updated: new source list includes plant societies

The Asian longhorned beetle (ALB; Anoplophora glabripennis) is not easy to miss – adults of this large, black beetle with white spots, black and white striped antennae, and blueish feet are between 1 and 1 ½” long (Fig. 1). ALB larvae are equally striking as the large, white segmented larvae can be nearly 2” in length (Fig. 2). Established populations in the U.S. are found in Massachusetts, New York, and Ohio, and a new infestation was recently found in Charleston County, South Carolina.

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

So I can invite guest experts to join me as well as share the program with other public-radio stations, we’re pre-taping “A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach” to stand alone, instead of airing live as part of my local station’s morning show, which it has been since March 2010.You can listen in to the first such standalone show here, right now. This week’s topic: When to sow what seeds, with guest Dave Whitinger of All Things Plants in Texas. Next time (February 4), the topic is why I’m going to grow calendul

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

“Something odd has to happen for hairworms to be on soil or vegetation, instead of in water, so at first when I got those calls I thought: It must be earthworms,” says Hanelt, a Research Assistant Professor with the Center for Evolutionary and Theoretical Immunology in the Department of Biology at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. “But I asked one caller to send me some—and lo and behold, they were hairworms.”It took years between the time Hanelt saw his first nematomorph, while on a survival-training hike in high school, until he actually knew what it was.“There they were out in the middle of the forest in winter, in a bucket of water,” he recalls. He saved the strange animal,

Balick has spent more than 30 years learning how indigenous and ancient cultures have used herbs in health and healing, and the book’s subtitle, “A Practical Guide for Healthy Living Using Nature’s Most Powerful Plants,” speaks to that, as does the foreword by Dr. Andrew Weil. But it is also a book on how to identify, grow and even cook with them.Balick is an ethnobotanist (“a person who studies the relationship between plants, people and culture”). He is also Vice President for Botanical Science at The New York Botanical Garden, and has undertaken more than 75 expeditions as diverse as Micronesia, Belize and the Bronx, where he also directs a research program, studying traditional healing practices in ethnic urban communities.“I trade in my passport for a subway token, and go into the markets of New Yor

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).

READER NANCY WROTE TO ME and made me do it–made me finally sit for several hours and categorize the Resource Links page so that you can find sources to shop for bulbs versus seeds, products versus plants. Up till now all the shopping sources were in one big pile; sorry! All she said was something I already knew but hadn’t glued myself to my chair long enough to fix, and I thank her for the nudge.

The selection is unlike in the early 1990s, when Ken published his first big shade-garden book and most people knew maybe two, hostas and astibles. Then, gardeners cursed shady areas of their yards as a liability to be eliminated instead of a refuge to be celebrated and expanded upon.Ken has been called the “guru of natural gardening” by “The New York Times,” but I just call him my old friend and the longtime master of the shade, and I’m was glad to welcome him back to my public-radio program to talk about making gardens in th

And like the Postal Service, we did so despite the weather, each of us snowed in at our respective homes, unable to reach the radio studio (where it was also likewise a whiteout) therefore recording via a less-than-ideal remote hookup. Forgive the audio hiccups; a consequence of our weather workaround.This episode is the second of Ken Druse’s and my promised monthly reader Q&A series. Submit a question for a future show on Facebook, in the comments on this post, or in the contact form here, too.I could best describe Ken as my kooky old friend from whom I have learned much about plants over the years…but here’s the formal version: Ken, an award-winning garden photographer and author of more books

On the other end of the equation, Lee and I are both un-planting some particularly un-loved weeds this autumn, and he joined me on my public-radio show and podcast to talk about planting trees, and also fighting weeds.I often refer to Lee Reich, a longtime friend and fellow garden writer, as the unusual fruit guy, because one of the first books of his I read was called “Uncommon Fruits Worthy of Attention,” and he grows medlars and pawpaws and figs and more at his New Paltz, New York, farm-den—that’s half garden, half farm. His other books