26 Gardening Tools and Gadgets that can Change the Way You Garden

Since 2011, Timothy has worked at Untermyer Park and Gardens in Yonkers, New York, which is becoming a horticultural destination for keen gardeners wanting inspiration–and a getaway for anyone just wanting to be surrounded by bold, contemporary plantings in a dramatic, historic setting. The Untermyer Gardens Conservancy is a non-profit organization collaborating with the City of Yonkers to facilitate the garden’s restoration (details on tours and how to visit otherwise are at the bottom of this page).In case you’re wondering: that garden has many vivid miles to go before it sleeps for winter. I even saw the phrase “floral fireworks” (such as the crape myrtles and hydrangeas in the right-hand photo below) used to describe it at the end of August, and there are plenty of foliage fireworks, too.Timothy and I worked together for years at “Martha Stewart Living” magazine, and he has been a gardener at the famed Wave Hill in New York City, and at the Garden Conservancy project called Rocky Hills

The boys and I extend a huge thanks to Adrian, whom you can meet in the videos he’s been creating on The Post’s website. I loved this video about tomatoes, in which he combined visits with DC-area community gardeners and with our mutual friend Amy Goldman, the heirloom tomato queen who lives not far from me. Adrian’s recent story on Amy is a must-read as well.Also thanks to my very dear friend Erica Berger, who performed trick photography during the Washington Post photo shoot, so that (finally) a photo of Mother of the Frogboys that’s more recent than me at age 3 appears here.  I didn’t see any of Erica’s photos that ran in the paper, or others from her shoot including this one, on The Post’s website…just the story itself is there…

THE LATEST BOOK GIVEAWAY–which was a smashing success–ended at midnight Sunday, but there’s a “win” for everyone, it turns out. Collaborator and author Katrina Kenison and I asked commenters to tell us about books they’d relied on in times of transition…and wow, did they ever.

The Sister Project is sort of my unplanned late-life baby; it wasn’t meant to happen. What was intended was a book, co-authored by me and my younger sister, Marion Roach Smith. While Marion was writing away diligently, I was at my house carrying on a late-night romance with internet 2.0, and with WordPress in particular, as you A Way to Garden visitors know. The latest love child of that romance is The Sister Project, a blog network or family of related blogs: sister blogs.The more Marion (left) and I delved into our joint memoir that circles round the puzzle of “nature or nurture?” and our same-but-different realities as siblings, the more I got to thinking about the other s

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.

In a series of emails and Skype calls since I began A Way to Garden in 2008, Gayla and I have found so much shared turf:We two longtime organic gardeners can get riled up—over topics ranging from the environment, to chemical companies and the “business” of gardening in general, to dyed mulch and more (her most recent rant on offcolor mulch is way down in this post). We both overdo it—on plants, work, and a major inclination to cart home lots of rusty buckets and other “vintage” metal stuff from tag sales. We both live in the garden offseason crammed into spaces where in many rooms, the plants get a majority of the square footage. (And why not?) In addition to the usual tools, you’ll find us both with a camera in the garden, though Gayla is a professional ph

I hadn’t done a music show since the previous June, when I threw myself an on-air birthday party, and brought along some of my crazy collection of tunes. It’s wasn’t another birthday yet, but an anniversary I wanted to note:Almost precisely seven years before the radio taping (specifically in December 2007) I began to live fulltime in my now nearly 30-year-old garden—a place that before that was home to me only on weekends, for more than 20 years, as many of you know.When I lecture to garden clubs, I often begin by saying that I am going to tell the audie

Each day in the garden reminds me that I am blessed, even when it is raining ping-ping balls of ice from on high, as in the video clip above. (Try watching it full screen by clicking the Vimeo logo; for perspective, it’s shot through a window and the pond in the distance is more than 25 feet from where I was standing, in awe.)BEFORE FIVE concurrent weather warnings converged overhead that afternoon to form the hailstones and, eerily, a small tornado, I had been thinking about Oklahomans, including the Shawnee garden club I’d lectured to in 1999. It was the first time I’d ever seen the formidable red clay up close—I think I actually said, “Is that soil?” before I got hold of myself and my manners. Also on my mind was Dee Nash, the “Red Dirt Ramblings” garden writer who always has a smile and a kind word. Even this last week; even among her tears.“After tornadoes

Joe gardens in the Atlanta area, but has for years visited gardens around the nation as the longtime creator and host of the much-loved“Growing a Greener World” program on public television. I’ll confess that he’s also someone I treasure as a virtual colleague, someone I often email with my own Urgent Garden Questions for advice, so I’m especially glad he’s helping us get started on our 2018 paths.Read along as you listen to the Dec. 18, 2017 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).garden recap and resolutions, with joe lamp’lQ. Did you close up that garden down there in Atlanta or what?A. You kno

You know me: I like to know my weeds—rather than just have a fit about some infestation or other, to actually find out what they are, and where they are native to, and what their role for better or worse is in the bigger picture is (other than to irritate me).I don’t know which liverwort I have, but it is what’s called a thallose species—made up of flattened tissue that looks almost rubbery to me. You might think at first they were some kind of moss or algae, and in fact like those other Bryophytes the liverworts have no vascular system, and they repro

“The Way Through the Woods” (Amazon affiliate link) is by Long Litt Woon, an anthropologist originally from Malaysia who has spent her adult life living in Norway. It’s at once both an invitation to the astonishing world of fungi and also the personal story of a path of healing from great grief. I was treated to a conversation with Woon, about how she got started with mushrooming and where it has led her.Read along as you listen to the November 18, 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).Plus: Enter to win a copy of Woo

The popular course that Daryl Beyers teaches at NYBG in New York City is called Fundamentals of Gardening. And now Daryl, who has more than 25 years of professional landscaping experience besides his teaching role, has put all the fundamentals into a new book, “The New Gardener’s Handbook” (affiliate link).It was in its pages that I picked up some new-to-me tips on better composting and more—including the right way to water as you plant trees and shrubs; how to choose which limbs to prune off or keep when shaping and thinning; and how to rejuvenate overgrown shrubs (all at once, or in stages?).Read along as you listen to the March 16, 2020 edition