteer with Virginia Cooperative Extension since 1995.

Pat is happy to be breaking in a new garden where the bulb planter will actually work with her husband and two old rescued Golden Retrievers.

She also tells stories and pours wine at a local winery.

In this episode I talk with Kathy Jentz about groundcovers and how they may solve many of your garden issues.

We explore how to make wise selections when seeking the perfect groundcover.

Kathy is a life-long gardener.

She believes that growing plants should be stress-free and enjoyable.

Her philosophy is inspiration over perspiration and is on a mission to turn black thumbs green.

Kathy’s newest book Groundcover Revolution is a powerhouse of garden wisdom.

She also co-authored The Urban Garden: 101 Ways to Grow Food and Beauty.

Kathy Jentz is the editor and publisher of the award-winning Washington Gardener Magazine, based in Washington, DC.

She also hosts the popular weekly GardenDC Podcast, which was recently named Best DC Podcast.