While most of us focus on keeping deer from browsing our gardens, Brad Roeller actually once managed what was called a Deer Browse Garden as part of a 10-year research study to learn more about what these big herbivores do, and don't do, when offered the opportunity—and how different strategies affect their behavior. Tips for gardening where deer are present is today's topic.   Brad has held top horticultural positions at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York, at the New York Botanical Garden, and on a private estate. He's currently a trustee at Innisfree Garden in Millbrook, where he'll give a virtual talk on Wednesday afternoon, February 23, on effective solutions for dealing with deer.

MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN

Deer With Brad Roeller-A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach February 21, 2022

There's an old expression in gardening, a folksy piece of advice that states: "Don't fight the site."  James Golden has been guided by a more nuanced version of that idea in creating a much praised garden, a wildish, unexpected landscape in New Jersey called Federal Twist. It was even featured on the hit BBC program “Gardeners' World" with Monty Don. I've been reading James's new book about Federal Twist, and just like that old garden adage, a lot of his philosophy of garden making is about acceptance, about letting the place tell you what it wants to be.  James Golden came to garden making later in life, when he was preparing to retire from a writing job in the corporate world. His new book is “The View from Federal Twist: A New Way of Thinking About Gardens, Nature, and Ourselves.” 

A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – February 14, 2022 – James Golden’s Wild Garden

It's hard to name another genus of shrub that's more beloved by gardeners than Hydrangea. But with the overwhelming popularity of Asian species, like the big blue mop heads and summer into fall Hydrangea paniculata types, where do hydrangeas fit in as more and more gardeners favor native plants, and especially ones that support pollinators and other beneficial insects? The native plant experts at Mt. Cuba Center in Delaware have just released a report on the results of a five-year trial, that focused mostly on an important native species, Hydrangea arborescens, and what both gardeners and pollinators have to say about its range of cultivars.  The last time Sam Hoadley visited the show, we compared the dizzying range of cultivars and species of echinacea. Today's topic is hydrangeas. Sam is the manager of horticultural research at Mt. Cuba Center, a long time native plant garden and research site, where he trialed 29 species in cultivars. Before joining Mt. Cuba, he was lead horticulturist for Longwood Gardens Hillside Garden, and he received his degree in sustainable horticulture from University of Vermont. 

A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – February 7, 2022 – Sam Hoadley on Native Hydrangeas

When I saw news of an upcoming webinar about invasive plants listed on the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society's website, I knew I wanted to sign up and listen in. And also that I wanted to talk to the presenter, who founded a business in 2016 to help private and public land owners with the remediation of Japanese knotweed, multiflora rose, Oriental bittersweet, and other thugs that are crowding out native plants and destroying wildlife habitat. Invasives are our topic today.  Our guest is Christian Allyn, who founded Invasive Plant Solutions when he was still pursuing a double major in horticulture and economics at the University of Connecticut. Rather than just watch the continuing ravaging of natural habitats by invasive species in Connecticut and Massachusetts where he practices, he decided to do something, to make it his career path.  "This does not have to be our reality," he says, "We can choose to restore nature." 

A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – January 31, 2022 – Christian Allyn on Invasives

As regular readers and listeners know, I've had a longtime interest in the organic seed movement, especially farm-based companies that grow at least some of the seed they sell and are proud to tell you where they source the rest. I like to know where my seed comes from.  Lately I've had the pleasure of getting to know a number of new-to-me companies, including Truelove Seeds of Philadelphia, whose website promises culturally important, open-pollinated seeds to people “longing for their taste of home.” Today's guest is Owen Taylor, one of its co-founders. With Christopher Bolden-Newsome, Owen Taylor started Truelove Seeds, which offers a diversity of vegetable, flower and herb seed from more than 50 small-scale urban and rural farmers committed to community food sovereignty, cultural preservation, and sustainable agriculture, and who each share in the sales price of every seed packet sold.

A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – January 24, 2022 – Owen Taylor on Ancestral Seeds

The other night I hosted an online class about shade gardening, featuring Ken Druse, whom I met in 1992-ish, almost exactly 30 years ago to the day, when I interviewed him on the publication of his book “The Natural Shade Garden.” In 2015, Ken wrote a whole new shade book appropriately called “The New Shade Garden,” so I guess you can tell that shade gardening has been a consistent theme of his work in his own gardening efforts, and it's our topic today.  You all know Ken, author and photographer of 20 garden books and a daring gardener and plant propagator. He spoke to me from his garden among the trees in New Jersey, to talk shade.  

A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – January 17, 2022 – Ken Druse on Shade Garden Advice

Did you maybe get or give a cookbook or two for a holiday gift? Well, hopefully you can make room on the shelf for another couple of good ones. Our expert guide who's been browsing and cooking from the latest crop is Alexandra Stafford, aka Ali, who has some goodies to share—perfect fodder for another January of sticking close to home as I know a lot of us are again with cooking as one of our mainstays of comfort and creativity.   Ali Stafford, author of the essential cookbook “Bread Toast Crumbs” and creator of the website alexandracooks.com, is here to highlight some of the recent cookbook titles that she's finding irresistible. They range from topics like cooking more vegetable-centric means, to creative use of grains, and yes, even more ideas for delicious cookies. 

A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – January 10, 2022 – Ali Stafford on Latest Cookbooks

Uh-oh, now I've learned that there's another plant I didn't think I could grow in my Northern garden, but it sounds like I can. Hello, Crinum lilies, you gorgeous size-XL bulbs that I thought were the domain of Southern gardeners only, and not for me.  A new book about them by Jenks Farmer is teaching me otherwise, and making me want to order some bulbs.   Augustus Jenkins Farmer, aka Jenks Farmer, is a longtime horticulturist and garden designer who's former director of Riverbank Botanical Garden in South Carolina and author of a couple of previous books. These days, he is, true to his surname, also a farmer specializing in growing and selling crinum lilies and a few other goodies from his organically managed 18th-century South Carolina farm. His new self-published book is called “Crinum: Unearthing the History and Cultivation of the World's Biggest Bulb.”   

A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – January 3, 2022 – Jenks Farmer on Crinum Lilies

"To discover and share knowledge about plants and their environment in order to preserve and enrich life." – Missouri Botanical Garden mission Founded in 1859, the Missouri Botanical Garden is the nation's oldest botanical garden in continuous operation and a National Historic Landmark. The Garden is a center for botanical research and science education, as well as an oasis in the city of St. Louis. The Garden offers 79 acres of beautiful horticultural display, including a 14-acre Japanese strolling garden, historic architecture, and one of the world's largest collections of rare and endangered flora. For over 158 years, the Garden has been an oasis in the city, a place of beauty and family fun—and also a center for education, science, and conservation.

A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – December 27, 2021 – Missouri Botanical on Fraser Fir

Being an ever-better gardener means staying open to change. As long as we've both been gardening, my friend Joe Lamp'l was saying to me the other day, we're still evolving, still learning lessons every single growing season. We were comparing notes on the phone about the season we just each put to bed, Joe in Atlanta and me up north in New York State, and decided to bring you into the conversation about what 2021 taught us and what we've got planned 2022, in case our aha's can help you be a better gardener too.  Joe is the longtime creator and host of the public-television program “Growing A Greener World” and also of the “Joe Gardener Podcast.”  As if he needed more to do, in recent years, he's created something else, the Joe Gardener Online Gardening Academy, a curriculum of virtual courses on topics from seeds to tomato, pests and weeds, to soil science and lots more. 

A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – December 20, 2021 – Joe Lampl on Lessons Learned

When Ken Druse and I talked on the program a couple of weeks ago about putting our tools away for the winter, all cleaned and oiled, one part we failed to mention: We're both eyeing some new tools, too, for the year ahead.  All of them would make great gifts, we think, so that's today's topic: stuff we love or covet, for gifting or treating yourself to. 'Tis the season and all that, right? So ho, ho, ho.

A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – December 13, 2021 – Ken Druse on Garden Gifts

I'm eyeing a vintage glass cookie jar I haven't used in years, and a big glass snifter, too, that's been sitting idle on a shelf in the sideboard for ages. And I'm thinking terrariums, and I'm thinking holiday centerpiece, or maybe a gift or two. Are you feeling crafty? Today's guest has expert how-to and design help for creating tiny landscapes under glass.  Patricia Buzo started her terrarium design business, Doodle Bird Terrariums, in 2008, and sells her creations on Etsy. She's also author of the recent book, “A Family Guide to Terrariums for Kids,” which is suited to inspiring would-be terrarium makers of all ages—even me. 

A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – December 6, 2021 – Patricia Buzo on Terrariums

Some of the most beautiful and intricate creatures in the garden are not plants at all. A diversity of lichens are showing off right now on tree bark and branches, on stones, on unpainted garden furniture and even soil, more visible since many of the garden's plants have quieted down visually for their dormant season. Let's go on a virtual lichen walk with lichenologist Jessica Allen, co-author of a new book on the subject. Jessica Allen is an Assistant Professor of Integrative Plant Biology at Eastern Washington University. And before that she pursued her PhD at New York Botanical Garden in a joint program with the City University of New York. At NYBG she met lichenologist James Lendemer, and years later, when she conceived of creating the new book, “Urban Lichens: A Field Guide for Northeastern North America,” she invited him to collaborate, as they have continued to do on lichen research work over the years.

A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – November 29, 2021 – Jessica Allen on Lichens

Author Marta McDowell, a gardener and landscape designer in contemporary New Jersey, has an enduring passion for digging into history, particularly into noted authors and their gardens—what she calls the “connection between the pen and the trowel.” She's written books from that vantage point on Emily Dickinson, Beatrix Potter and Laura Ingalls Wilder, and now her latest is on the prolific author Frances Hodgson Burnett, author of the classic “The Secret Garden.”  Marta McDowell also lectures extensively, and teaches landscape history and horticulture at New York Botanical Garden. She's here today to talk about the subject of her latest book, “Unearthing The Secret Garden: The Plants And Places That Inspired Frances Hodgson Burnett.”

A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – November 22, 2021 – Marta McDowell on a Secret Garden

It's been a strangely mild fall so far in the Northeast, where Ken Druse and I both garden. But as some recent overnight freezes served as a reminder: Get the must-do chores done or else, because who knows when the weather will lower the boom for good.  On our lists, still: collecting some seeds of natives to sow later and cleaning and preparing tools for storage; lifting tender bulbs and tubers to stash; where to overwinter the nursery pots of things we bought that never found their permanent home in the ground (oops). Ken, author of 20 garden books and an old friend, is back today to help with the countdown, to getting the garden really tucked in for the winter ahead, and especially to remind himself and me and all of us not to get lulled into procrastination, even if it has been in the 60s some days here the last week. 

A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – November 15, 2021 – Ken Druse on Last Fall Chores

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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