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You’ve heard of comfort food and oh boy, have we all been hungry for that non-stop this crazy year. But how about comfort books—whether to keep yourself company as winter takes hold or to consider for gifting? That’s today’s topic with my writerly friend, Katrina Kenison, to help curate a collection for various tastes. You may know Katrina Kenison as author of several books, including “The Gift of an Ordinary Day,” and “Magical Journey” and “Moments of Seeing.” She’s a former literary editor at Houghton Mifflin, where she was series editor for “The Best American Short Stories” for 16 years and co-edited, with John Updike, “The Best American Short Stories of the Century.” Katrina’s also a yoga teacher and an increasingly keen gardener in her own New Hampshire backyard. 

What if I told you there’s a new way to shop for seed where your purchase yields not just the packets, but also educational support, and the invitation to share your feedback—to participate in a virtual seed trial essentially, citizen-science style.  Now I know that was a mouthful, but it’s a brave new increasingly virtual world out there. And I want us to get in on the ground floor and learn more about the promise and potential of a newish entity called SeedLinked.com that a number of expert friends are part of.  One who is participating tipped me off to a selection of curated seed collections that are part of the bigger digital undertaking. To learn more I called Bjorn Bergman, who curated the SeedLinked lettuce collection and is also part of the SeedLinked team.  Wisconsin-based Bjorn is, like each of us, an avid gardener, and he’s also a long-time participant in various Seed Savers Exchange programs. And he confessed to being positively mad for growing and eating salad. 

A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach – November 16, 2020 – Emma Greig on Feeder Birds A flock of robins visited my garden recently for a three-day long field day. By the time they decamped, I was down about 40 mature winterberry holly shrubs-worth of fruit, but we had fun together while the frenzy lasted. I love feeding birds with help from the garden plants or with supplemental birdseed too. And I love keeping records of who visits when.  The annual winter-long citizen-science event called Project FeederWatch, from Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is just getting under way this week, as it does each November. So what better time to talk about just that: the best practices, and also what all the data is telling scientists and can tell you, too.   Dr. Emma Greig leads Project FeederWatch at Cornell, a citizen-science effort with more than 30 years of history and more than 20,000 participants in North America who don’t just feed birds, but also share their observations. She joined me on the latest radio segment and podcast. [Carolina wren photo by Dan Pancamo, from Wikimedia.]

Shrubs: I think of them as the sort of human-sized plants, and they definitely are the backbone of the garden. Ken Druse and I each have a lot of different shrubs, and I asked him the other day, “If you could only have three, which ones would they be?” Well, that’s our topic today—desert island shrubs. You all know Ken, old friend, great gardener, and author and photographer of 20 award-winning garden books. He helped me try to narrow down our list of must-have shrubs to the real standouts, and explain why which ones made the cut.  

“There’s always a weed out there, no matter when.” That’s what today’s guest, education manager Duncan Himmelman of Mt. Cuba native plant center in Delaware, said the other day to me on the phone. And that means now, even as we approach the quiet season, weeds are lurking, and we need to know when and how to target our efforts to control them. Duncan Himmelman, currently the education manager at Mt. Cuba Center, a renown native plant garden and research site, earned his doctorate in ornamental horticulture at Cornell before teaching college for 24 years. He’s also managed a large private estate and designed gardens for private clients, so he knows from weeds and weeding.  We talked about weed ID (and why it matters); about removal tactics and why skipping the chemicals makes the best sense, and more. Attachments area

  In a recent conversation with Doug Tallamy about ecologically minded fall cleanup, he raised the name of Heather Holm, and how some of the pollinator research she’s been part of lately is informing how he shifts his approach to garden maintenance this time of year, and again in spring. I wanted to hear more, so Heather’s here today to talk about how we can each support pollinators in our gardens beyond the season of bloom, in the offseason, too. Heather Holm is the award-winning author of the 2017 book “Bees,” and before that of “Pollinators of Native Plants.” Her expertise includes the interactions between native bees and native flora, and the bees’ natural history and biology. She joined me on the podcast to tune us into their needs.  

  What the word “groundcover” means has really changed in the years Ken Druse and I have been gardening. And I’ll admit right here, some of the choices that I made to do the job of covering the ground under shrubs and trees at my place are now plants I want to be rid of.  Last time Ken Druse, author of “The New Shade Garden” and 19 other books, was here with us, we promised to talk when he visited again about my groundcover eradication program, targeted at one rampant perennial and what might go there instead.  And that’s our topic today: groundcovers, out with the old, in with the new. Ken got me to detail what I am up to, and what I think are the next steps in turning large areas of mostly Asian plants into more desirable (and hopefully better-behaved) native ones. 

  One of the ways many of us have been getting through the last few months is by taking comfort in the outdoors, in all that nature and the garden has to offer—by slowing down, looking around, and connecting. One person I know who does that as her 24/7/365 life practice is today’s guest, wildlife rehabilitator and artist and author Julie Zickefoose.  I have to admit to being a fangirl of Julie’s, and when I need a lift lately—and who doesn’t in this most challenging year of all?—I often scroll through her Instagram to follow her latest wild bird rescue adventure, or her unfolding meadow showing off yet another sequence of bloom and beauty. Or frankly, sometimes just to enjoy the antics and videos and photos of the newest member of her family, a charismatic dog named Curtis, and their deepening bond. And I’m not even a dog person.  Julie’s here to help us all focus, to keep an eye on the outdoors, and also to get ready for bird-feeding season. We talked about goings-on to have your eye on this fall, and also about getting ready for bird-feeding season. 

I think of them as investment plants, plants that might not be hardy where I garden, but that with a little extra work and the right strategy can be carried over year to year, even without a greenhouse or the perfect spot to do so.  Nobody I know has more investment plants than the list of 1,600 unusual annuals and tropicals that Dennis Schrader and the team at Landcraft Environments propagates to sell wholesale to nurseries, landscapers, and botanical gardens. With his husband, Bill Smith, Dennis Schrader has since 1992 operated Landcraft Environments in Mattituck, Long Island—specialists in unusual plants that add seasonal color and texture, and the look of the tropics to the garden.  He’d like to encourage us to start a collection, too, and offered tips on how to keep them happy—tactical advice on plants we should consider investing in.

  When I last talked to Doug Tallamy in February around the publication date of his latest book, “Nature’s Best Hope,” I didn’t want to go on and on about the advice in it about smart fall cleanup, which is one of the ways I know I’ve dramatically shifted the way I manage my own garden compared to 10 or even five years ago. But we were looking ahead to spring then, not fall.  But now’s the time, and I’m grateful that Doug is back on the show to do just that. Want to plan your most ecologically minded garden cleanup ever, and understand the consequences of each potential action you can take?   The subtitle of University of Delaware professor Doug Tallamy’s recent book “Nature’s Best Hope” is “A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard.” Meaning: The choices we make all year round, including the very important one of how we clean up in fall and again in spring, can help counteract an overdeveloped, fragmented landscape that puts the food web to the test. You and I are nature’s best hope, and I’m glad Doug joined me on the radio program and podcast to help us learn to support it. 

The word “downsizing” was spoken more than once when Page Dickey and her husband were making plans a few years back to leave their beloved home and big old garden, called Duck Hill, in Westchester County, New York, for a new one. Well, the new piece of land turned out to be bigger than the last, and it has fostered in Page a whole new relationship to gardening—especially, a more intimate connection to nature and the property’s wild-ish areas. Starting over, and the surprises along the way, are the subject of Page’s new book, called “Uprooted: A Gardener Reflects on Beginning Again.” Page is a popular garden writer and author of numerous books, including her newest called Uprooted. And she was the co-founder of the Garden Conservancy Open Days national garden-visiting program. I was so glad to welcome her back to the podcast to hear about what happens when a gardener transplants herself. 

Who are you going to tuck in with this fall and winter, as the garden starts to rest and we are all indoors more? Do you have any hand-me-down houseplants from a relative maybe, or plants that you bought that have been with you since college or your first apartment? Marc Hachadourian, Director of Glasshouse Horticulture at the New York Botanical Garden and I answer yes, to both of the above. And he’s here to talk houseplants and which ones make the best longtime companions to grow and even share—and how to grow them to perfection.  Marc is also Senior Curator of Orchids at the New York Botanical Garden’s 55,000-square-foot Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, and author of the recent book “Orchid Modern.” So no surprise that some of his suggestions are easy-to-grow orchids because, after all, he’s, @orchidmarc on Instagram. 

I have a running joke with today’s podcast guest, a joke I suspect thousands of other former customers just like me email him about regularly, too. Every spring cleanup I come up with more distinctive turquoise plastic labels in my garden that were the signature of Dan Hinkley’s former mail order nursery called Heronswood. And I write to tell him so, or I send him photos of once-tiny plants he shipped me that are giants today in my yard—the plants named on those labels.  Now Dan Hinkley has another treat for us all in the form of his new book called “Windcliff,” the story of the garden he has been making since leaving Heronswood, and where he now lives on Puget Sound in Washington. “A Story of People, Plants and Gardens” is the subheading the book, and it is rich with tales of all of the above that have influenced the making of the place.  Learn about Dan’s insights into garden design—from avoiding beds of plants that are “as flat as a flounder,” to why to start with smaller plants than ones that fill the whole space right away. 

  Maybe you can feel it where you garden, too. A slight shift in the weather, which combined with shortening days, means summer is loosening its grip. It’s not fall yet. It’s not cleanup time, but what time is it in the garden right now? Ken Druse and I are each under way on projects that are just perfect for this moment, for the in-between time. From sowing biennials, to collecting seed of some annuals, to eradication of enthusiastic groundcovers and more that we want to tell you about. Author and photographer and old friend, Ken Druse—the guy who was laughing a second ago—joins us again today as he does each month to talk plants, and this time, he wants to tell us what he’s sowing and more. 

A reader emailed me not long ago, asking if I’d ever written a story or done a podcast about dried flowers—which ones to grow and how to dry them and so on. And no, I hadn’t, I had to admit, so I called Jenny Elliot of Tiny Hearts Farm, a farmer-florist friend. And that’s what our topic is today: what you can dry that you’re growing now—yes, even your marigolds and things to forage for and more. Farmer-florist Jenny Elliott with partner, Luke Franco, owns Tiny Hearts Farm in the Hudson Valley of New York, where they grow flowers organically, both for the wholesale market, for subscribers to their weekly flower CSA, and also for events in a normal year, including weddings that she designs and more. 

I suspect that you each have several mail-order bulb catalogs on hand, and also that each catalog devotes page after page to gorgeous photos of Narcissus and tulips, often right up front. Don’t get me wrong, I love both of those. But today with help from Matt Mattus, author of the book “Mastering the Art of Flower Gardening,” we’re going to look past those pages at some fantastic but too-often-overlooked bulbs and bulb-like plants that deserve a try.  Before I placed my bulb order, I called Matt, who blogs on the website Growing With Plants, and on the latest podcast we showcased some of his favorite bulbs, including the most lily-leaf beetle-resistant lilies, and also some of his favorite bulb sources. 

A new book came my way recently with a title that just said it all. “Lawns Into Meadows” is what it’s called, and its author, landscape designer Owen Wormser, gave me a short course on meadow-making in a recent conversation we had. “Lawns into Meadows: Growing a Regenerative Landscape” is his book’s full title, and its approach is focused on sustainability, regeneration, and beauty, says Owen, who owns Abound Design, a firm based in western Massachusetts.  We talked about how to choose plants for a meadow or meadow garden; the steps required for proper preparation without chemical herbicides; aftercare tips and more. 

Today’s show came out of a phone conversation that Ken Druse and I were having the other day, when I found myself confessing to him that I’d let things in my containers get, shall we say, a tad overgrown this season without the pressure of any visitors and tours to keep me in line. And how I was finally trying to get them back into shape for the rest of the season by pinching things.  And just for fun, how I’ve been rooting some of the pinched-off bits in little jars of water. So all that’s to say, Ken and I talked about a little midsummer rejuvenation—and also some of the less-obvious positive effects that can yield. Ken is author of 20 garden books, including one on plant propagation called “Making More Plants.” 

Years ago, a friend who founded a botanic garden in Massachusetts took me to visit a landscape that he had long loved and admired. It was not just beautiful, but a designated National Historic Landmark—and one that was also a cemetery, on land that was consecrated for the purpose in 1831. Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts is still all those things—historic, beautiful and a place of burial—but in more recent years, its mission has also been one of environmental stewardship. Insights into how that has been, and continues to be, accomplished in an established landscape is our topic today. David Barnett came to Mount Auburn Cemetery in 1993 as the cemetery’s first director of horticulture. Today, he is its president and CEO, which he has been since 2008. Good thing Dave had not just a degree in horticulture, but also a PhD in ecology, since he has drawn on that background extensively in recent years to guide Mount Auburn, to see itself as an urban wildlife refuge, and a forward thinking model of sustainability.

A surprising number of people ask me about whether this plant or that plant in my garden or theirs is poisonous. And so when I saw news from the New York Botanical Garden about a just-published, fully-updated edition of a reference book on the subject, I thought, “Why don’t I learn more about this?” (Meaning, why don’t we learn more about this together?) To that end, I’ve invited one of its authors, Botanist Michael Balick, to talk poisonous plants with us. In collaboration with Rutgers University medical toxicologist, Lewis S. Nelson, MD, today’s guest, Dr. Michael J. Balick, who is vice president for botanical science and director of the Institute of Economic Botany at the New York Botanical Garden, has written the new Third Edition of the “Handbook of Poisonous and Injurious Plants.” I asked him about plant chemistry—why some plants have the toxins they do, and what we’ve learned from, and about, those plants.