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 even sold in local garden centers, and if you really want to create a dramatic swath of the diminutive plants ... well, that would add up to quite an investment.  As I was ranting my text buzzed to alert me there was a message, and there was a photo from Ken of a flat of his just-emerged primula seedlings—hundreds of them, that he’d successfully winter-sown outdoors. All for the price of a couple of seed packets. Learn how he did it and other things you can sow that way.  

MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN

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

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 the ones he makes for design clients, today’s guest can use them even more lavishly, as perennials, in beds and even meadows. Eucomis, no matter where you garden, are today’s topic with Jenks Farmer, a longtime horticulturist and garden designer. He is also a writer, with several books to his credit and more to come, and founder of Jenks Farmer, Plantsman, which makes gardens for clients and is also a mail-order nursery specializing in unusual bulbs. 

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

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 Palmer's Connecticut Garden is a nonstop harvest. No flower gets more of the prime real estate in her beds than dahlias, and she grows hundreds of dahlia plants each year.  Frances Palmer is a well-known ceramist and gardener, author of the 2020 book “Life in the Studio,” and creator of a popular Instagram account, too. We talked about growing great dahlias—and some of her favorites and her go-to sources. 

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

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 Nancy Lawson, whom you may know as “The Humane Gardener,” which is also the title of her previous book. She has a new one out called “Wildscape” that asks us to adjust our senses to take into account everyone out there whose world it is—everyone else whose world it is and was before we intervened.  Nancy Lawson is a naturalist and a habitat consultant based in Maryland who promotes animal-friendly plant strategies and challenges us to sharpen our awareness that we're not alone out there. 

Wildscape With Nancy Lawson-A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach April 24, 2023

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, and restraint, and in accepting that it has a life of its own, it seems to me, and I wanted to talk about all that with someone who makes meadows as his profession—Owen Wormser, whose popular 2020 book “Lawns Into Meadows: Growing a Regenerative Landscape” is just out in a new second edition.  Meadows are not an overnight project, nor are they something that remains static and unchanging. Landscape designer Owen Wormser of Abound Design, his firm based in Western Massachusetts, talked about the life of a meadow, and its maintenance. 

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

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 get one, and then where do they get guidance on what to do next?  The creators of the online Purdue Plant Doctor that does just that—plus offers possible solutions—are here today. Two Purdue professors, entomologist Cliff Sadof and plant pathologist Janna Beckerman, collaborated on the recent enhancements to the Purdue Plant Doctor online tool at PurduePlantDoctor dot com, and they offered advice on how to sharpen our diagnostic skills and learn to do the homework it takes to plot a course of action when trouble strikes. 

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

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 passion besides gardening. I talked to Marianne about growing tender edible ornamentals, from turmeric and gingers to lemongrass and more.  Marianne, a longtime garden writer who gardens in Virginia, is a contributing editor to the collaborative blog Garden Rant, and is also the author of the 2021 book “Tropical Plants and How to Love them: Building a Relationship with Heat-Loving Plants When You Don’t Live in the Tropics.” I’m so glad she’s here today to guide us on which of all those tempting tropicals at the garden center to indulge in for visual and culinary enjoyment. 

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

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 and looking around the landscape and the houseplant-filled sunroom for some chances to make more plants, his favorite pastime. Ken is author and photographer of 20 garden books, including one on plant propagation, and is a daring plant propagator himself. Together since 2021, we've co-hosted the Virtual Garden Club, a series of online classes about our favorite subject: plants. Ken gardens in New Jersey, mostly in the shade.

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

Today’s guest says you can tell a lot about a tree by the company it keeps – from unseen microbes to fungi, countless insects and other arthropods, to vertebrates like birds, squirrels, and even porcupines. From soil life around their roots to the action up in their canopies, trees are swarming with life, and their diverse community of companions is our topic. Dr. James Nardi is a research scientist in the School of Integrative Biology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and the author and illustrator of several previous books. His latest is “The Hidden Company That Trees Keep: Life From Treetops to Root Tips,” and I am happy he’s joined me to talk about it. 

A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – March 13 2023 – Jim Nardi on the World of Trees

Could your houseplants use a tuneup after a hard winter indoors? I know mine will need it, from re-potting, to light pruning, to full scale rejuvenation in some cases, so I wanted to get expert advice. Today's guest has been growing houseplants since age 5, and the last 25 years he's been doing that not just at home, but also in historic Longwood Gardens Conservatory in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, where he's the conservatory manager.  In 25 years working in the conservatory at Longwood Gardens, Karl Gercens estimates he's seen more than a million pots of display plants, many of them species we think of as houseplants, move through its galleries as different seasonal shows were staged. Each one has to be exceptional to make the grade, the best varieties and grown to perfection. So I know he has the answers on both fronts on which plants to choose and how to care for them. 

A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach March 6, 2023 – Karl Gercens on Houseplant Tuneups

Each year the powers that be in the horticulture industry declare what the trends are—what color is “in” and what design styles we’re all meant to adhere to, and what plant is hot—or not. Today’s guest and I beg to differ, and have decided to do some trend declarations of our own ... from big bold perennials to why you should learn to propagate and share some plants.  Dr. Jared Barnes is an Associate Professor of Horticulture at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas, and the creator of the Plant-ed blog and e-newsletter, and the monthly Plantastic Podcast. He has been gardening since about age 5, and I’m so glad to welcome him here today to do some forecasting together. 

A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – February 27, 2023 – Jared Barnes on Garden Trends

. It’s probably the question I am asked most: Gardeners want to go wilder and use more native plants to create habitat. But how do they figure out which plants, since it’s not one size fits all regions, or even different locations within a region...and choosing as we mostly do by hardiness zone isn’t going to get the ecological job done. Help!  Benjamin Vogt has just published a new book that takes us through prescriptive steps to get started in natural garden design. He is the owner of Monarch Designs LLC, a prairie-based design firm specializing in natural landscapes, and the book is “Prairie Up: An Introduction to Natural Garden Design.”  

Natural Design With Ben Vogt-A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach February 20, 2023

Like any gardener looking ahead to another growing season, I’m deep into the seed catalogs, dreaming of things to come. But many seeds also offer us a window to look back in time by telling us their stories, which are also the stories of the people who grew them before us, and the places those people and seeds have journeyed from.  I have a special affection for catalogs that celebrate seeds with such histories to share. Ujamaa Seeds, founded in 2021, is one such place, and one of its founders is here to talk about “seeds as vessels of cultural heritage,” as they refer to them.  Bonnetta Adeeb, a retired educator, is President of Steam Onward, Inc., a nonprofit dedicated to increasing the number of minority and under-served youth pursuing higher education in STEM-related fields. In 2020, she founded the Ujamaa Cooperative Farming Alliance, a collective of BIPOC growers, farmers, and gardeners who cultivate and distribute heirloom seeds and grow culturally meaningful crops ... and in 2021 the Ujamaa Seeds online catalog that’s our subject today was born.  

Ujamaa Seeds With Bonnetta Adeeb – A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach – February 6, 2023

Promises of less work with more garden productivity often raise my suspicions, perhaps sounding too good to be true—except when the subject is no-dig gardening.  The no-dig method of caring for our vegetable beds, which today's guest, Charles Dowding, has popularized, is not just good for maximizing output while minimizing labor, but also of great benefit to the soil and the greater environment. I learned more about how to get started from Charles.  Charles Dowding is often called the guru of no-dig gardening, which he practices today in his organic market garden in Somerset, in Southwest England. He began experimenting with no-dig in 1982 and, over the years since, in his many books and in person and online teaching, including his massive YouTube channel, Charles has brought countless people into the no-dig fold.  His most recent book is “No Dig: Making and Managing a Vegetable Garden Without Tilling.” 

A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – January 30, 2023 – Charles Dowding on No-Till Gardening

If you think you know what a cucumber is, think again. Spend even five minutes on the website of The Cucumber Shop, a passion project of today’s cucumber-mad guest Jay Tracy, and you will realize that you don’t. At all. The incredible diversity of cucumbers is our topic today.  California-based Jay Tracy is a teacher, and a father of four teens—and also the person behind the collection of exceptional and unusual cucumbers called The Cucumber Shop, a mail order seed catalog he created about 10 years ago and that evolved into cucumbershop dot com in 2019. 

A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – January 23, 2023 – Jay Tracy on Crazy Cucumbers

A WAY TO GARDEN is the horticultural incarnation of Margaret Roach

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MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN

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