New Edition Of Margaret Roach’s Garden Book

If we had a Gardening Laureate like our Poet Laureate,  I would appoint our New York neighbor Margaret Roach, who has a weekly radio show broadcast from WHDD, (Robin Hood Radio in Sharon), writes a weekly blog called A Way to Garden, does a podcast of the same name, while managing her 2.3 acre garden in Copake Falls, opening it for educational and how-to talks, and writes important gardening books. (Phew)

Perhaps equally important for the first Laureate, she does everything in a lyrical, humorous, and somehow humble way so that you feel like she’s your buddy not some pretentious, incomprehensible pooh-bah with lots of initials after her name. 

With that in mind, I picked up the phone to find out about her latest book, “A Way to Garden: A Hands-On Primer for Every Season,” which is a complete update of the original one published in 1998. 

Cynthia Kling: What have you learned since the first version?

Margaret Roach:  I suppose the biggest change in those years has been my grasp of the sort of science part of gardening, and of the interconnectedness of what’s going on outdoors. I often say that becoming a gardener landed me in a place that is part Buddhist retreat and part science lab, and thanks to literally hundreds of interviews with experts in the years since that first book, I have really indulged my curiosity about the science lab. 

 When the first book came out, I could identify the birds who visited, for instance, but why they came here to this place and not another habitat (or the concept of habitat at all, really) — their life histories, and the life histories of the other organisms like caterpillars they depended upon—I had no idea. 

CK: Have you got new mentors?

 MR: I really like people who have studied something deeply, carefully, who understand all the moving parts.  There are so many buzzwords now — “natives,” “pollinator plants”— but this information is so deep and complex that I admire the experts, the scientists, entomologists, ornithologists, ecologists, etc. 

CK: How has your garden changed?

MR: When I began here about 30 years ago, I was looking for rare things, unusual plants. It was a collector’s garden. I would order things like 6-inch shrub from a funny little catalogue or an Asian Hosta. But bugs don’t care about strangely colored ferns, and as I got interested in the connections, diversity, and actual creatures, I have begun finding ways to layer in wilder, looser, more native plants for them and created a meadow.

CK: I know you love the creatures — insects, frogs, birds, turtles. If  I wanted to bring them to my garden, what is the one thing I could do?

MR: My friend [entomologist] Doug Tallamy says to plant an oak tree because they are the keystone species of our forests. I would say to make water gardens and keep them unfrozen in winter because water is a real magnet for all kinds of creatures, and create meadow in a part of your lawn.

CK: OK, that’s an oak, a water garden and a meadow. I really look forward to your new book where I can learn more about all three. Thanks, Margaret.