The Garden Mixer

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...

They’re deer resistant, drought resistant, and boredom-resistant — and they’re not without controversy. Ornamental grasses might be the magic texture your garden has been missing all these years. Whether you want to ‘blur and merge’ as per Grasses for Gardens and Landscapes author Neil Lucas, or ‘punch and soften’ as per the more violent of your two co-hosts, Marianne Willburn — using ornamental g...

You’d like to go on vacation. Your family wants you to go on vacation. But you don’t know how to leave your garden. So you don’t go on vacation. Wrong answer. You NEED a vacation. You just need to prep your garden and make it Vacay-Ready. This week Leslie and Marianne dive into what it really takes to leave your garden without the guilt. From prepping your plants to prepping your mindset, they wan...

Welcome back! The girls are rested, refreshed, reenergized, and ready to tackle the overgrown gardens that await them with the tools they love this week. From can't-be-without pruners to surprising new finds, Leslie and Marianne dish the dirt on the implements that help them dig it. Are brand names important? What’s a seckie? How do you pronounce Okasune? And what on earth is Marianne’s problem wi...

Waaaayy back when this podcast was just Leslie doing Into the Garden with Leslie, Marianne was a frequent flyer even though she was just a guest at that time. In this episode, Marianne and Leslie team up with Scott Beuerlein to talk about their "Dear Gardener" correspondence on Garden Rant. Next week Leslie and Marianne, are back, tanned rested and ready for the summer garden and they will be talk...

This week we reach into the archives to bring you the first ever time Leslie interviewed Marianne on her podcast Into the Garden with Leslie. You can tell by the stilted convo and awkward silences that we didn't really hit it off, and we've been faking it ever since. Actually, we hit it off so well that as an apt preview of what was to come, we go completely off of whatever topic Leslie had planne...

This week the girls mix dry humor and deep honesty with Doug Oster, Emmy award-winning garden broadcaster & author from Pittsburgh. This, unbeknownst to Marianne, makes him a Yinzer — and that does not mean he enjoys a Yingling from time to time. For years, on television, radio, newspapers and social media, Doug has been an outspoken champion for organic gardening, and for the passion and pers...

So. The garden is chaotic and you’ve either got guests coming, or you’re in danger of having an ever-so-mini breakdown each time you glance outside. How can you make it Bikini-Ready in a fairly short space of time? The answer: you can’t. But you can definitely make it look decent in a one-piece. This week, spurred on by one too many Ad-stagram promises to change your skin, hair, and body just in t...

This week we decided to come clean and admit that, based on some of the amazingly detailed emails we’ve received since starting The Garden Mixer, our listeners are very much smarter than we are. We’re dipping into a few of these [surprisingly polite] messages to bring their plant picks, techniques, and general wisdom to everyone. Featured: Garden writer Kathy Purdy from Upstate New York, Paul West...

This week, the girls welcome Linda Vater to the Mix and try to stay focused on important topics like Marianne’s new topiary snail. Linda Vater is a blogger, garden designer, stylist andlifestyle influencer with a penchant for grabbing shears and a gin and tonic and going after defenseless shrubs who don’t know how much they’re going to love their new look. She has gardened for decades in Oklahoma...

This week we're mixing up indoor/outdoor lines with a #houseplantvacation . Do you allow your hard-working houseplants a little time off during the growing season to be the plants they were born to be? Just as we could all use a little time soaking up the sun, getting the drinks in, and feeling fresh air on our faces, our houseplants could too. What a shame that time outside doesn’t make us lo...