I’VE BEEN IN THE STUDIO, recording my next book as an audiobook (yes!), editing video slideshows to accompany it, and more. The process is so different from the one nearly 15 years ago, when I published “A Way to Garden,” the book I named this site for a decade later. It made me sentimental, and though it’s not quite time to shout out the next book (“The Backyard Parables,” due January 15), why not toast the original with two precious copies, in a new giveaway?
Like my next book will, “A Way to Garden” (published 1998) celebrated both sides of the garden equation: horticultural how-to and woo-woo, or both the practical and philosophical.
some ‘woo-woo’ excerpts from ‘a way to garden’
- ‘A Season for Sisterhood,’ circa 1989
- ‘My Hill of Beans’ (a birthday essay, from 1989)
- ‘Throwing in the Trowel,’ from 1990
how to enter to win the book
ALL YOU HAVE TO DO to enter to win one of two collectible copies I’ve stashed away to share: Comment below, telling me how long gardening has captured your heart.
I’ve been at it about 30 years–and next year I’ll celebrate 25 years of writing about the subject for national publications (first at “Newsday” newspaper in Long Island and New York, and later as garden editor at “Martha Stewart Living”). My 25th anniversary year seems a fitting time for a new garden book, right?
Don’t want to confess how long you’ve been in love with the garden? That’s fine–just say “count me in,” and you’ll be officially entered. Two lucky winners will be chosen at random after entries close at midnight Thursday, November 1. Good luck to all!
I’ve been gardening for more than 60 years, and I can’t say that those early years were voluntary.^__^
Definitely count me in, please. I read your book from the library and yearn to have my own. Hope Sandy passed you by.
xxoo
Almost 70 years! Ever since as a two year old I helped my grandma plant petunias in her back porch window box .
Gardening captured my heart when I bought my first house 20 years ago.
Hi!
Sadly, I was not the daughter of gardeners. However, when I was 19 I moved into my own tiny apartment on Balboa Island, a luscious plot of summer homes from the 1930s in Newport Harbor, California. My next door neighbor, Mrs. Parks, had all varieties of Southern California-friendly plants, which of course bloomed nearly all year-round. I would lean over her fence and ask “what’s that called?” “Salvia” “what’s that?” “primrose” “That?” “poppies” :) As a thank you for watching their home when they were away, she began giving me gift certificates to the local lovely garden center. I was HOOKED! I am now 48 so that was what . . .29 years ago? WOW! I hadn’t realized. So, thank you, Mrs. Parks, from my heart. And than you Margaret Roach, for your wonderful missives to my inbox. :)
Please count me in
I started to notice things that were in the garden very intently around Ocotober of 1994. I had a car accident, and couldn’t do much else for the next year or so. I started to watch the 4 season garden that had been planted for enjoyment. I started my first garden the next spring, already planning it that winter. I drew the plans with colored pencils, and found a lot of good compost in the yard. I planted every type of basil that I could find in that little village in Switzerland. It was pure delight. And that and painting got me through the next 5 years. Now living in NC, at the place I call home since 1998, I’ve planted the flowers that I love, for their fragrance mostly (except my poppies!), and have come to find what works for me in my vegetable/herb garden. And take refuge there often. I do enjoy your site, and like to read your posts. And, I would love to read your book! I hope I am one of the lucky winners.
I’m only 25, but I’ve been gardening most of my life (my mom’s veggie garden growing up was bigger than our house!)
I have loved gardens since my childhood in England in the fifties and sixties. It was magical place to play. In the years since, I only dabbled until I got the bug by embracing my new climate, southern CA about 8 years ago and started and using climate appropriate plants. Having retired this year, I am expanding and adding more local natives and plants from same zones around the world, more fruit trees more veggies from seed and becoming a volunteer at a Botanic Garden to expand my knowledge. This is magical once more.
I was 10 when my mom handed me a packet of marigold seeds, and asked me to plant them. I dug a small hole in the backyard and dumped them in! Imagine my surprise when I glanced out the window a few weeks later and noticed a bunch of green leaves, with little yellow buds!! I’ve been hooked ever since! I’m now 53!
Please count me in.
I started gardening at my daddy’s side when I was 10. Ummm, that makes it 52 years I have been gardening in some form. Nothing better than getting your fingers in the dirt.
When we were kids, our family grew vegetables out of necessity. When my kids were growing up, we grew a garden to teach lessons of nature and nurture and awe. Then I went through my herbs and flowers stage. Now I grow many things for fun and food (smells, color and texture!).
This is our second year gardening as a family and we are trying to learn more every season!
While growing up in NE Ohio, we always had a garden in the back of our small city lot. Us three kids helped my dad plant, weed and pick vegetables. My mom did not do this nor plant flowers. She saw how hard my grandmother had to work to prepare stuff from the garden & she wanted nothing to do with it in her life except eat it which she did enjoy. Three sides of my home, however, and beside the neighbor’s garage is where the annuals and perennials have been planted for the past 34 years. I have ruined several rings because I forgot to put my gloves on. There is something about your hands working in the dirt. Mammouth sunflowers, impatients and a few perennials are the highlight of my front yard. The sunflowers will reach my gutter before the flowerhead bends over. The neighbors that walk past always comment how beautiful. That is the thing about gardening, no matter what you plant, it turns out to be something beautiful (most of the time). No one comes inside the home and says to me, Oh, you’ve dusted today, it looks beautiful! The interaction with people about my garden is what I love because it causes conversation. I love that. After a divorce and raising 5 children, now 21-28yrs old on my own, gardening helped with depresion. Gardening has enriched my head and soul and has been part life saver. Remarried now, hubby and I plan to plant food crops on the south side instead of flowers. I am going to give a try at canning tomatoes, beans, and peppers. Wish me luck. It is never to late to learn something new. Life is good with flowers in it! Thanks dad for having us involved with good old Mother Earth!
When I was about 5 years old I planted a maple seed in the tiny “yard” behind our apartment where the owner grew his tomatoes. Soon the tree was 3 feet tall! That’s when I was hooked. It wasn’t until I was an adult that my mother confessed to buying a maple tree at the store and planting it when my seed failed to germinate.
My grandparents grew beautiful roses, so it must be in my blood!
Count me again and again, I need that book.
1973 I purchased my first home in Florida and luckily had some good starter plants waiting for me. It took me a while to realize trail and error growing plants will make you a better gardener.
Hope you are safe in this ferocious Autumn.
Have been gardening for over 34 years, past president of Organic Gardeners of Long Island…the key and the joy is that I am still learning and still having fun….best wishes to everyone, especially those on Long Island!
My first gardening attempt was when my Girl Scout troop sold seeds (later in the year than cookies). My Mom bought a few of the packets — one was Nasturtiums — and I planted the seeds. This was about 51 years ago!
My mother is a wonderful gardener. It is her that gave me the gift, which at certain times of the year feels more like I an illness. It consumes me at times. The rewards are breathtaking and some are disappointing. But most gardeners are wired not to give up!
Count me in!
I have been gardening and working in the yard for 60+ years! That number is even hard for me to comprehend. I love to garden, I take photos from all angles all a part of being in awe of what goes on in and around the garden. Thank you for offering your new book.
Only three years!! And have a LOT to learn!!
I have been in love with gardening for four and a half years. The minute we signed for our first home, which had a backyard and therefore gardening space, the bug bit me but good! It came out of nowhere, I never cared that much about gardening before.
Since we moved into our house 25 years ago. Veggies and flowers!
count me in. longer than I can count!
I’ve been gardening and loving it for only 3 years, but it’s 3 years of a garden of my very own rather than pots lugged around between rentals and so has immeasurable meaning to me! Though the pots was still gardening, but somehow this seems more real…
Since I helped my grandfather plant tomatoes in our tiny back yard, long before Internet, cell phones and Netflix. What a gift he passed along to me!
I have gardened all my life. I am hoping to read that you made it thru the storm OK?
Well, I think I have been in love with gardening since I was a little girl playing in my grandmother’s flower garden….. And – lets just say it was a long time ago….
I was 10 when my mother sent us, her 3 kids, in the garden for harvesting Cosmos seeds. For the next year, she said.
We did our best and filled a big box with seeds -enough, I suppose, for a huge Cosmos farm. Meanwhile, my mother had a peaceful hour…
We were so proud!
Next year – it was 42 years ago – my lifetime growing passion for gardening began, with sowing (part of!) those Cosmos seeds.
Ever since, gardening became a continuous adventure of descovering, learning and being constantly enchanted.
Oh, let’s see. My grandma had a huge garden and I would pick stuff with her, can it. My mother, having grown up with that huge garden and being rebellious by nature had one tomato plant per summer. But she was very handy with flowering shrubs, flowers. I had window gardens in various apartments until we bought our first house in 1985 where we had a do-able sized garden for vegetables, window boxes and beds for flowers. Our 2nd and present house came with a huge backyard vegetable garden and all kinds of flowering trees and shrubs and perennial beds. I plant annuals in various pots around the house. My middle daughter and her husband have a garden at their house and my son and his girlfriend had a plot in the community garden. So it has been a long time.
My love of and connection to gardening is tied in a very “woo woo” way to my Father’s Mother. She passed away at an early age two years before I was born back in 1954. Because Mom, Dad and I stayed on the homestead where my Dad grew up, I lived and played in the garden of a Grandmother I have never known. My Dad loved her dearly and could seldom speak of her because it was just to hard for him, so I was never told much about her. To this day I can walk in my mind through the very large vegetable garden, the drifts of daffodills spreading out into a meadow, and the tiny woodland bower carpeted with forget-me-nots that was created my Grandmother in the middle of 40 acres of Northwest woods. My own gardening efforts seem very small compared to what she did with so little money and time.
ENTRIES ARE NOW CLOSED. Thanks to all of you for your stories of garden love (and in some cases frustration — I know both sides of the relationship, too!).
You may continue to chime in, but the winners were chosen at random using random.org, and notified by email. They are: Burndette and Greenglasses. Congratulations!
I first tried to garden when I was about 10 years old. it was pathetic. I didn’t know the first thing and there was no one able to help me. The point is, I kept trying and now, many years later, gardening is one of the biggest parts of my life!
Count me in! Just had my small back yard soil amended and the bones planted – so now I can turn my thumbs green! Gardening has had my interest for many, many years and this new project has many fun possibilities! I always am excited to learn – even at almost 60!
I was an army beat for 22 years and had aunts, uncles and a great aunt who had vegetable gardens. Every
visit, we were treated to fresh vegetables and pies. My great aunt and I would gather pecans and she would bake me a pecan pie.
When we were able, my parents also had a vegetable garden, either in the ground or containers. My husband and I garden
I am brand new to gardening! I started my first garden two years ago but we moved last year so I wasn’t able to start my garden at my new house. So this is the year. I’m really excited, and a little nervous that I’ll mess it all up! I would love any help I can get!
I can’t remember a time where I haven’t been a gardener! There are photos of toddler me helping Grandpa in his gardens. I am 58 now. One of the joys of buying a home was the prospect of my very own gardens. One of the first things I planted was a rose bush from Grandpa’s garden in the Bronx after he passed away in 1988. It lived here in Ballsron Spa for about 3 years- it was too cold here. We have a photo of it as a mature plant from 1956, so it lived a long life- like Grandpa, who made it to a vibrant 93! And I now host about 50 rosebushes!
Since I’m a part of the over 60 crowd and I grew up on a farm in Iowa, I have been gardening for over 50 years. My Mom and I canned and froze everything we grew on the farm. I’m so glad she taught me these skills and I didn’t appreciate that until I was older. I have continued to add to that knowledge by reading everything I can get my hands on. I can’t wait to get out there again this spring.
I used to help my mother garden, beginning probably 50 years ago. It was then that I found the smell of the dirt so intriguing and learned that telling the weeds from the flowers, and pulling them out – being sure to “get the roots’ – was so satisfying. She knew all the “big names” of flowers; and I learned so much from her. Raising a family and working full-time have kept my gardening at a minimum for far too long.
As a young child I went out with my Father and watched him plant seeds, and bulbs in the Yard. He thought me to Garden. In his last years, he got on his knees and planted more tulips in his yard. Leaving a legacy of himself. He loved flowers. He died shortly after that. When spring came, my Fathers tulips came up and we knew it was because of our Dad was a gadenwr and had tought us. What a beautiful legacy he left us. Every since then, I have been gardening. First veg gardening and now flower gardening and about 5 tomato plants. I find so much peace in my garden, knowing tha my Father is watching over me and guiding me. Tank you Dad. I am so conten in the garden. Life is good.