What’s 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… Read More ›
Archives
Nancy Lawson Asks Is Your Yard Undergrown? – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Jan 29, 2024
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 isn’t overgrown and neither is yours,”… Read More ›
David Culp on Snowdrops – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Jan 22, 2024
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 Downingtown, Pa., and… Read More ›
Ken Druse on Seed Planning – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Jan 15, 2024
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… Read More ›
Matt Mattus on Sweet Peas – 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 I’ll organize some supports in the garden for them, and indulge in their unmatched extravagance of color and… Read More ›
Uli Lorimer on Ecological Resolutions – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Dec 25, 2024
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… Read More ›
Jennifer Jewell on Beloved Seed Catalogs – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Dec 18, 2023
Ho-ho-ho: It’s 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 general. Jennifer’s… Read More ›
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,… Read More ›
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… Read More ›
‘Gardening Can Be Murder’ Book – A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – Nov 20, 2023
I don’t think I’ve 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. … Read More ›