Mary Phillips on Rethinking the Lawn – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – April 29, 2024

FromMARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN

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Mary Phillips on Rethinking the Lawn – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – April 29, 2024

FromMARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN

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28 minutes

Released:

Apr 26, 2024

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Podcast episode

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You’ve probably heard the expression No Mow May in recent years, a campaign borrowed from an effort in the UK meant to increase diversity by leaving lawns unmown for the one spring month, but is that the answer for US... Read More ›

Released:

Apr 26, 2024

Format:

Podcast episode

Titles in the series (100)

A WAY TO GARDEN is the horticultural incarnation of Margaret Roach

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Florapedia With Carol Gracie – A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach April 19, 2021: There’s the so-called language of flowers, as in the symbolism or sentiment attributed to a rose versus a pansy or a daisy. And then there’s the actual language of flowers in botany, as in what’s a sepal or a tepal... Read More › by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
26 min listen
Echinacea With Same Hoadley-A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach March 1, 2021: Any gardener shopping at a local nursery or paging through perennial plant catalogs can’t help but notice there are a lot of Echinacea, or coneflowers, on the market—more every year, including in unexpected colors and some with extra-showy double f by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
26 min listen
Native Spring Perennials With Ken Druse-A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach February 8, 2021: Facing a forecast of heaps of snow the other day, Ken Druse and I got to dreaming on the phone together of more colorful times ahead. Of the emergence, not so very long in the future, of spring’s first woodland... Read More › by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
27 min listen
Classic Garden Books With Ken Druse – A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach March 15, 2021: Do you remember your very earliest gardening books—the ones that transported you into the world of plants, whether that was last year or years ago? Or other books that have earned a permanent spot on your bookshelf as old trusted... Read More › by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
25 min listen
Oaks with Doug Tallamy – A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach – April 5, 2021: Every time over the years that I’ve spoken to today’s guest, one word comes up: oak. If entomologist and University of Delaware Professor Doug Tallamy sounds a little fixated on native oaks, it’s because they are the most powerful plant by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
26 min listen
A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – March 22, 2021 – Helen O’Donnell on Flower Garden Favorites: I met today’s guest, Helen O’Donnell, at a plant sale a couple of springs ago, before the pandemic scuttled most such big public events. Spring sales like that, where multiple small growers of unusual specialty plants gather, are my favorite. by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
25 min listen
A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – February 15, 2021 – Ellen Ogden on Heirloom Vegetable Gardens: The subtitle of Ellen Ecker Ogden’s latest book, “The New Heirloom Garden,” tells it all. “Designs, Recipes, and Heirloom Plants for Cooks Who Love to Garden,” is how it reads. Throughout her career of writing, and lecturing, and teachi by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
26 min listen
Texture and Variegation With Ken Druse – A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach August 16, 2021: Texture and Variegation With Ken Druse – A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach – August 16, 2021 Ken Druse called the other day to say that he and his garden have the August lulls. The sort of annual... Read More › by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
26 min listen
Tomatoes With Craig LeHoullier-A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach February 28, 2022: Sick of winter? What I find helps, besides the occasional warmish, sunny day, is thinking about tomatoes. And thats what were going to do today with Craig LeHoullier, author of the hit 2014 book “Epic Tomatoes,” who has over the years grown some 3,000 va by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
26 min listen
A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – March 29, 2021 – Peter Kukielski on Roses:   Roses are ancient plants with a 35-million-year history on planet earth, so maybe it’s no surprise then that they have been a fixture in nearly every culture and many religions, too. In his recent book, “Rosa: The Story of... Read More &#825 by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
26 min listen
Small Trees With Bruce Crawford-A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach June 7, 2021: Looking around the garden as some of spring’s show off shrubs and perennials fade, I realized how glad I am that I made room for some garden-sized trees too. Not too big and not too small, and the best... Read More › by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
27 min listen
Around the World in 80 Plants With Jon Drori – A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach May 31, 2021: Environmentalist and best-selling author, Jonathan Drori, says that for him, plant science is fascinating, but it’s truly enlivened when it’s entwined with human history and culture. In his new book, “Around the World in 80 Plants,” the follo by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
27 min listen
Wasps With Eric Eaton – A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach May 10, 2021: I just read a book that filled me with wonder and awe. Now, would it startle you to hear that it was a book about wasps? Don’t cringe and turn away; listen as I talk to entomologist Eric Eaton,... Read More › by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
27 min listen
Trilliums With Uli Lorimer – A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach May 3, 2021: It’s Trillium Week the first week of May at Garden In The Woods, the headquarters of Native Plant Trust in Framingham, Massachusetts, the nation’s oldest plant conservation organization with more than a century of history. Well, with a little by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
28 min listen
Brassicas With Steve Bellavia – A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach April 12, 2021: They’re among the most popular and good-for-you vegetables, but brassicas—broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts and the like—can also be a little tricky to grow unless you start with the right variety, get the timing right, and have a pr by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
26 min listen
Ecological Landscaping With Rebecca McMackin – A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach April 26, 2021: I watched a Zoom lecture the other day that really put into words a lot of the ways my own deepening understanding of ecology is shaking up the way I practice horticulture—from spring cleanup, right on to the last... Read More › by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
26 min listen
Unusual Perennials With Far Reaches Farm – A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach – February 22, 2021: On the website of Far Reaches Farm rare plant nursery, shoppers can filter the plant listings by the usual expected things, like shrub or fern, or shade or sun, or hardiness zone. But there’s also a filter for “shop by... Read More › by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
26 min listen
Natural Communities With Patrick McMillan – A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach July 5, 2021: I’ve been looking forward to connecting with Patrick McMillan, who last October took over as director of the exceptional plant collection and astonishing landscape that is Heronswood Garden in Kingston, Washington. Besides wanting to know what&# by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
27 min listen
A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – March 8, 2021 – Jessica Walliser on Smarter Companion Planting: You’ve heard the expression “companion planting,” as in: What plants supposedly “love” growing alongside what other plants? But how many such pairings are folklore, and how many stand up to research?  In her new book, “Plant Partners,” Jessica by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
26 min listen
A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – October 4, 2021 – Marc Wolf on Native Shrubs: Im always looking for more places to tuck native plantings, and my current mission is along my property edges, where Im adding a more complex layer of shrubs and small trees adjacent to the big old canopy-level ones to increase habitat for beneficial ins by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
27 min listen
Birdpedia With Chris Leahy – A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach July 12, 2021: How many bird species are there in the world and how many individual birds? And how do you even try to count?  Do bird sweat, and how is their eyesight or sense of smell? What makes some eggs solid blue... Read More › by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
27 min listen
Outdoor Treasure Hunt With Ken Druse – A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach May 24, 2021: Ken Druse and I are putting a new spin on weeding by giving it a new name: treasure hunting. Maybe the incessant, relentless nature of all those naughty things that keep popping up around the garden beds will be softened... Read More › by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
27 min listen
Asparagus With Ali Stafford – A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach May 17, 2021: One dimension of my friendship with today’s guest is a years-long ongoing barter. She shares her cooking expertise with me and my extended family, and I give Alexandra Stafford and her husband gardening advice. It’s a pretty sweet deal,... by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
26 min listen
Secret Garden With Marta McDowell-A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach November 22, 2021: 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.” Shes by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
26 min listen
Shade Garden Advice With Ken Druse – A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach January 17, 2022: 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 wh by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
27 min listen
Tropicals With Marianne Willburn-A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach July 19, 2021: I was at the local garden center the other day, when a truck full of tropical plants was being unloaded. And in the heat of a summer day, they looked like just the right choice to bring home to liven... Read More › by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
27 min listen
Shrub Propagation With Ken Druse – A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach June 14, 2021: Today we’re going to do some multiplication, as in: make more shrubs, thanks to a lesson in propagating favorites like Hydrangea or elderberry or Physocarpus and more, courtesy of our friend and regular guest, Ken Druse. Ready to learn the... Read by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
27 min listen
Propagating Ferns With Uli Lorimer-A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach August 2, 2021: By the time we hit August, some plants in the garden are a little beat up—or have at least needed deadheading, or even wholesale cutting back, perhaps. As delicate as they might look texturally from the moment of their first... Read More › by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
26 min listen
A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – October 18, 2021 – Ken Druse on Monocots: What do you want to talk about when we tape our next podcast segment, I asked Ken Druse the other day, and his answer was succinct.  Monocots, he said.  To which I said, What? I want to talk about monocotyledons, he said, using the by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
26 min listen
A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – September 20, 2021 – Heather McCargo on Natives From Seed: Today were going to get a lesson in winter sowing, sowing seeds in fall and early winter outside in a protected spot, a sort of easy DIY home nursery for making more plants. What well learn to propagate that way are specifically seeds of native plants—bo by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
25 min listen

More Episodes from MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN

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Philadelphia Gardens – A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach – May 6, 2024: The area around Philadelphia is well-known for its richness of public gardens, including many historic ones, but the region is also home to an impressive roster of distinctive private landscapes—from formal 19th century European-style estates to mid-cent by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
28 min listen
A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – April 22, 2024 – Stephen Procter on Ceramic Garden Art: It’s that time of year when we gardeners are shopping, shopping, shopping, often in hot pursuit of just the right plant that will make the design of a bed or the larger landscape hang together—that elusive missing ingredient. But what... Read More &#8250 by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
28 min listen
Hilton Carter on Propagating Houseplants – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – April 15, 2024: I for one have a number of houseplants that would look a whole lot better right now if given a pinch or two or three, plus I could potentially enjoy the benefit of more plants from those trimmings, whether to... Read More › by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
28 min listen
A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – April 8, 2024 – Japanese Maples at Mr. Maple: I confess to something of a weakness for Japanese maples, and I suspect I’m not alone. Now, thanks to breeding work by experts like today’s guests, there are more and more varieties being made available that are suited to a... Read More &#825 by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
29 min listen
Staying ‘GardenFit’ With Madeline Hooper – A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach – April 1, 2024: You know how it goes, especially in those tempting first spring-like days: You’re barely out of bed before you’re out in the garden having at it. And then, by day’s end, your body’s screaming that maybe, just maybe, you overdid... by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
28 min listen
Container Design With David Mattern – A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach – March 25, 2024: Wait! Before you find yourself at the garden center grabbing up every irresistible thing that calls out to you, figuring you can somehow find a role for it in this season’s container designs, think again: What’s your plan for this year’s seasonal... Read by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
29 min listen
‘Bio-Productive Gardens’ With Tim Johnson – A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach – March 18, 2024: In a recent phone call, today’s guest, Tim Johnson, used the phrase “bio-productive gardens,” and it stopped me. What does he mean by that, I thought? And then he explained:  There are ways to manage our landscapes, he said, so... Read More › by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
28 min listen
A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – March 11, 2024 – Darryl Cheng on Collectible Houseplants: Some people collect art, others collect vintage cars, or maybe stamps or coins. Darryl Cheng collects houseplants, and in his latest book, “The New Plant Collector,” Darryl suggests some gorgeous possibilities, with detailed guidelines for figuring out h by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
28 min listen
Amsonias With Sam Hoadley – A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach – March 4, 2024: Early on in making my garden decades ago, I bought a nursery pot of bluestar, or Amsonia, at a native plant sale, and planted it in a border here. It has never asked anything of me, never had any pests... Read More › by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
29 min listen
A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Feb 26, 2024 – K Greene on Herbs: When shopping the seed catalogs, I realize I’m probably more likely to consider a tomato or pepper I haven’t grown before, or some unusual annual flower, than to try some new-to-me herb. But what a shame.  I need to modify that... Read More &#8 by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
28 min listen
Rebecca McMackin on the Native Movement – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Feb 19, 2024: Maybe more than any other topic, the use of native plants has consistently figured among the top garden trends in recent years. Just how popular is the movement toward a more ecological focus in the way we design and care... Read More › by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
28 min listen
Be a Better Bird Watcher – A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach – Feb 12, 2024: Watching birds lifts my spirits, as it has for decades, and who couldn’t use their spirits lifted right about now? But there’s another much bigger potential benefit, which is that sharing my sightings helps scientists understand what’s by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
29 min listen
A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Feb 5, 2024 – Don Tipping on Diversity of Zinnias: Whats not to love about zinnias? Organic seed farmer and breeder Don Tipping of Siskiyou Seeds and I both vote an emphatic “yes” in favor of making zinnias a part of every garden year. But what goes into creating the diversity of zinnia colors and for by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
28 min listen
A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Jan 29, 2024 – Nancy Lawson Asks Is Your Yard Undergrown?: As she often does, naturalist and nature writer Nancy Lawson—perhaps known better to some of you as the Humane Gardener after the title of her first book—caught my attention the other day.  My yard isnt overgrown and neither is yours, Nancy wrote by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
28 min listen
A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Jan 22, 2024 – David Culp on Snowdrops: David Culp is a self-professed Galanthophile—a lover, and passionate longtime collector, of snowdrops in all their various incarnations.  He is also a host of the annual Galanthus Gala symposium, which happens the first weekend of March in Down by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
28 min listen
A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Jan 15, 2024 – Ken Druse on Seed Planning: If you think nothing’s on the to-do list in winter, fellow gardeners—that we’re all meant to be dormant like the cannas in the cellar and the herbaceous perennials outside in the flower beds—well, think again.  Most of us in colder zones, especia by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
28 min listen
Sweet Peas With Matt Mattus – A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach – Jan. 8, 2024: Every year when I get to the sweet pea listings in the seed catalogs, I think this is the year, the year Ill organize some supports in the garden for them, and indulge in their unmatched extravagance of color and fragrance.  Todays guest doesnt by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
27 min listen
A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Dec 25, 2024 – Uli Lorimer on Ecological Resolutions: Like everyone around this time of year, I get into a “looking back while looking ahead” combined mindset. Today I want to do just that, but with a sort of ecological filter, taking stock of how things in the garden fared in the bigger environmental pictu by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
28 min listen
Beloved Seed Catalogs with Jennifer Jewell – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Dec. 18, 2023: Ho-ho-ho: Its seed season, among other festive reasons to celebrate in December. Today I invited a similarly seed-obsessed friend, Jennifer Jewell, to help me curate some seed-catalog recommendations you might not otherwise browse, and to talk seeds in g by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
28 min listen
New USDA Hardiness Zone Map – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Dec 11, 2023: You no doubt have seen news that the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map was just updated, and that half the country once again got reclassified a half-zone warmer—just as many of us did after the previous update of the map, in 2012. But what does it all mean by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
29 min listen
Seed Shopping with Turtle Tree – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Dec. 4, 2023: Let the seed-shopping season begin! The 2024 offerings are being loaded into seed-catalog websites, and the earliest print catalogs are already arriving in our mailboxes, as if to help soften the separation anxiety we may feel if we’ve already put our ga by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
28 min listen
‘Gardening Can Be Murder’ Book – A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach – Nov. 20, 2023: I dont think Ive read a mystery novel since the “Nancy Drew” books of my long-ago childhood, though I will confess to having watched more than a few who-done-it TV series over the years, most of them from the BBC.  But I never noticed how many my by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
28 min listen
A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Nov 13, 2023 – Eric Lee-Mader on Milkweeds: Most of us may automatically think “monarch” after hearing the word “milkweed,” or vice versa. And thats in fact a critical and intimate relationship, the one between monarch butterflies and native milkweed plants.  But the genus Asclepias offe by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
28 min listen
Fall Cleanup With Ken Druse – A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach – Nov. 6, 2023: Yes, it’s time or almost time to do some raking, and to dig the dahlias to stash – time to perform the rounds of the so-called “fall cleanup” and put the garden to bed.  But today Ken Druse and  I want to advocate for a sort of Cleanu by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
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Citrus Houseplants With Byron Martin – A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach – Oct. 30, 2023: Are any of your houseplants edible? A new book by the owners of the beloved rare plant business called Logee’s Greenhouses suggests that we make room for some delicious candidates among our potted indoor plants, including a range of citrus. Their book is by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
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Cornell’s Natural Lawn – A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach – Oct. 23, 2023: Reducing the footprint of our lawns has been a key environmental message for gardeners in recent years, since lawns lack biodiversity, and involve huge amounts of pollution between fertilizers, herbicides and the gas used in mowing. But what to cultivate by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
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Brandywine Valley du Pont Gardens – A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach – Oct. 16, 2023: Its hard to think of another place so rich with major gardens as the Brandywine Valley in Chester County, Pennsylvania, and an adjacent portion of Delaware. Five of those gardens have a historic connection—a family connection—as they were all by members by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
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The Wild-ish Garden of Margaret Renkl – A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach – Oct. 9, 2023: My how times have changed. That’s what I keep thinking looking around my own garden in recent years, and I’ve been struck by the same thought over and over as I read “The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year,” the latest book by Margaret Renkl that takes us by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
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The Real Organic Project – A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach – Oct. 2, 2023: When you shop for food—whether produce or meat or eggs—and see a label that says “organic,” what do you think that means? At its most fundamental level, I guess I always thought it meant vegetables grown on the fields of an organic farm—like, in the soil by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
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The Garden’s Delights, With Ross Gay – A Way to Garden, With Margaret Roach – Sept. 25, 2023: The words joy and delight figure prominently in writer Ross Gay’s work – and so do moments he spends in his garden, and descriptions of his relationship to plants.  Is that a coincidence -- that the garden is a main character in his books, book by MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
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Mary Phillips on Rethinking the Lawn – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – April 29, 2024

Mary Phillips on Rethinking the Lawn – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – April 29, 2024

Description

Titles in the series (100)

More Episodes from MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN