Shows / MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
A WAY TO GARDEN is the horticultural incarnation of Margaret Roach
Episodes
MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDENJulie Zickefoose on Birdwatching – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Sept 8, 2025
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…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Dr. Susan Pell on Poison Ivy – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Sept 1, 2025
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…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Rebecca McMackin on Garden Resources – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Aug 25, 2025
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…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Patrick McDuffee on Scented Geraniums – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Aug 18, 2025
Patrick McDuffee believes that everyone should have at least one scented geranium on their windowsill year-round, for an on-demand invigorating whiff of…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Alla Olkhovska on Clematis – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Aug 11, 2025
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…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Trialing Seed for Seed Savers Exchange – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Aug 4, 2025
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…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Thor Hanson on Wonders – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – July 28, 2025
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…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Ken Druse on Foliage Power – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – July 21, 2025
There may be no moment in the year when my friend Ken Druse and I are more grateful for the range of textures and colors of foliage we made room for in our…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
George Schoellkopf of Hollister House – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – July 14, 2025
Today’s guest returned from a 1979 trip visiting English gardens inspired to do some garden-making of his own. His canvas was a northwestern Connecticut…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Dr. John Marzluff on Crows – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – July 7, 2025
A couple of ravens have been shouting at each other across the garden each day this spring-into-summer, and their loud-mouthed antics reminded me of a somewhat…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Beth Brantley on Beech Diseases – A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach – June 30, 2025
A big old copper beech tree is a focal point of my garden, and each time I look out the window at it admiringly these days, I feel the same love and gratitude…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Mike Gibson on Topiary – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – June 23, 2025
Today we’re going to do some pruning, but not the same old straight-forward kind. Instead we’re going to talk topiary, and its transformative powers – not just…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Frances Palmer on Cutting Gardens – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – June 16, 2025
Some of us plant a row of particular annuals with the intention to cut them for bouquets in their moment of bloom – and some of us think bigger have a whole…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Abundant Landscapes with Kelly Norris – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – June 9, 2025
We may know one when we see it, but what word best describes an ecological landscape? Compared to traditional, more formal gardens, such native-plant-forward…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Gardening with My Sister – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – June 2, 2025
I’ve answered a lot of garden questions in my time as a garden journalist, but nobody has asked more of them than today’s guest—who’s also the person I’ve…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Eco Adventures with ‘The Bad Naturalist’ – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – May 26, 2025
Again and again, as I was reading the recent book “Bad Naturalist” by Paula Whyman, I kept thinking: Good thing I only have a couple of acres of land. Whyman…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Nancy Lawson on Mosquitoes – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – May 19, 2025
The first issue of “American Gardener,” the newly redesigned member magazine of the American Horticultural Society, arrived recently, and in it are lots of…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Ken Druse on Shade Treasures – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – May 12, 2025
When I first started gardening, it wasn’t unusual to hear other gardeners lamenting the shady areas of their landscapes – wishing for more, more, more sun. But…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Dan Wilder on Powerhouse Shrubs – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – May 5, 2025
Woody plants—the trees and shrubs—can be pure ecological powerhouses, but most of us don’t have room for an entire forest in our backyards. So on a…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Uli Lorimer on Trillium & More – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – April 28, 2025
I look forward to spring for many reasons, not the least of which is the emergence and bloom time of the trilliums. There’s a saying that good things…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Marigolds & More with Peace Seedlings – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – April 21, 2025
So you think you’re  familiar with marigolds and zinnias? Well, it’s time to take another look, I think, as I have been longingly in the seed list…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Rosy Dawn Gardens on Coleus – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – April 14, 2025
It’s hard to think of a brighter botanical bright spot than the one that Coleus creates—whether in a container design, or planted in a garden bed.  And…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Amy Chaplin on Spring Flavors – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – April 7, 2025
I can almost taste it now: the flavors of the first spring crops, whether homegrown, or from your CSA share, or even ethically foraged…with the promise…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Teresa Woodard on Maximalist Design – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – March 31, 2025
More isn’t always better, of course, but in the case of the gardens profiled in the new book “Garden to the Max,” it definitely is, whether more color, more…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Theresa Crimmins on Phenology – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – March 24, 2025
Though the calendar says that spring started on March 20, the many clues that nature offers to those who watch and listen add up to a more complex and layered…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Garden Biodiversity at Chanticleer – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – March 17, 2025
Anyone who has heard of or even better visited Chanticleer Garden in Pennsylvania knows that it is home to some of the country’s most exceptional examples of…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Jim Sirch on Frog Gardens – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – March 10, 2025
We’ve all heard about what plants and other features figure into making a garden for the birds, or a pollinator garden … but what about a frog garden?…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Ken Druse on ‘Fat’ Houseplants – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Mar 3, 2025
If another houseplant dropped all its leaves for several months each year, you’d think you killed it. But with some of Ken Druse’s and my favorite indoor…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Julie Zickefoose on Welcoming Bluebirds – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Feb 24, 2025
The sight of Eastern bluebirds rates high on my happiness scale, so I say bring them on. But what makes a place look like inviting habitat to these charismatic…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Sam Hoadley on Ironweeds – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Feb 17, 2025
One of the tallest perennials in my garden is New York ironweed, Vernonia noveboracensis, but basically my knowledge of the genus starts and ends there. Or at…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Josie Flatgard on Seed Exchange – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Feb 10, 2025
You probably know the popular Seed Savers Exchange catalog, which this year features 600 varieties of seed to choose from, and supports the beloved nonprofit…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Matt Mattus on Garden Rituals – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Feb 3, 2025
Have you ever replied, “I don’t know; that’s just the way I’ve always done it” when someone asked why you performed a certain garden task in a particular way?…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Joseph Tychonievich on Snapdragons- A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Jan 27, 2025
Anybody in the mood for something just plain pretty at the moment, something to search the seed catalogs for, choosing among the many wildly colorful…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Warren Leach on The Winter Garden – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Jan 20, 2025
How’s winter shaping up where you are so far – or more to the point, how’s the winter garden looking? What’s your view out the window this time of year, and…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Kelly Norris on Your Natural Garden – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Jan 13, 2025
As many of us heavy up on native plants, and transition larger areas of our landscapes toward more naturalistic styles of design, there is a lot to learn – or…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Basil Camu on Winter Tree Care – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Jan 6, 2025
I messaged to my arborist neighbor the other day to just say, “Happy holidays.” And at the end of my note, I also said this: “See you soon.”  Winter may…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Joe Lampl’s 2024 Recap – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Dec 30, 2024
Whether out loud here on the podcast or just between us on one of our periodic late Friday afternoon phone calls, I always benefit from catching up with…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
A Dry Year With Julie Zickefoose – A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach – Dec. 16, 2024
Did you have an abnormally dry growing season this year—one where it felt like you just couldn’t keep up with the watering, maybe? Today’s guest, naturalist…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Sarah Jayne on Supporting Biodiversity – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Dec 9, 2024
The message has become increasingly clear: By shifting the palette of what we plant toward native, and refining the practices we employ in caring for our…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Margaret Renkl on Nature Watching – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Dec 2, 2024
She has had various job titles in her career, but writer Margaret Renkl says one consistent role in her life for decades has been that of “a window-gazer,”…
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Peggy Anne Montgomery on Forcing Bulbs – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Nov 25, 2024
It’s practically December, but like many gardeners I’m already thinking about spring. One big element of that thinking is how to maximize the power of flower…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
‘WildStory’ Podcast’s Poetry + Plants – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Nov 18, 2024
I was invited recently to be a guest on a podcast called The Wildstory from The Native Plant Society of New Jersey that talks about plants, of…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
David Sibley on Birds in Winter – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Nov. 11, 2024
When cold weather approaches, we humans often have it easy: We can retreat to the shelter of central heating, or pile on more layers of clothing. The path to…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
George Coombs on Trees for the Future – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Nov 4, 2024
In the face of shifting weather patterns influenced by a changing climate, the garden can be a really confusing place these days. What stressors are coming…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Flora & Frost on Solving Garden Mysteries – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Oct 28, 2024
The garden is my favorite escape from stress, of course, but as I have confessed before on the podcast, I sometimes succumb to the lure of swiping my way…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Sara Weaner on Lawn Transformation – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Oct 21, 2024
Today’s guest, Sara Weaner Cooper, and her husband, Evan Cooper, bought their first home a couple of years ago, and before long undertook transitioning the…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Joan Strassmann on a Birding Journal – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Oc. 14, 2024
It was almost two years ago to the day when today’s guest, Joan Strassmann, last visited me on the show, right around the time her book “Slow Birding” was…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Tim Johnson on Native Seeds – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Oct 7, 2024
When I read the other day that Native Plant Trust, the nonprofit plant conservation organization in New England, had successfully raised the money to complete…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Daniel Weitoish on Managing Invasives – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Sept 30, 2024
Increasingly in recent years, my garden “weeds” include more and more tenacious opponents – and the landscape along the roadsides nearby and pretty much…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Preston Montague on Ecological Landscaping – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Sept 23, 2024
If you have ever tried creating, and then caring for, a habitat-style garden with native plants … well, let’s just say it’s not exactly the same thing as…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Jared Rosenbaum on Native Plant Stories – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Sept 16, 2024
“Plants tell the story of a place,” says field botanist and native plant nursery owner Jared Rosenbaum. “If you want to be rooted on the earth you live on, you…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Real Organic Project on Soil-Supporting Advice – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Sept 9, 2024
Organic farming and gardening have always been based on the principle of “feed the soil, not the plant.” In a recent interview, I got some expert advice for…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Ken Druse on Bulb Shopping and Dividing – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Aug 26, 2024
Have you done your bulb shopping yet? It’s ordering time—both for fall-blooming treats like Colchicum, which you can only buy now if you hurry, and for the…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Matt Mattus on Holiday Cactus – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Aug 19, 2024
I was scrolling through Instagram the other day – yes, sometimes I just cannot help myself – when I saw a post by Matt Mattus about Christmas cactus. Even…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Daniel Weitoish on Extreme Weather – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – August 12, 2024
I suspect I’m not alone when I say that weather extremes in recent growing seasons have made me feel a bit like a stranger in a strange land in my own…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Carly Still on Medieval Herbs – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Aug 5, 2024
When most of us think of growing herbs each spring, what we probably put into our shopping cart, whether from online seed catalogs or at the garden center, are…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Ken Druse on Hydrangea Time – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – July 29, 2024
It’s Hydrangea season, and in the Northeast, in particular, this summer, it’s REALLY been a crazy hydrangea season in 2024, with billows of blue bloom from…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Amy Stewart on “The Tree Collectors” – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – July 22, 2024
We’re going to talk about collectibles today, but not the kind you score at a flea market or from an online auction. We’re going to talk about…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Benjamin Vogt on Meadow Making – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – July 15, 2024
Are you thinking about the possibility of transitioning an area of your lawn into something more diverse, like maybe a meadow? A question I’m asked a lot is…
- MARGARET ROACH A WAY TO GARDEN
Lessons from the High Line – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – July 8, 2024
It’s one of the best-known naturalistic gardens anywhere, and yet it’s perched in the most unnatural spot imaginable, 30 feet high above New York…