Gardenig in state New York. Tips & Guides

THE FLYER PIQUED MY INTEREST: Dan Benarcik, part of the creative team at Chanticleer Garden in Wayne, Pennsylvania (a must visit!), would be lecturing nearby about “The Art & Craft of the Garden,” and how to personalize a garden using artistic elements, found artifacts, and ornamental containers. I quickly got a ticket—you can, too, for the June 16 event, including garden tours and a garden market, in Spencertown, New York—but also asked Dan to share some of his ideas and images (including the bromeliad-artemisia- urn-and-melianthus moment at Chanticleer, above) with us, no matter whether we can attend. A Q&A with this enormously talented plantsman and garden artist.

Many visitors have asked me to take it to the next level. Now Broken Arrow Nursery—they always do plant sales at my big Open Days—and I are offering smaller, ticketed, workshop-style events and sales on September 17, lasting a half-day each, with lots of individual attention. Our spring version sold out fast; space is very limited. Ticket includes $25 Broken Arrow shopping credit at the plant sale.Tour with me, Margaret, focusing on how I made a garden for the birds (60-plus species visit yearly); my maybe-too-crazy obsession with gold foliage; my passion for great groundcovers; the pollinator- and bird-enhancing “meadow” I’ve cultivated by observing carefully and mowing differently; and most of all, my intimate relationship with the place that goes wa

Garden open from 10-4; $5 suggested donation to the Garden Conservancy, no reservations required. Broken Arrow Nursery plant sale in my driveway, 10-4. 11 AM lecture just down the road on “Backyard Fruit Simplified” by Lee Reich (reserve tickets here); 2 PM grafting workshop by Lee Reich (tickets here). (Plus: one other Garden Conservancy property open nearby.)saturday, june 1Garden open from 10-4; $5 suggested donation to the Garden Conservancy, no reservations required. Broken Arrow Nursery plant sale in my driveway, 10-4. (Plus: three other Garden Conservancy properties open nearby.)saturday, august 17Garden open from 10-4; $5 suggested donation to be shared by the Garden Conservancy and Friends of Taconic State Park, no reservations required. My Open Day in August is part of a townwide celebration called Copake Falls Day. Broken Arrow Nursery plant sale in my driveway, 10-4. 11 AM lecture on “The Heirloom Life” by The Fabulous Beekman Boys, Josh Kilmer-Pu

I mean, it doesn’t close up shop or shut it doors on me or to visual enjoyment. The garden centers may need to stand idle a portion of each year, but not the landscape itself. And so, stubbornly and defiantly over a period of 25 years, at first accidentally and lately more intentionally as my knowledge has grown, I suppose I have made a garden for 365 days. Good thing I did, since I now live in it year-round, having left my career and the city in late 2007 after more than 20 years as a weekender in the Hudson Valley-Berkshires area of New York and Massachusetts.TO MAKE A YEAR-ROUND GARDEN was not my plan, or at least not a conscious one I could have explained when I began digging holes on an overgrown, bramble-infested bit of Columbia County, New York, land with little more to recommend it horticulturally beyond a half-dozen very old apples and a pair of ancient lilacs. My 365-day garden style was actually a happy side effect—a total serendipity—precipitated by my love of birds.Because birds’ needs vary at different times

Now, I can tell you from first-hand experience that the purple markings on the rounded, 6- or 7-inch green pods look nothing like those on an Eastern timber rattler. But when grown until the pods mature and dry (here’s how to grow and dry shell beans), they’d be more in the snake’s tan and brown color range, if not the right pattern, exactly. The bean seeds are somewhat pinto-like, but much smaller, and speckled the way the green pods are before they turn solid green when cooked.Besides being beautiful, the fresh snap beans are somewhat sweet-tasting and easy to grow, and especially cooperative in hot weather (making them a favorite in the Southeast and mid-Atlantic, says Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, which lists them as 73 days to producing size).  Up north in Maine, Fedco’s catalog says 70 days–and that down south they’re sometimes called Preacher Beans, which Seed Savers confirms (offering a range of harvest time from 60-90 days); High Mowing See

All Things Plants: It was our mutual friend Dan Long of Brushwood Nursery (gardenvines.com) who introduced us, and I am so grateful to know All Things Plants’ founder Dave Whitinger. He’s in Texas and I’m not—but the common threads we always find when we get together spell kindred spirit. I was the guest on his popular podcast this week (do you subscribe already?). Beekman 1802 Boys: One half of “The Amazing Race”-winning, goat-farming, cheese-making Beekman 1802 Boys was my colleague at Martha Stewart, and we keep in touch across the rural New York State counties betw

You may recall my previous conversations with Thomas, the co-author with Claudia West of the provocative 2015 book “Planting in a Post-Wild World: Designing Plant Communities for Resilient Landscapes.” Even though we both have worked around plants for many years, it’s as if Thomas sees them differently from the way I do, in a sort of super-savvy botanical 3-D. He doesn’t see them as mere decorative objects, but astutely reads their body language for clues to who they want to grow with (or not) and how to put them all together successfully.I love how he sees, and thinks, as you can glean from our lively Q&A, where he says things like this:And this:Though not intentionally so, the Times article turns out to be especially timely—and not just because it’s early spring, and we gardeners need to make smarter choices

I got to know Franca this year when she opened an actual shop for Boxwood Linen in the next town, Hillsdale, New York, at the historic Hillsdale General Store, which was recently renovated. Franca grew up on a farm in Ontario, the daughter of parents born in Scanno, Abruzzo, so she is no stranger to the ways of the garden and kitchen.“We had a cellar, a cantina, at the old farm in Canada,” Franca recalls, “where we’d store not just canned goods but cheese and prosciutto and sausage—but no more!”Now Aida, Franca’s mother (above), visits her daughter’s Hudson Valley, New York-based home from Toronto each late-summer-into-fall, when the garden is offering up its best and there’s work to be done. Together, Franca and Aida continue the old traditions, but in a new location. They do hot-packed tomatoes two ways: chunky, and also as a puree. Aida used to use a motorized mach

‘THE SMALLEST NPR STATION in the nation,” Robin Hood Radio, just got bigger, which is good news for them and also for my garden podcast, which we began doing together each Monday morning around 8:30 in March 2010. The station, headquartered in nearby Sharon, Connecticut, has expanded to reach about 150,000 residents, up from 40,000 previously, by adding a signal from the frequency at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.

This history of beelining, the other way to connect to honey bees besides keeping hives, is the subject of the book called “Following the Wild Bees: The Craft and Science of Bee Hunting,” by Cornell University biologist Thomas Seeley, just released in paperback edition. Tom, Horace White Professor in Biology in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at Cornell, has been passionately interested in honey bees since high school, eventually doing his doctoral thesis on them, and his ongoing scientific work has primarily focused on understanding the phenomenon of swarm intelligence with the help of these incredible animals.Learn about how a hive works, with its female-dominated order, about how and why Tom beelines to locate wild hives. And maybe most astonishingly listen about what he calls our “shared uniqueness” with the honey bees–what characteristic we share with

WHEE! The birds and I were happy yesterday for snow here at Cupcake Falls, New York (and I suspect you can hear some opera playing in the background, which ain’t bad, either).

I WISH I COULD walk every visitor around personally at Garden Conservancy Open Days—and answer every question. But that’s impossible when hundreds of guests stream through for the self-guided walkabouts I’ve been hosting for 20 years (last one of 2017 is on August 19, top of page).Many visitors have asked me to take it to the next level. Now Andrew Brand of Broken Arrow Nursery—they always do plant sales at my big Open Days—and I are offering a sort of “Open Day-Plus” on September 16: smaller, ticketed, workshop-style events and sales lasting a half-day each, with lots of individual attention.Space is limited, at each of two sessions per day.Ticket includes $25 Broken Arrow shopping credit.The September program (from 9:30-noon, and repeated from 1:30-4 PM):Baked Treats & Beverages: Fuel up, get acquainted, and te

GARDEN OPEN DAYS start at my place in Columbia County, New York, on Saturday, May 11, when this slow spring promises lots of early goodies that would normally have gone by. Make a day of it: Reserve your ticket now for a morning organic fruit-growing lecture by Lee Reich, plus an afternoon grafting workshop—and an all-day plant sale by Broken Arrow Nursery is also on tap.

Remember: I’m all about the 365-day garden, even here in Zone 5B in the Hudson Valley of New York State, where frost happens in May and again in October. By planting extra-early (and extra-late) showoffs, including shrubs that flower at one extreme end of the season or get fiery foliage or fruit at the other (or maybe have great bark or structure when “naked”), I stretch the season to fill the calendar with visual treats.The woody-plant bloom schedule begins here in late January to mid-February, weather depending (update: in 2014 it was late March instead!), and by late April look at what has already happened, or is currently under way or about to pop. Follow the green links to the full plant portraits f

On my radio show and podcast, I spoke with Adam Wheeler of Broken Arrow Nursery—growers of a staggering 80 selections of magnolias—about the range of possibilities, and how to care for them.  Plus: Adam’s a champion giant pumpkin grower, and offers some tips on that, too.Understatement: “We’re big magnolia fanatics,” Adam says of Broken Arrow’s collection, which continues to grow. Many more (plus distinctive shrubs, vines, perennials…) are available at the Hamden, Connecticut, retail location than can ship by mail, but good news:Adam Wheeler will be my guest in my Hudson Valley, New York

OOPS! Had a crazy hailstorm, and the garden’s topsy-turvy. But with a little help from my friends, I’ve got an action-packed, improvised “Open Day” on tap instead for Saturday June 1, anyhow, from 9 AM to 1 PM, at the nearby church here in Copake Falls, New York (with three unscathed nearby Garden Conservancy gardens open, too).

GARDEN VISITING: Entry to the garden from 10 AM to 4 PM, as for all Garden Conservancy Open Days, will be a suggested $5 donation per adult, with all proceeds to be split by the Conservancy and Friends of Taconic State Park, a local charity. No reservations required for garden visiting.KEN DRUSE LECTURE: Ken Druse‘s 11 AM talk on creating exciting plant combinations will be held at the Church of St. John in the Wilderness, Copake Falls, about 2 minutes’ drive from my garden. Reservations suggested as space is limited; learn more and buy a $20 ticket, to benefit Friends of Taconic State Park.SHOP FOR PLANTS: Broken Arrow‘s plant sale will take place in my driveway from 10 AM to 4 PM. Want to know more about them? Read my recent Q&A about exceptional plants with Adam Wheeler of Broken Arrow of

THE DISEASE THAT DETHRONED Impatiens as the top annual in the nursery industry—Impatiens Downy Mildew—continues to take its toll. But a breakthrough reminiscent of advancements we hear about in medical research was announced this month by industry giant Ball Horticultural Company.

Tomatillos (Physalis ixocarpa or P. philadelphica, depending which variety you grow) are cousin to the tomato and other solanaceous crops or nightshades, such as peppers, potatoes, and eggplants. But it’s much easier to see their even closer relationship to the Chinese lantern, Physalis alkekengi, a somewhat-thuggish perennial that’s wonderful dried, with its papery orange husks (the lanterns, technically the calyx).Gayla of You Grow Girl [dot] com  is a mad canner who also admits to an obsession with solanums—“even including just-on-the-verge-of-edible ones,” she says—so I knew the plain old edible tomatillo and salsa would be a great topic for us.growing tomatillosIN GAYLA’S Toronto, Ontario, location and mine in New York State, tomatillos that set fruit will then self-sow the coming year (assuming some fruit is left in the garden to do so). But we don’t get enough early heat to prompt those seedlings to get up and growing in time to accom

THE ADVENTURE IN Mollie Katzen’s “The Heart of the Plate: Vegetarian Recipes for a New Generation,” begins even before the first recipe page. It starts in the delicious, intimate endpapers—which came from illustrated journals that the author has been keeping since she was a teenager, which were also the origin of her beloved, bestselling “Moosewood Cookbook.” The musings (that’s one in the photo above), in drawings and hand-lettered words, speak to how Mollie—a keen gardener, and the guest on my latest radio show—approaches food today. Learn how she suggests we re-define “vegetarian;” how she “paints [her] rice,” and makes her simplest, most delicious tomato sauce. And maybe win her newest book, too. 

QUICK, BEFORE THE FROST gets hold of the ground for good, do it: Take a soil test, to send off to the lab. Host Joe Lamp’l of the award-winning public television program “Growing a Greener World” says this simple practice is a foundational tactic of garden success, and shares other insights into building and maintaining healthy garden soil.

I REMEMBER SITTING in our skyscraper-high offices at Martha Stewart, dreaming out loud together about the “someday” of rural living. Well, I made it out of the city, and so did Brent Ridge—my former colleague, and half of  “The Amazing Race”-winning duo called the Fabulous Beekman Boys. Now he and Josh Kilmer-Purcell are coming over to this side of the Hudson River for my August 17 Garden Conservancy Open Day, and to do a talk about “The Heirloom Life” they live.

I’m feeling daring, so I specifically called Timothy Tilghman, a former colleague at Martha Stewart Living, who is now horticulturist at the much-heralded Untermyer Park and Gardens in Yonkers, New York, just minutes north of New York City. The property has quickly become a destination for gardeners, a getaway where visitors are wowed by bold, contemporary plantings—including ones in containers—in a dramatic, historic setting.A century ago, in 1915, Samuel Untermyer hired William Welles Bosworth, an Ecole des Beaux Arts-trained architect and landscape designer who designed Kykuit for the Rockefellers, to create the “greatest gardens in the world.” Soon after, they began exe

Reserve a free ticket below (space is limited!) to Update 7/1: Response to this even has been fantastic, so we are close to capacity. Put your name on the waitlist to come see moths and other flying creatures of the night on white sheets at special blacklight and mercury-vapor light stations set up for us in the Park, including perhaps the giant pandorus sphinx (above) from last year’s walk, who really liked resting on my neighbor’s shirt or Brigette’s nose (below).Before dark, we’ll first examine and release the live catch from special blacklight traps set the night before, to get acquainted with some of the local species. At dark, we’ll venture along Park trails to the various light stations to see the night’s diversity of visitors. We’ll continue till 10 or so, as long as there are moths, and participant interest.The mothing event begins at 8:15 PM at the historic Copake Iron Works, located ad

Yes, you’ve seen these and many more examples of bird behavior–but do you know what any of it means? Do you know not just the what, but also the why behind those actions?I’m a longtime amateur birder and can ID a good number of species, but until I started taking online webinars and other courses with Cornell Lab of Ornithology maybe five years ago, I didn’t realize that my powers of observ

Andy Brand is longtime nursery manager of the famed mail-order and destination nursery Broken Arrow in Hamden, Connecticut, and each September he and I teach half-day workshops in my rural Hudson Valley, New York, garden–with one part of the workshop being about gardening for the birds. Our next one is Saturday 16, 2017 (details at the bottom of this story, or at this other page).But no matter where you are listening, we talked recently about strategies and plants that bring in the birds and more—particularly the top genera of powerhouse woody plants that fuel fruit production in summer and fall for hungry birds, preceded by spring or summer flowers that support pollinators and other beneficials. I’ve also inclu

Today’s guest, the leader of Cornell Lab’s Project FeederWatch, will tell us more about changing bird populations–including not just rare birds but among some of our most familiar backyard species, like blue jays and juncos–and also about how data from birdwatchers helps, plus best practices for feeding birds this winter and more. Emma Grieg is the leader of Project FeederWatch at Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York, which for more than 30 years has fostered connections between people and birds, and also between birdwatchers and scientists, who benefit from all those extra sets of eyes to help them get a closer look at bird population changes over time. That’s Emma below, o

The book, appropriately called “Bread Toast Crumbs,” by Alexandra Stafford, got me thinking about not just bread for, say, a sandwich, but about bread as an ingredient in the simple, delicious recipes I can concoct with my upcoming garden produce. Examples: a thick, roasted tomato and bread soup, or orecchietti pasta with brown butter, Brussels sprouts leaves and homemade bread crumbs, or a salad that becomes a meal when it’s a version of panzanella–reviving even stale bread in the best, delicious Tuscan fashion.Alexandra Stafford is the creator of the popular food website Alexandra’s Kitchen at alexandracooks dot com. Though “Bread Toast Crumbs: Recipes for No-Knead Loaves and Meals to Savor Every Slice” is Ali’s debut cookbook, it has earned raves from

JOIN US for our fourth annual Moth Night, part of the citizen-science project called National Moth Week, and organized by A Way to Garden and Friends of Taconic State Park in Copake Falls, New York. BYO picnic supper if you please–we’ll provide dessert treats–to enjoy while you learn Moth 101 from top experts, then experience nature after dark with them and just have fun.Note: This is a free event, but if you wish to donate to the Friends of Taconic State Park to help us offer honoraria to more experts to lead more nature programs like this one, there is an extra button on the ticket form for that. Thanks.Brigette Zacharczenko, a PhD UConn-Storrs entomologist, and Dylan Cipkowski, who has been surveying the moths of Columbia County, N.Y., as pa

Q. Where did you learn to be a good bluebird landlord? A. I rely heavily on Bet Zimmerman’s website Sialis.org and a wonderful little pamphlet called “Enjoying Bluebirds More” by Julie Zickefoose, and I always urge (implore, really) people interested in putting up nestboxes to read Bet’s page of bottom-line advice for new bluebirders. [Note: Sialia sialis is Latin name for the bluebird’s genus and species. Also: Zickefoose wrote a whole book on the subject called “The Bluebird Effect” in 2012.]Q. So what’s the basic thrust of your Bluebird Rules and Regulations? A. My boxes are installed to encourage successful nesting by the bluebirds

I decided to invite one to the show to find out. Here to help is Head Gardener Timothy Tilghman, of Untermyer Gardens Conservancy in Yonkers, New York, an ambitious restoration of a historic landscape that he’s been undertaking with his team since 2011 and gaining lots of praise in the press and from visitors. (That’s Timothy watering the greenhouse flats of annuals, below.)Read along as you listen to the Feb. 25, 2019 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Spotify or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).hot annuals, with untermyer gardens’ timothy tilghmanQ. Hi, Timothy. It’s me again.A. No, it’s always fun to hear from you.Q. Needing more plant ideas again. We should probably just as an introduction for people who

Read along as you listen to the August 19, 2019 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Spotify or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).And for those of you listening from near the Capital Region of New York State, Ken will join me at the New York State Writers Institute’s second annual Book Festival on Saturday, September 14th, 2019, and we’re going to have information about how you can join this wonderful, big, free day-long book festival and meet us.the latest q&a with ken druseMargaret Roach: New York State Writers Institute’s se

Kathryn is past president of the New York State Ornithological Association, has directed New York’s Natural Heritage Program, and conducted bird surveys for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Her new book is “Birding the Hudson Valley”–you can enter to win a copy in the comment box at the bottom of the page–and she’s also one of us, a gardener.We talked about some things you probably didn’t know about sparrows (including the white-throated, above; photo from Cephas at Wikipedia), plus things you can do to up your birding game, and more.Read along as you listen to the

Suitable for all ages, and families welcome. Wait till you see what we discover together at moth-attracting blacklight “stations” set up on park trails.Note: This is a free event, but if you wish to donate to the Friends of Taconic State Park to help us offer honoraria to more experts to lead more nature programs like this one, there is an extra button for that! Thanks.Also: Note new location within the Park from past years for this event.Brigette Zacharczenko, a PhD UConn-Storrs entomologist, and Dylan

Soon my new friend Andre was living in Nebraska with the future Mrs. Andre, and eventually they moved to South Dakota (despite being forewarned that winter never kids around there). A run of the Mount Rushmore State’s doozies has apparently left an impression on Andre, the dimensions of which he has summed up with a series of at once empathic and totally mad doodles–gardening cartoons that I hope you love as much as I do.To mark more than a decade of knowing Andre, I thought it might be fun to reprise some of them–just in time for the day that winter is officially supposed to be dispatched. Happy spring? Well, maybe.winter doodles, by andre jordanBAD WINTER: I miss the migrant birds

You know Joe Lamp’l as host of the “Growing A Greener World” show on PBS and of the Joe Gardener podcast, but apparently besides being a great gardener, he also had a show on the DIY Network for three years. So before all my vining crops and tomatoes need support, or the seedlings are screaming to be gridded out at proper spacing and other such impending issues, Joe shared some proactive garden organizing tips, DIY-style, based on the wire panels.Read along as you listen to the April 2, 2018 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).joe lamp’l’s diy garden projects using livestock panelsQ. Welcome back, Joe. I’m ready for some he