MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN

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... Read More ›

Until I met today’s guest, James Young, early in 2025, it hadn’t really registered in my brain that some of the familiar annuals I grow from seed, like cosmos and marigolds and even purple basil, could also double as dye... Read More ›

I’m letting myself be transported away from the winter scene outside my window, burying my nose not in the snow but instead in the spring-into-summer possibilities depicted in seed-catalog pages. I have familiar, favorite varieties I grow every year –... Read More ›

I put out my first bird feeder of the season around Thanksgiving or so each year and get the party started. But there’s more to feeding the birds than just filling the feeders, like how to keep them safe in... Read More ›

The earliest references to people cultivating trees date back to 6000 B.C., and there are records of tree-care tactics in the Bible, too, and from ancient Egypt. These person-to-tree interventions were the start of the science and art of arboriculture,... Read More ›

Not so many years ago, relative to the history of horticulture, even a now-ubiquitous phrase like “pollinator plant” wasn’t part of our everyday gardening language and mindset the way it is today. Our collective consciousness about the importance of native... Read More ›

If I say: quick, name a holiday flower, you might first answer poinsettia. But the poinsettia wasn’t always synonymous with this time of year, today’s guest tells me – like once upon a time more than a century ago the... Read More ›

I can’t imagine life without my admittedly oddball collection of houseplants, many of whom have been with me for several decades already. So I was delighted recently to meet today’s guest, Rob Moffitt, whose Los Angeles-based botanical design studio specializes... Read More ›

When I bought my place decades ago it was nestled in a tiny piece of former farmland with a little 1880s house and no garden. There were, however, five giant apple trees, at least a century old even then –... Read More ›

Once upon a time the seed catalogs came out around the start of the New Year, but these days the very first ones may arrive by Thanksgiving, and their listings may be posted online even earlier. So I guess what... Read More ›

Besides their native-heavier plant palette and looser style, ecologically designed landscapes have another difference: The way we maintain them is not the same as with more traditional, ornamentally-focused gardens. I’m asked again and again by gardeners who have planted a meadow-like... Read More ›

Today’s guest didn’t have to convince me to be wild about woodpeckers, because I already am—utterly so. These charismatic, hardworking birds make oversized ecological contributions to the environments they inhabit and to the other creatures that they share them with... Read More ›

Every gardener has certainly heard the rallying cry each recent autumn to “leave the leaves”, invoking us to go gentler with our cleanup to support a diversity of beneficial invertebrates who call the fallen leaves their home.  Now a recently... Read More ›

Kevin West begins his newest book, called “The Cook’s Garden,” like this:  “This is a book about flavor,” he writes. “It is a book about how to become a better cook by stepping into the garden.”  His is not just... Read More ›

Almost 10 years ago on this program, I talked about making sourdough starter with today’s guest, Sarah Owens, on the occasion of the publication her book called “Sourdough.” Now a 10th anniversary edition of the James Beard Award-winning book is about... Read More ›

Most of us have something to hide – in our gardens, that is, some view of something we’d like to erase. It could be the telephone pole across the street that we can see from certain spots, or the neighbor’s... Read More ›

The “what plant goes where?” aspect of gardening is the hardest part for a lot of us. And as we increasingly shift our plant palette and gardening style to more native and ecologically focused, decisions about design might seem even... Read More ›

In recent growing seasons, the “new normal” of a changing climate has sometimes been making me feel like my Northeastern garden has relocated farther to the South. So maybe that’s part of what caught my attention when I saw news... Read More ›

The fall bird migration is under way, and that means the cast of characters we’re seeing and hearing in the garden is changing quickly – as we say goodbye for now to some species, and keep a close eye out... Read More ›

In the age of climate change, my guest on today’s reprise edition of the podcast told me, we can expect “more poison ivy and meaner poison ivy,” and I’d say from what I see growing around me and the rashes... Read More ›

Today’s guest and I were sitting having a cup of tea together recently and talking abou guess what? Plants! What came up pretty fast was how lately we both sometimes cringe at the results to our online searches about one... Read More ›

Patrick McDuffee believes that everyone should have at least one scented geranium on their windowsill year-round, for an on-demand invigorating whiff of fragrance, or to admire its colorful flowers…or to make a homebrewed cup of herbal tea from its leaves.... Read More ›

The last time I spoke to Alla Olkhovska from her home and garden in Ukraine, she confessed to growing about 120 different types of Clematis—a number that after seeing her recently published e-book “Clematis Passports,” which profiles 140 kinds, I suspect... Read More ›

On the weekend of Aug. 8 and 9, the beloved Seed Savers Exchange will celebrate its 50th anniversary of preserving our seed heritage with festivities at its homebase in Decorah, Iowa. I wanted to celebrate Seed Savers here a little, too,... Read More ›

For each of us, it’s probably safe to bet that our most familiar piece of the natural world is the outdoor space right beside the place we live – our own yard. But how well do we really know even... Read More ›