‘horticultural how-to and woo-woo’
the source for organic gardening inspiration
margaret roach, head gardener
JACK AND I WISH YOU EVERY GOOD THING in 2010 (however you wish to pronounce it, twenty-ten or two-thousand ten, or even two-oh-one-oh). As our parting shot, a look at some of the zillions of photos we enjoyed taking in 2009. Happy New Year! (Photo of us thanks to Erica Berger, and no, I am not torturing Jack. Promise.)
Click on the first thumbnail to start the show, then toggle from slide to slide using the arrows next to each caption. Enjoy!
Welcome! I’m Margaret Roach, a leading garden writer for 25 years—at "Martha Stewart Living," "Newsday," and in 3 books. I host a public-radio show; lecture and hold tours, and always say no to chemicals and yes to great plants.
Wishing both you and Jack (the demon cat) a wonderful 2010. It wasn’t a horrible year, but wishing you an even better year ahead. Thank you for sharing so, so much! Happy, Happy Holidays MR! Much love!
Gorgeous! My favorite is the ferns, I think.
@Bobster: No, it wasn’t horrible at all, and we have had good fun here to be sure. Thanks for all your encouragement, and great comments. :)
Really beautiful! Thanks for sharing these images!
A lovely way to start New Year’s Day!
Thank you for your limitless love of the gardens and for reminding us of the awesome possibilities that await for all gardens both large and small. I look out at the snow covered ground and I pick up a tool and head out to plant 4 mini trees into a window box saving them from the warmth of the mantle, envisioning that one day they could reach 7 feet tall…To plant a garden is to believe in the future… HAPPY NEW YEAR TO A BELIEVER!
this was yummy on this cold gray new year day, thank you, i feel inspired to do a slide show of my own.
Wishing you and Jack a Happy New Year ( from Miami). I am ever so thankful to have your “blog” and to be able to visit your garden not far from my Lakeville summer home.
i actually stuck to my plan & got some crocus, hyacinth, daffodil, striped squill & glory of the snow planted this fall. i look out @ today’s snow & smile picturing what i’ll be seeing in a few months. this, along w/ the assorted perennials & shrubs planted last spring are all because of your inspiration & my past visits to your garden. thanks, margaret. i wish you happiness in 2010 & hope to visit again on your garden conservancy tour this spring.
denden8148
Thank you so much for sharing the beauty that you have created on your country landscape throughout the year. I look forward to your newsletter and blogs. You make it all seem so simple, but we who have gardened—perhaps less successfully (I’m speaking for myself, of course)—know the hours of work behind the lovely scenes. Thank you for sharing your wit and humor and all of your creature friends—Happy New Year!
Your gardens are just incredible! You and Jack have created such a beautiful, peaceful space – it is no wonder you love it so! Thank you for sharing your year…aren’t we lucky?
margaret, your photos are such an inspiration — and a distraction as i had to go hunting for angelica gigas for my own garden (too bad you don’t own a nursery too! hahaha).
best wishes for a wonderful twenty ten!
Welcome, Fran. You don’t believe this is a Ruth Stout No-Work Garden, huh? :) Thanks for joining the conversation; don’t be a stranger.
@ all of you: So nice to see you this first morning of the New Year and decade. Lots to come in 2010…
Ah! What a wonderful way to start the new year……..for this confined city gardener to revisit your stunning, expansive country garden. Thank you from this Oklahoma City garden voyeur…….
Happy 2010 Margaret! Thanks for your beautiful and inspiring blog. I enjoy it very much. Wishing you a creative and floriferous year.
Happy New Year to you and Jack. We are frozen in here and our oldest Korean Maple split through the heart in the big snow in early December. Many trees and shrubs still glued to the ground. I am trying to think about all the new things I can plant if more things succumb from that storm. Meanwhile, I am anticipating the year to come via your photos!
Add my thanks to the rest. You blog had made this year easier in the midst of so many global problems. Have a glorious 2010 and please let us keep sharing it with you.
Margaret, the pictures are lovely. My question is, are you seeing your crocus, snowdrops, and glory of the snow coming up now? I’m in southeastern Missouri (5B as well, so the charts claim) and they are showing now, though no flowers have budded yet. Will they still be able to put on a spring show when they started coming up in December? Thanks for your help.
A bit north and west of you, here in Saratoga County, my variegated red twig dogwoods are already glowing against the snow. The bird feeders are busy with colorful cardinals and blue jays. Juncos and finches, chickadees and winter wrens bob and weave around the shrubs and spruce trees. Mourning doves caucus on low-hanging branches. It is New Year’s Day and I have time to look at it all. What peace.
Your slideshow cheered me up this gloomy morning. Thank you.
I love that we have Kansas and Oklahoma and Missouri in this last string of comments…fun to know where you all are from.
Welcome, first off, to Linda Vater (OK); I have not been to your state in many years, but once lectured in Shawnee, I recall, and also have a gigantic collection of green-glazed Frankoma pottery (make in Oklahoma). So I have a little bit of your clay soil here in the house with me, sort of. :)
Welcome also to Tom. Sorry the morning is gloomy; the sun keeps trying to overtake the gray here today, and melting snow is dripping off the roof, so not so vibrant here, either. Hope to see more of you both in this new year.
@LiriopePisces: Yes, funny that various bulbs here have shown green since late fall — though in my case mostly larger ones, not the specific ones you describe. I keep looking with a concerned eye, and then remember that they typically know how to take care of themselves.
Those little guys you mention usually come in March sometime for me, extending into April, and I wonder if what will happen is that you will have an earlier-than-normal show this year if there is a thaw in March? They are usually very tough unless they get all the way up and open and then get hammered too many times. Crossing fingers for both of us.
Happy New Year Margaret. Wishing you all the best from the summer here in Argentina. I have enjoyed enormously sharing your comments and photos. I even went to the riverside and got lots of frogs for my garden!! after reading the adventures of yours. Thank you for all the advise (that I religiously follow 6 months after!!) Best wishes for the coming year.
Welcome, Vicki, from the other half of the world (6 months away!). :) Thanks for your kindness, and for commenting today; glad to “meet” you. Happy New Year.
Thank’s for the great blog Margaret! I love to spend time there when I’m not in my own garden. Wishing you an abundant garden, literally and figuratively, in 2010!
Thanks Margaret, what inspiration! In the dead of winter (- 15 degrees tonight in MN – brrr) there’s nothing like looking back and dreaming about next year. Now where are those seed catalogues? @joangolson
Thank you, Maragret, for creating your wonderful site and sharing your gentle connections with the natural world.
I discovered A Way to Garden this past fall while searching for an east coast garden site (we moved from Dallas to Maryland last month) and my “visits” to your garden have been a wonderful introduction to a different type of landscape. Your photographs are so special that I revisit them often! Happy gardening to you and Jack!
Welcome, Suzanne (Jack is always delighted to be singled out in a comment, so now he is your fan). I am happy you enjoy the blog, and the photos, and I will be studying up in 2010 on how to *really* take pictures (some technical lessons lie ahead, uh-oh). I am giving myself a new camera for Valentine’s Day, and also trying to learn DIY video. So watch out! :) See you soon again, I hope.
Happy New to you all.. and we loved the slide show…thanks for all your posts…Helen, Darcy and Bingley
Happy New Year from N.Florida.
Jack is a lovely “Tuxedo” cat, always dressed for the occasion.
We are having some VERY cold weather for us. It will be interesting to see what it will do to our gardens.
Margaret,
What a lovely journey through 2009!!! I would like to feature it with another slideshow I am writing about on Garden Variety. Can I use one of your pictures on the blog? Your choice!
Thank you for sharing your pics and memories with us:) I love the ‘Tiger’s eye’ sumac and the ‘ephemeral’ picture, well that got me in the mood for spring time really fast. Alas as i am sitting here in Georgia wearing three pairs of socks in record low temps It seems I will have a bit more time for fantasizing about the glories of spring.
Welcome, Susan, and yes, borrow ahead since it it for a good cause; thank you for asking. Happy New Year to you.
Welcome, Keren. It has been bitter here, too, these last few days. I have not gone past two pairs of socks but it sounds like a good idea. :) I am going to sit down with the seed catalogs tomorrow for a big dose of hopefulness and forward-thinking. See you soon.
What a beautiful picture of you and that furry devil Jack! Happy New Year, Margaret – your gifts in the garden (and on the page) inspired me all your. Here’s to an energized, sisterly 2010. :)
Happy New Year, Margaret and Jack!!!!
Thanks for the beautiful slide show. Looking forward to
all of your posts in 2010.
If I let you have the garden and the cat … can I have your hair? HAPPY 2010 … and thanks for all the great mail. Mimi
It’s amazing to see so many varied scenes of beauty coming from one place. Perfect example of how gardening enriches our lives. Hope you have a great year!
Dear Margaret
You SO live in the garden of Eden. I loved your slides and wish that I could magically step into the one with your spring ephemerals under the old apple tree. it is just so breathtakingly beautiful! You are a wizard!
I am really enjoying your blog and have been perusing your older posts; your home and garden just Wow me!!
It is so nice to see that I am not the only person dragging all sorts of tidbits from the outdoors to bring inside. Pretty soon there will be no distinction between the two!
I just had to say thak-you for sharing your piece of heaven on earth after seeing your wonderful photos.
It is very inspiring.
I love your chairs outside, too!
Sincerely, Wendy C
Welcome, Wendy. I am happy that it looks like a piece of heaven form there…it does from the seat by the window here, too. I am happy to be here — in my garden, and on the blog with all of you. :) Do come see me again soon.
This site is truly one of a kind. It’s the best of everything.
And in my own little cold and snowy Ontario , I remain inspired and looking forward to next year. thank you.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!! to You Margaret, and your readers. May if be a FLOWERiferous year for you ALL!!!!!! ( is there us such a word like that)
On February 13, 2010, at 2pm, at the Monument Mountain School, the Berkshire Botanical Garden is having their winter lecture “Three Decades in the Garden at Highgrove”. Highgrove is the home of Prince Charles . Debs Goodenough, his head gardner is giving the talk. The lecture is $35. for non members. If you are interested visit http://www.berkshirebotanical.org I, for years, from my LOFTY seat in the bleachers, have seen Margaret sitting there, with friends ALMOST front row center. They, for the most part, present a really fine lecture, EQUALLY good as Margaret gives on the 365 day garden.
Thank you for sharing with all of us, Margaret. Your gardens AND your photography are stunning.
Gorgeous photos, Margaret! Especially love the Lespedeza thunbergii — you’ve inspired me to get some of my own. Happy new year!
@Jessica: Nice to see you and happy new year back. It’s a great plant; give it room, and time to shape up. See you soon.
Greetings from Northern Michigan, Margaret! I just love your newsletter. Thanks for sharing your pics, your life, you!
Welcome, Susie. I expect it’s cold in your neck o’ the woods (as it is here this weekend again, brrrrr). Thanks for your encouragement, and don’t be a stranger.
Oh, beautiful dear Margaret — happy, happy new year! I would now like to marry pictures 16 an 33, if it’s okay. I love them sooooooooo much.
greetings from Virginia: I could help thinking about Jack as he danced around the mulberry bush singing “Pop Goes the Weasel” Thanks for the wonderful pictures.
Welcome, Mary. ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ is right. Jack an you are in total synch. :) See you soon again.
Hello Margaret! I found you through an article written by Mariana Greene in the Dallas Morning News entitled “Looking for other gardening fools online” I immediately recognized you from your years with Martha Stewart Living. Your website is amazing and look forward to exploring it! I live on an acre outside of Dallas and attempted tomato plants in pots with some success. I bought a tumbler composter last year and was so excited to see my first batch of compost. I built a raised bed to try my tomato plants again this year with hopefully more tomatoes. So glad you started you own blog! I feel like I found an old gardening friend.
Welcome, Stephen from Dallas. Yes, our old gardening friends are here with me, gradually showing up season by season. Glad to have you along, and hear of your backyard adventures. See you soon again, I hope.