The Garden Mixer

Every gardener has them. The plant that ate the house, the catalog seduction that ended in tears, the tree you loved that didn’t love you. Regrets are how gardeners learn — or in Marianne’s case, how they beat themselves up while learning. Leslie chose the topic. Marianne suffered through it. Both of them had more material than an hour could possibly cover. Welcome to a guided tour through the tax...

Deadheading, do we or don't we? The answer, as you expected, is complicated. And Leslie and Marianne want to dive into the nuance on this week’s One More Sip. In fact they’re going to discuss a lot of heinous herbaceous amputations in the name of beauty, such as Chelsea chopping, tiered pruning, and post-pruning. Why does it work? And when doesn’t it? And do you really have the patience to sni...

America has a hydrangea problem. In the best possible way. They’re consistently among the best-selling flowering shrubs in the country, they colonize every garden center and big box supercenter from May to August, and, if you don’t have a deer problem, you’re likely to succumb to the latest plump, end-of-aisle offering every time you go out to buy some milk. Erin Schanen , The Impatient Gardener,...

Alliums are more than just big purple lollipops — though those are magnificent and need no apologies. This episode covers the full arc of the genus: from the early-season small species to the big June globes, through the alien-landed wonders of late spring and early summer, into the summer-blooming perennial types that changed how many gardeners think about late-season color. Whether or not Leslie...

HACK YOUR POTS: SMART PLANTS. PERFECT PLACEMENT It’s prime container gardening season, and everywhere gardeners are spending more than they should to achieve the dream of pots that stop people in their tracks and make their neighbors slightly jealous. But as anyone who has watched a lovingly assembled pot turn into a crispy disappointment knows — it’s not quite as simple as thriller, spiller, fill...

Before “microclimates” became a gardening buzzword, Leslie and Marianne were already having hot flashes in the garden. 🔥🌿 In this vintage One More Sip episode of The Garden Mixer, we talk about: • hot vs cool pockets in the garden • why some plants fry in summer and freeze in spring • raised beds, slopes, walls, and heat traps • tropicals, hostas, wisteria heartbreak, and elephant ears • Thomas...

HIGH IMPACT, LOW EFFORT FLOWERS THAT DO THE WORK FOR YOU   When the growing season is moving at breakneck speed, an easy win in the form of copious, gorgeous, hey-I-forgot-about-THOSE! flowers is not only cherished, but longed for. Even gardeners who insist on making things more difficult for themselves (ahem…Marianne?) can enjoy the guilty pleasure of high impact, low effort blooms that do a disp...

Flamboyant, sophisticated, blousy and beautiful - the peony tops the favorites chart of so many gardeners (and non-gardeners), that we had to devote a spring episode to them. They are delicate, but tough, and can live for up to a century -– so it makes sense to figure out what you want and where you want it before you plant one. Leslie & Marianne start that conversation with their favorites to...

Leslie and Marianne have ground to cover today. And possibly, so do you. Spring hits, everything wakes up and suddenly your garden looks like it’s got a bad case of bedhead. Bare spots and awkward tendrils abound. What can pull everything together and literally connect the dots? Our suggestion is a strategic toupee in the form of a good ground cover that also protects the soil, cools the roots, &a...

Just when you thought winter would never end, spring comes and clobbers you with seeds, weeds, and a list that just won’t quit. Cue the panic. There is a TON to do — so how do we prioritize what’s important, what’s inconvenient, and what’s seriously not getting touched for a couple months? Leslie and Marianne thought that the best person to tell them was friend and Founding Mixer Erin Schanen, The...

Absolute certainties make Marianne’s Spidey senses start to tingle; Leslie simply ignores absolutes and does her own thing. Which means Leslie would have been much more fun in high school. But where do they come down on the native/non-native debate? Bouncing off a recent article in GardenRant , where Marianne laid out the development of a powerful movement in US horticulture, the girls dig into th...

It’s that time of year when we put blade to wood and help our shrubs and trees to become the best versions of themselves.  Pruning is a big job and many gardeners are right in the middle of it by the beginning of March. Some of us are excited by the challenge. Others are dreading the many decisions still in front of them.   Leslie and Marianne aim to channel that excitement, alleviate any anxiety,...

Compost: it’s so misunderstood. Vilified by HOAs, and loved by gardeners, it’s been ignored, worshiped, blamed, blessed, and then quietly banished to the far corner of the yard. Yet this magical garden process keeps working anyway, taking our scraps, our weeds, our gardening mistakes, and even items that we should have cleaned out of the fridge last month and turning them back into organically ric...

They’re BAAAAAAAK! Season II kicks off today — WELCOME if you’re new and welcome back if you’re not! Even Leslie and Marianne have been missing the weekly mix of seasonal relevance and irreverence — and a chance to raise a glass in support of our gardening audience all over the world who are dedicated to the proposition that gardening shouldn’t be boring. The Garden Mixer is bringing you one of th...

In the beginning, social media and gardening seemed meant for each other. After all, how better to teach than to show? But it does feel like we might have lost our way in the last few years. Now we’re pushed towards viral moments, not moments of true discovery. Now we watch sexy six packs selling six packs; and find ourselves navigating a manufactured reality that makes everyday gardeners feel inf...

Deer Damage. Few things crush a gardener’s spirit faster than to stroll outside and see that Bambi has invited himself for dinner. Coincidentally, few things crush Marianne’s spirit more than referring to these four-legged agents of the Devil in cute terms such as ‘Bambi’. What’s on their perfectly curated menu? Pretty much all of your favorite garden plants. Sprays, granular applications, and mot...

Promises, promises. We all make them at the beginning of each year. And — made desperate by the cold claws of winter — gardeners make even bigger ones at the beginning of each growing season. Today on The Garden Mixer, Leslie and Marianne take journalistic integrity to a new level and actually follow up with the promises made, the products they loved, and the season they foretold back in February...

Let’s be honest and dispense with the illusion of carefree, perfectly decaying, infinitely Instagrammable, late fall gardens. In reality, the leaves have blown off the trees, the decorative pumpkins are getting soft spots, and there’s a whole lot of flattened, crushed, eaten, and dejected going on where you had envisioned majestic seed heads, trusses of berries, and full-on fall splendor to welcom...

How better to take advantage of the experience, skill, and time of others than to buy and plant a plumped-up, pumped-up, ready-to-bloom-for-you bulb? Or maybe two hundred. When perennials need a couple years, shrubs insist on commitment, and trees require a selfless gift to future generations; bulbs are all about YOU — and it’s time to indulge. Granted, it’s the you of six months from now — but wh...

Cool air and warm soils mean that it’s a great time to divide and multiply the plants that you love, and Leslie and Marianne want to help you do it easily, efficiently, and with the least amount of plant pain as possible. What are they dividing in their gardens and how are they doing it? And why is it so good for the plants to rip them from happy homes just when they were thinking of taking a well...

Today, The Garden Mixer is highjacked by two jetlagged women drinking way too much coffee and trying to pull themselves together to adequately describe the many sights, tastes, and eureka moments of nine days visiting gardens in Cornwall and the Southwest of England. From new naturalism and earthworks at Wildside, to the breathtaking views across Tresco Island, to extraordinary fairy tale hotels,...

September has snuck up on most of us and cold weather is right around the corner. Suddenly it’s time to walk through your garden and decide who’s making the travel team and who’s sitting out this season in the great hereafter. Can you set aside sentiment and choose the strongest and healthiest to make winter a joy instead of a chore? Do you know when to bring them in? (And what you can get away wi...

Pumpkin spice may have snuck itself onto the shelves (and into Leslie’s cheesy introduction), but that doesn’t mean that the pollinating insects in your garden have stopped searching for pollen to store and nectar to sip. On today’s episode, Leslie and Marianne discuss some late blooming species you can grow to keep those pollinators healthy and gearing up for winter — and which will also make you...

As a gardener, you are not just creative, you are a creative. Your job is to go out there and create your tail off. But the other job you must strive to do well is that of an editor, tightening the voice of your garden with strategic cuts that help it shine and become the garden you envisioned (even when those cuts seem counterintuitive). This means that cruel things are going to happen. Cruel, an...

You’re tired. You’re hot. You’re yearning for autumn to set you free. But how your garden looks right now has everything to do with the choices you made in past planting seasons and a lot to do with foliage. Have you capitalized on the resilient summer foliage options that keep working when the lobelia has melted and the poppies are so over? This week on The Garden Mixer, Leslie and Marianne explo...