podcast: with debbie millman's 'design matters'

A happy and pleasant surprise has just arrived through the post at home.

By now, everyone involved with gardening or growing plants has heard the term “soil health” thrown around. What is soil health, and why is it important?

Since the book “Planting in a Post-Wild World” came out in 2015, co-authored by Claudia West with Thomas Rainer, I’ve been gradually studying their ideas and starting to have some light bulbs go off, on how to be inspired to put plants together in the ways that nature does, in layered communities.Claudia joined me on the July 17, 2017 edition of my public-radio show and podcast to about some of the practical, tactical aspects of plant community-inspired designs that we can app

But first, that key reminder: For best flavor and texture, harvest both zucchinis (Cucurbita pepo) and cucumbers (Cucumis sativus) before the skin gets hard and dull, when they still look like the beauties up top. Bitterness from an increase in the chemicals called cucurbitacins that these crops (and melons, pumpkins and gourds) contain may increase with overripeness, though it can also result from environmental stressors such as uneven soil moisture, low soil fertility, low soil pH, high heat or wide swings in temperatures. Once you’ve got such tender subjects in hand, head directly to the kitchen.IAM KNOWN FOR MY PICKLES, and more all the time thanks to search engines and other such decidedly non-culinary efforts. The second-most-popular post I’ve ever published (just an inch behind my slideshow of gorgeous vintage “green” WPA posters from 1936-43, like the one below): the easy refrigerat

Andrew, who is now assistant director of the Chicago Botanic Garden, is past president of Magnolia Society International’s board of directors, and remains a member of the society’s board. In his tenure over 20 years as curator at Scott Arboretum of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, Andrew built the magnolia collection from about 50 to more than 200 cultivars. That’s a lot of magnolias.Now Andrew Bunting is author of a book on the queen of flowering trees, called “The Plant Lover’s Guide to Magnolias,” just out from Timber Press as part of an ongoing series on various distinctive genera of plants.We talked magnolias on my public-radio show and podcast. Read along while you listen in to the April 25, 2016 edition of the podcast using the player below (or at this link)–and even learn how to train a magnolia or any w

IKNOW IT’S TOO LATE FOR HELP with the freakish October storm that flattened the woody plants here last weekend, but I have a hunch those of us in snow country will be needing tips for helping the garden through storms to come. After all, winter hasn’t even started yet (evidence outside my window, where it hasn’t melted yet, to the contrary).

Thanks to Lisa, I got helpful advice about shopping for bulbs, and the importance of choosing perennial companion plants that work well with them—creating dramatic backdrops, or hiding faded bulb foliage—plus tips for making our tulips last longer and more.  We also talked about gardening by subtraction—the essential process of editing, especially in a looser “wild garden,” as the Gravel Garden style represents.Lisa, at Chanticleer since 1990 after graduating from Longwood Gardens’ Professional Gardener Program, is also one of the co-authors of lavish book about Chanticleer called “The Art of Gardening.” (Enter in the comments box at the very bottom of the page, after the last reader comment, to win a copy.)Read along as you listen to the Aug. 29, 2016 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the

Maybe the best answer to that question is one I found on page 28 of the new book “The Art of Gardening: Design Inspiration and Innovative Planting Techniques from Chanticleer,” where it says:“It is a garden for the sake of being a garden.”Bill Thomas (above photo, back row, far right), came to Chanticleer Garden in 2003, as director and head gardener, after 26 years at nearby Longwood Gar

Our guide is Virginia Tech associate professor of horticulture Dr. Holly Scoggins, a herbaceous plant specialist and educator, who also teaches greenhouse management and ornamental plant production and marketing. She conducts research to help commercial growers of container plants get it right, optimizing inputs like water and fertilizer, for instance, or different kinds of growing media.In other words: Holly Scoggins knows a well-grown plant when she sees one.Because she apparently can’t get enough plants, Holly also operates a U-pick blueberry farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains, blogs at The Garden Professors blog at extension.org, and contributes to the Professors’ popular Facebook page.On my public-radio show and podcast I learned a whole new style of plant-shopping etiquette, and got over my sti

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

Years later, when visiting English gardens, I’d smile to see what are referred to as “houseleeks” happily growing on shed roofs, out of stone walls, and in other unfussy spots.These days at nurseries and in plant catalogs, Grandma’s version, the Sempervivum, are just the start–joined by what my friend Katherine Tracey of Avant Gardens Nursery calls “the other hens and chicks.”I got inspiration on the creative use of succulents from Kathy on my public-radio show and podcast. Read along as you listen to the April 1

Susan Morrison is based in the Bay Area of California and known especially for her experience on solving the puzzle that small-space gardens can pose. Her own backyard is just 30 by 60 feet, though anything but boring.The subtitle of her new book, “The Less Is More Garden,” is “Big Ideas for Designing Your Small Yard,” but even big-yard types like myself have plenty to learn from Susan’s ideas. We talked about how each of us can look at our own spaces with a designer’s eye, about breaking up too-boxy rectangular spaces to bring life into them, about use of color and other elements, and