Episodes

  • Bird-Feeding Season with Julie Zickefoose - A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach - Dec. 29, 2025

    Bird-Feeding Season with Julie Zickefoose - A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach - Dec. 29, 2025
    Dec 26 2025
    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 the age of increased disease transmission, or how to provide essential water in the coldest months, and of course, much-needed tactics for outsmarting the squirrels. Smart bird feeding and more bird-related wisdom was the topic of conversation I had in December 2022 with Julie Zickefoose, that we’re featuring in encore on the show today. I’m always delighted to talk to Julie... Read More ›
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    28 mins
  • Tomatoes With Craig LeHoullier-A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach February 28, 2022

    Tomatoes With Craig LeHoullier-A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach February 28, 2022
    Feb 26 2022

    Sick of winter? What I find helps, besides the occasional warmish, sunny day, is thinking about tomatoes. And that's what we're going to do today with Craig LeHoullier, author of the hit 2014 book “Epic Tomatoes,” who has over the years grown some 3,000 varieties in his home garden and adds new ones to his list every year

    Craig, who gardens in North Carolina, is a retired chemist with a longtime passion for tomatoes. He's the co-founder of the Dwarf Tomato Project, an advisor on tomatoes to Seed Savers Exchange, and the person who in 1990 named the popular heirloom Cherokee Purple from seed that had been passed down and eventually made its way to him. 
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    26 mins
  • Tree Care History and How-to with Melissa Finley - A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach - Dec. 22, 2025

    Tree Care History and How-to with Melissa Finley - A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach - Dec. 22, 2025
    Dec 19 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, and our best practices of pruning and other how-to have evolved in each successive era to the methods we know today. We’re going to take a little look backward, and also at some current recommendations, with today’s guest, Melissa Finley, the New York Botanical Garden’s Thain Curator of Woody Plants, and curator of NYBG’s Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden, too. Woody... Read More ›
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    27 mins
  • Tomatoes With Craig LeHoullier-A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach February 28, 2022

    Tomatoes With Craig LeHoullier-A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach February 28, 2022
    Feb 26 2022

    Sick of winter? What I find helps, besides the occasional warmish, sunny day, is thinking about tomatoes. And that's what we're going to do today with Craig LeHoullier, author of the hit 2014 book “Epic Tomatoes,” who has over the years grown some 3,000 varieties in his home garden and adds new ones to his list every year

    Craig, who gardens in North Carolina, is a retired chemist with a longtime passion for tomatoes. He's the co-founder of the Dwarf Tomato Project, an advisor on tomatoes to Seed Savers Exchange, and the person who in 1990 named the popular heirloom Cherokee Purple from seed that had been passed down and eventually made its way to him. 
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    26 mins
  • Keystone Plants with Uli Lorimer - A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach - Dec. 15 2025

    Keystone Plants with Uli Lorimer - A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach - Dec. 15 2025
    Dec 12 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 plants has grown fast, and with it have come more new words for our vocabulary. One phrase that I’ve heard a lot lately is “keystone plants” – an expression I probably didn’t even know five years ago – describing native species that are disproportionately important to local ecosystems, the sort of powerhouse plants of all. I wanted to learn... Read More ›
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    26 mins
  • Matt Mattus on Holiday Blooms - A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach - Dec 8, 2025

    Matt Mattus on Holiday Blooms - A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach - Dec 8, 2025
    Dec 5 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 Chrysanthemum took center floral stage from Thanksgiving to New Year’s, surprising as that might sound. Whether historic or cutting-edge modern, horticulturist Matt Mattus reminds us there are many choices of festive blooms – including various ones we can grow ourselves indoors, and he has tricks for perfecting even the most familiar of those, your Amaryllis, for instance. Matt Mattus... Read More ›
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    28 mins
  • Editing and Dividing Perennials With Toshi Yano - A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach August 23, 2021

    Editing and Dividing Perennials With Toshi Yano - A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach August 23, 2021
    Aug 20 2021
    Maybe you, like I do, have certain perennial beds that could use editing and some particular plants that need dividing in the process. That’s just one focus of today’s guest, Toshi Yano, in his role as director of horticulture at Wethersfield, a former private estate turned public garden in the Hudson Valley of New York, He’ll tell us the how-to, and also about visiting this special place.  Toshi Yano Toshi is in his third year as director of horticulture at the former estate called Wethersfield garden in Dutchess County, New York, with its 3-acre formal gardens plus 7 acres of wilderness garden and commanding views of the Catskills and Berkshire Mountains.  Toshi and his team are bringing the gardens back to life, and he told me about the place, and specifically about the tasks of editing and dividing that every perennial gardener needs to do, whatever their garden scale. 
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    26 mins
  • Unusual Houseplants with Rob Moffitt - A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach - Dec. 1, 2025

    Unusual Houseplants with Rob Moffitt - A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach - Dec. 1, 2025
    Nov 28 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 in matching their clients with houseplants that are just the way I like them: Not just pretty, but possessing loads of personality. Often sculptural in stature, like living artworks. Capable of forging a connection to the person caring for them … and with the potential to endure, maybe even for a lifetime of companionship. Rob is here to tell... Read More ›
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    29 mins