The 365-Day Garden with Margaret Roach: The

I select plants to serve a mix of design & ecological functions:

• EPHEMERALS AND OTHER EARLY BIRDS (herbaceous woodlanders and minor bulbs, the opportunists...plus early pollen/nectar sources);

• AN ARMY OF SOLDIERS (durable, unfussy plants with a long season of interest, such as ferns or Hakonechloa or colorful conifers);

• LATE-SHOW STARS (e.g., asters, Solidago or Ilex verticillata, w/late sustenance);

• IMPERFECT BUT IRRESISTIBLE TYPES with short peaks, but that you cannot live without (for me, that would include lilacs, Martagon lilies…);

• TRUE POWERHOUSE PLANTS, of course, are the ones that fit into more than one category above (e.g., Viburnum, crabapples…).

Some to talk about:

NATIVE EARLYBIRDS/EPHEMERALS Salix (willow) Caulophyllum thalictroides (blue cohosh) Hydrastis canadensis (goldenseal) ... and a mass of it Mertensia virginica (bluebells) Uvularia grandiflora (merrybells) Jeffersonia diphylla (twinleaf)

I LOVE RED (at each layer and season of garden) Trillium grandiflorum (wakerobin) Pulmonaria rubra Lilium martagon ‘Claude Shride’ Lonicera sempervirens Aesculus pavia (red buckeye) Doublefile viburnum (V. plicatum tomentosum cultivar)...a no-no now Viburnum setigerum Malus ‘Ralph Shay’ Ilex verticillata (winterberry, with viburnums, in “biohedge” or “edge”) Not-red winterberry (such as ‘Winter Gold’ and aurantiaca) Red chairs (viewing purple Lespedeza thunbergii)

I LOVE GOLD Eranthis hyemalis Gold- Corylopsis spicata Lindera benzoin (earliest to in yellow, latest to go gold) japonicum Charles Price, troublemaker and teacher (underplanting in progress) The awkward first birthday of an underplanting Sheets of Hylomecon and more…division’s rewards Stylophorum detail Hakonechloa macra ‘All Gold,’ join Hylomecon

WHICH BRINGS UP NEAR-NATIVES LIKE... Aesculus parviflora (bottlebrush buckeye) Fothergilla major Chionanthus virginicus (fringetree, female in fruit)

LEAVES FIRST (and what happens when we change their color?) Astilboides tabularis (yellow-green color, but also bold scale and texture) Ferns: Autumn fern and Japanese painted Anthocyanins in emerging peony (Paeonia mlokosewitschii) …and in Jeffersonia diphylla… Variegation: Cornus sericea ‘Silver and Gold’ (yellow offseason twigs) Cornus sericea ‘Sunshine’ (red twigs in offseason)

MISC. STUFF: My weekly podcast, my website, and my latest book are all called A Way to Garden.

Oblong Books (Rhinebeck/Millerton NY) has signed copies of the latter (and all my books).

I have a weekly e-newsletter, too.