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 ›
Archives
A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Jan 12 2026 – James Young on Dye Plants
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 ›
A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Jan 5, 2026 – Lane Selman on Must-Try Vegetable Seeds
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 ›
A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Dec 29, 2025 – Julie Zickefoose on Bird-Feeding Season
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 ›
Melissa Finley on Tree Care History and How-to – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Dec 22, 2025
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 ›
Uli Lorimer on Keystone Plants – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Dec. 15 2025
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 ›
Matt Mattus on Holiday Blooms – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Dec 8, 2025
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 ›
Rob Moffitt on Unusual Houseplants – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Dec 1, 2025
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 ›
Jamie Hanson on Heritage Apples – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Nov 24, 2025
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 ›
Joseph Tychonievich on Seed Sources – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Nov 17, 2025
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 ›