A Way to Garden: A Hands-On Primer for Every Season

by Margaret Roach

Overview

“A Way to Garden prods us toward that ineffable place where we feel we belong; it’s a guide to living both in and out of the garden.” —The New York Times Book Review

For Margaret Roach, gardening is more than a hobby, it’s a calling. Her unique approach, which she calls “horticultural how-to and woo-woo,” is a blend of vital information you need to memorize and intuitive steps you must simply feel and surrender to. In A Way to Garden, Roach imparts decades of garden wisdom on seasonal gardening, ornamental plants, vegetable gardening, design, gardening for wildlife, organic practices, and much more. She also challenges gardeners to think beyond their garden borders and to consider the ways gardening can enrich the world. Brimming with beautiful photographs of Roach’s own garden, A Way to Garden is practical, inspiring, and a must-have for every passionate gardener.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781604698770
Publisher:	Timber Press, Incorporated
Publication date:	04/30/2019
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	178,754
Product dimensions:	8.10(w) x 10.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Margaret Roach, one of America’s best-known garden writers, creates awaytogarden.com and the public radio show by the same name, which has been called a “top-5 garden podcast” by The Guardian and is the winner of multiple Garden Writers of America medals. She was the first garden editor of Martha Stewart Living magazine where she also co-hosted a weekly call-in radio show for several years. She lives in rural New York State, and her garden has been open for Garden Conservancy Open Days for more than 20 years.

Read an Excerpt

Preface
My how times have changed. Though at first thought, the idea of rekindling a 21-year-old garden book might not seem like a task as radical or needed as, say, redoing one of the same vintage about computers, it turns out otherwise. Yes, we still use shovels (if not Word 6.0; I’m now pecking away on version 16.16.2). Yes, the horticultural operating system still begins with “green side up,” though I did recently gift a friend some paperwhite narcissus to force, forgetting to state what seemed to me the obvious. I got a call a few weeks later asking why white spaghetti was sprouting from the pot.

And one more yes, before we get to all the nos. Were they alive, my money’s on the likelihood that Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein would still be discussing the most perennial of evergreen garden topics:

The story goes that Toklas once asked Stein what she saw when she closed her eyes.

“Weeds,” Stein replied.

Me, too; now and forever, I forecast that the gardener shall forevermore have plants growing in the wrong place, ad infinitum, ad nauseam. Help!

Much else has been upended, I came to realize as I dug in to revise the book. No, mere updates would not do, Margaret. The catalog sources at the back of the first edition are now mostly fond memories of old friends long gone from the business. (Their progeny live on in my garden, and I still unearth the occasional old plastic label, the printing so faded as to be nearly illegible.)

Some “it” plants of that moment that everyone grew (or wanted to, if only they could secure a piece) are now known thugs, and I, like gardeners everywhere, will spend the rest of my days hoicking them out, sometimes losing the battle. Their tenacity is an in-our-faces, perennial reminder of inadvertent environmental wrongdoing—of cultivating what proved to become invasives.

Plants that were rare—a dramatic variegated- or gold-leaf version some savvy gardener identified from a sport, perhaps—stayed that way a relatively long while. The ramp up to wider distribution was once upon a time dictated by the math of the plant’s inclination to set seed or provide ample divisions or cuttings. As tissue culture laboratories have proliferated, and the secrets of micropropagation, or cloning, for more species unlocked, the pace for many plants has likewise accelerated. Advancements in other methods of mass production, like of wholesale baby plants called liners or plugs, has evolved, too, in ever more mechanized greenhouse facilities. You barely have time to gloat over being among the first to have something special, before it confronts you en masse at the big-box store.

I knew, and grew, some native plants back then—notably winterberry hollies and asters—but our current collective consciousness about the role of natives, about habitat gardening and pollinator gardening, had not taken hold. Today native status is even printed on plant labels (though often imprecisely, since few things are native to the entire nation). The word “nativar,” for a cultivar of a native plant with showier attributes or a different habit than the straight species, has been added to the vocabulary.

Ticks were familiar, but those tiny arachnids hadn’t yet traumatized a chunk of the nation. Our longtime No. 1 annual, the impatiens, hadn’t been assaulted by a devastating fungus-like disease called impatiens downy mildew, and a related species of DM hadn’t yet attacked beloved basil. (As I type this, news is just out that the impatiens genome “sequence and assembly” has been cracked, a critical step in developing a strategy to breed in resistance someday to DM.) And so many introduced forest pests have increased their pressure: The ever-wider encroachment of hemlock woolly adelgid, as one example, saw to it in these ensuing years that I would not dare plant Tsuga. Instead I mourn former stands of what was a foundation species of the northeastern forests I live surrounded by.

Even the earthworm has evolved from being regarded as a gardener’s (and farmer’s) best friend to a leading suspect in environmental havoc. I didn’t even know years back that there were no native earthworms in the northern United States—that they were all introduced species (including many kinds in warmer regions). And nobody knew just how destructive some of the latest imports, notably jumping worms from Asia in the genera Amynthas and Metaphire, would prove to gardens, yes, but to forest ecologies most terrifyingly, as they impoverish soil and interrupt the process of succession in parts of the Great Lakes Forest, the Great Smoky Mountains, and New England. We will be hearing more about them regularly, I forecast. Need I mention that the gardener’s other once-reliable companion, the weather, doesn’t seem very friendly or familiar at all, either, as the climate shifts? The expected meteorological pacing of each space of a season is no longer, and all the time we face extremes that are ever more perplexing to manage around.

As unsettling to keen gardeners (and to a greater degree, farmers) has been consolidation of the seed industry, as seed genetics became regarded as intellectual property—something to patent and own. The number of players has shrunk to a few giants, and their focus is on money-makers—genetically engineered agribusiness crops, yes, and also classically bred hybrids suited to large-scale farming because of their uniformity, perhaps, or inclination to ripen all at once for ease of harvest. Some heirloom home-garden seeds that didn’t have such profit potential got neglected, but, blessedly, counterforces have risen up to protect and reinvigorate some of them.

I didn’t know years back that my garden would become a laboratory for data collection. Though I was interested in science—something the garden opened up for me in a way no high school teacher ever had—I was not yet one of what are now millions of citizen scientists who today record backyard observations, adding my bird counts and moth counts and more to giant databases that scientists can use for research (but could not compile without us). In the old text of the book, I could hear the first hints of the gardener, and person, I would become. I met a Margaret who was, as I am now, devoted to organic practices, and already proselytizing. I also met one-time friends, plants that starred in the first edition but have since gone—not because they all died, but because my enthusiasms shifted. For example, once mad for silver, I’m now all about the gold (leaves, that is).

A younger Margaret shared joyful anecdotes of interactions with the first birds she came to know, and an apparent delight at a growing number of beneficial insects, too, as her deepening sense of connection to the bigger picture took hold. Missing in the original book were amphibian adventure stories, as their populations in the garden have multiplied to almost comical proportion, and I have undergone the metamorphosis into She Who Lives with Frogs. I likewise failed then to celebrate my reptilian brethren—to trumpet how important it is to make snakes at home in an organic garden. There is good reason for that last oversight: I was not yet a recovering ophidiophobiac. Quite to the contrary.

Today, I describe my approach to gardening as “horticultural how-to and ‘woo-woo’”—a blend of stuff you need to memorize, like how deep to plant a daffodil bulb, and stuff you need to feel when you witness a seed germinating, for instance, and just surrender to (like getting over a fear of snakes, and instead of screaming, thanking them for eating slugs and mice). I was glad I could hear both how-to and woo-woo notes in the old Margaret, and my nowadays constant invocation to strive for a 365-day garden was evident, if not labeled yet as such. I guess I am still me (or always was?).

One more thing, or actually two, have not changed even a little. First, I garden because I cannot help myself. I hope that you may feel that calling.

Most of all: this book is still titled A Way to Garden because it is not the only way, just my way. It’s the one way I have gradually sorted out despite all the shifts in trends and technology and even the taxonomic order of things, as tried-and-true plants were renamed (and sometimes then unrenamed for dizzying good measure). Whatever pest or predicament is thrown at me, onward I do dig, and most of all: weed. Perhaps mine is a way to garden that will work for you, too. I hope so.

Table of Contents

Preface: And Now, 21 Years Later 9

Introduction: Beyond Outdoor Decorating 17

Conception January And February 31

New Cycle, A New Season

Studying the Catalogs

Early, Middle, Late

Look Out the Window: Design 101

Planning, on Paper or Otherwise

Journals: Writing It All Down

Zones and Other Considerations

Taxonomy Lite

Say What? Speaking Latin

Hybrid, Heirloom, or Both?

Seed Viability versus Vigor

First Sowing: Onions and Leeks

Saying No to Deer

Pruning, Pared Way Down

Intermediate Witch Hazels

Hellebores Galore

Plants with Structure

Birth March And April 71

Groundhog Day

Gardening for the Birds

Powerhouse Bird Plants

When to Start Seeds

18 Seed-Starting Tips

Why Seedlings Stretch and Get Spindly

Making a Bed, with Cardboard

How to Shop for Plants (and Not)

Ephemerals

Dividing Trilliums

Planting Peas, with Mendel in Mind

Hydrangea Pruning

My Gold Foliage Issue

Forsythia Alternatives

Animal-Resistant Flower Bulbs

The Ever-Reliable Narcissus

Pruning Clematis

A Particular Pulmonaria

Finding Room for More Natives

What is Native Where?

Spring Water-Garden Regimen

Name Game: Know Your Weeds

Youth May and June 125

A Season for Sisterhood

Nuisance Wildlife

Tough-Love Transplanting

Editing Self-Sowns

13 Things About Growing Tomatoes

Salad Days

Sow, Sow, Sow Again

Investment Plants

Ornamental Onions

Fumitories and Aroids, Oh My

Euphorbias

Ferns

Peonies

A Moment for Lilacs

Making Mosaics (Underplanting)

Confidence Builders, Rethought

A Must-Have Rose

Water Garden in a Pot

Organic Lawn Care

Mulch Wisdom

Growing Potatoes

Adulthood July And August 183

Throwing in the Trowel

Fall Vegetable Garden

A Few Good Living Mulches

Meadow Plants, Mowing Strategies

Cutbacks

Fetid but Fantastic Eucomis

Southeast Native, Northeast Garden

Weavers and See-Throughs

Insect Love (or at Least Respect)

Foliage, the Garden's Wardrobe

Squash Madness

Viburnums

Not Your Average Morning Glories

Tall Perennials

Houttuynia, and Other Weeds I Planted

Senescence September And October 223

Nothing Lasts

Fall Leaves and Pink Mums

Repeat After Me

Making Compost

A Longer Clematis Season

When Inner Conifer Needles Turn Brown

Putting Up a Year of Herbs

I Just Call Them Asters

Cover Crops: Feeding the Soil

Smarter Bulb Shopping and Planting

Eranthis, the Winter Aconite

A Nectaroscordum by Any Name

Saving Seeds

How to Grow Garlic

Storing and Preserving Garlic

A Saner Fall Cleanup

Mad Stash: Overwintering Tender Plants

Taking the Year's Inventory

Death And Afterlife November And December 263

Dear Friend (Love, Margaret)

The Asset of Bark

Cultivating Snags, or Wildlife Trees

Winterizing the Water Garden

Winterberry Hollies

Willing Houseplants

Conifers I Have Known

My Seed-Shopping Rules

A Wheelbarrow Full of Prevention

References and Sources 291

Acknowledgments 301

Photo Credits 303

Index 305

Editorial Reviews

…indispensable…A Way to Garden—sensitive, wise, deliberate, thoughtful and splendidly bossy—prods us toward that ineffable place where we feel we belong; it's a guide to living both in and out of the garden.

The New York Times Book Review - Dominique Browning

★ 03/04/2019

Roach (The Backyard Parables), former gardening editor for Martha Stewart Living magazine, thoughtfully and thoroughly updates her 1998 guide to organic, year-round gardening. As Roach notes, it is “still titled A Way to Garden because it is not the only way, just my way.” She moves through the year in two-month increments, each identified with different phases of life, from conception to death, and opens every section on a personal note, such as about her changing relationship with her sister or memories of “the first gardener I ever knew,” her grandmother. These snippets of memoir are followed by lists of seasonal chores (including learning all the proper Latin plant names), practical advice (“Always go inside and look out the window before digging a single hole”), and best practices (for lawns, Roach keeps grass long and leaves the clippings). Throughout, she reflects on her evolving understanding of the impact of seed genetics, importance of native plants, and increasingly unpredictable weather, among other topics. Filled with expert and sometimes highly specialized information—such as about water gardens—this book is less a “how to” for novices than a meditation on “why to” for veterans. Those with dirt already under their fingernails will treasure Roach’s in-depth knowledge, wry humor, and reflective look at how seasons in gardening mirror the passage of time. With color photos. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

A Way to Garden—sensitive, wise, deliberate, thoughtful and splendidly bossy—prods us toward that ineffable place where we feel we belong; it’s a guide to living both in and out of the garden.” —The New York Times Book Review

"A gorgeous, helpful, and tenderly funny book for anyone who likes putting plants in the ground. I love the fact that it's 'A Way to Garden' not 'THE way to Garden.' Less Hubris, more mulch." —Ann Patchett, author of Commonwealth and State of Wonder

“Roach’s conversational tone showcases her personal experiences while highlighting important horticultural information, making it a compelling book to read straight through that is also useful as a reference for particular details. Readers will appreciate Roach's focus on gardening as a way anyone can help make the world a better place.”—Booklist

“I love plants and flowers and adore this brilliant gardening guru and her beautifully written new book, just out. It’s useful and gorgeous, a great combination.” —Kurt Andersen (@KBandersen), host of NPR's Studio 360

“Unquestionably brilliant! I am so impressed with the wisdom of Margaret Roach’s experience and the things she writes about that most garden books ignore.” —Deborah Madison, author of Vegetable Literacy and The New Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone

“Margaret has an intimate grasp of her subject, along with an appreciation of the microcosm of life within the spaces we garden. Her sparkling wit makes her a joy to read.” —Fergus Garrett, Head Gardener at Great Dixter House and Gardens

“Her voracious curiosity has kept Margaret on the leading edge. This updated classic distills decades of learning from one of gardening’s keenest minds. It is delightfully free of ideology but brimming with ideas and inspirations.” —Thomas Rainer, author of Planting in a Post-Wild World; principal of Phyto Studio

"If I could keep just one gardening book, the beautifully written A Way to Garden would be the treasured title. This is Margaret’s finest work to date and why she is my gardening superhero!” —Joe Lamp’l, Emmy Award–winning creator and host, Growing a Greener World, PBS
 
“A great book to curl up with . . . Margaret shares insight from her decades of gardening: the ups and downs are laid bare for gardeners to learn, empathize, and find inspiration.” —Tony Avent, garden writer and founder, Plant Delights Nursery
 
 The perfect reading companion for those of us who feel that gardening is an unstoppable addiction. It will draw you even further in, while confirming what you've always known in your heart: you must have more plants!” —Jane Perrone, host, “On The Ledge” podcast; former gardening editor, The Guardian
 
“An indefatigable researcher, Margaret Roach is a whirlwind of enthusiasm for and knowledge of the natural world. This update of A Way to Garden gives us the benefit of so much new information. Thank you, Margaret.” —Marco Polo Stufano, founding Director of Horticulture, Wave Hill
 
“Now that I am starting to dig into my own land, I have found a trusted manual to create interest in every season.” —Joshua McFadden, executive chef and author, Six Seasons: A New Way with Vegetables

“A comprehensive resource and a great book to cuddle up with in the winter while dreaming about your garden plans for the spring.” —Alexandra Cooks

“Charming, eye-opening and educational. I can’t imagine a better book to curl up with this winter and know I’ll be referring to it throughout each garden year.” —Susan’s in the Garden

“One of the most fun garden books.” —Country Gardens

“Brimming with photographs of her own garden, A Way to Garden is both practical and inspiring for any passionate gardener.” —Michigan Gardener

“A lavish book…that invites you into her garden with wisdom on gardening. A Way to Garden approaches each season with a metaphor of terms to relate to the months of the year.” —Empire-Tribune

“Roach’s discussion of even the most onerous chore or persistent pest makes me a better gardener; her words inspire me to keep going.” —The Seattle Times

“Margaret Roach encourages gardeners to view their yards less as outdoor decorating than as habitat creation, a trend that has gained force alongside greater environmental awareness.” —Boston Globe

From the Publisher