I’VE ANSWERED lots of backyard questions in my time as a backyard journalist, however no person has requested extra of them than my newest podcast interview, who’s additionally the individual I’ve recognized longer than anybody else on the planet. My child sister, Marion Roach Smith, is an writer and podcaster, a preferred instructor of memoir writing, and like her older sister and the grandmother she is called for, a gardener in her personal proper. She’s additionally the one that coined the phrase “pressing backyard query,” as in: “Margaret, I’ve an pressing backyard query,” that means that I wanted to ship on-demand solutions to the sister on the opposite finish of the cellphone line and quick—or else.
She joined me to speak about hand-me-down crops we’ve shared and backyard classes we’ve realized, like how her 18 dahlia tubers finally flip into 175 (together with huge clumps just like the one within the picture under), and the way that’s too many. And possibly we even requested and answered some extra pressing backyard questions.
Marion Roach Smith is the writer of assorted books together with “The Memoir Mission: A Totally Non-Standardized Textual content for Writing and Life” (affiliate hyperlink), which spawned an entire enterprise at marionroach.com, instructing and training memoir writers on-line via stay and recorded courses. She gardens within the Capital Area of New York State, and most essential, she’s my sister.
Plus: Remark within the field close to the underside of the web page for an opportunity to win a duplicate of “The Memoir Mission.”
Learn alongside as you take heed to the June 2, 2025 version of my public-radio present and podcast utilizing the participant under. You’ll be able to subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify (and browse my archive of podcasts right here).
sisters who backyard, with marion roach smith
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Margaret Roach: Welcome, Marion. Good day.
Marion Roach Smith: [Laughter.] “Most essential,” I like that: I simply bought a promotion.
Margaret: Completely, completely. You’ll be able to maintain laughing. A variety of what I write—together with after I wrote a memoir years in the past, “And I Shall Have Some Peace There,” is infused with nature—and lots of of your shoppers, their tales, they inform their tales with an infusion of nature, I presume. Sure?
Marion: Oh my goodness, sure. I’ve learn and edited manuscripts about canines who save us, cats who save us, chickens who save us, gardens that save us, timber that save us, and getting out in nature. However maybe the one that almost all attracts memoir writers is birds: the birds and the marvel that we uncover after we fowl. And I like this as a result of it suggests that every one of us, day-after-day, are tempted, provoked, or provided these moments in nature that may elevate our souls. It’s a stupendous factor.
Margaret: So let’s simply give a fast model of the genesis of the phrase “pressing backyard query.” It was a option to break via some silences that had occurred between us as sisters throughout some tough household years.
Marion: It was. There was a interval that was the worst interval of my life the place we didn’t communicate for about three years. And was it provoked by the lack of each of our mother and father, each of which have been ugly and tough, and our mom particularly on whom we by no means agreed. And now I do agree with you about who she was, however I simply didn’t have all the info after I was a child. And so when she bought Alzheimer’s illness, you and I fought valiantly to maintain her secure and maintain ourselves secure. However on the finish of that have, it was simply an excessive amount of, and we kind of walked away from one another.
And it started actually, the re-communication started actually after I began gardening, and I discovered a option to name you with what have been principally gardening questions. Generally they have been life questions, Margaret.
However I bear in mind the carrots, my first Christmas as a married individual, pulling carrots from my snow-encrusted backyard and calling you and saying, “I’ve carrots.” [Laughter.] And your pleasure that I had achieved that as a result of I wasn’t essentially the most, how ought to we are saying, custodial individual as a younger girl; you all the time have been, you all the time have been caring. I raised carrots that I fed my then-young-husband for Christmas dinner, and every little thing modified.
Margaret: And to start with, the questions that you simply used, the phrase, “I’ve an pressing backyard query” to kind of break the silence on the cellphone, it gave me a job. “Oh, she wants me. She’s asking me a query. I’m going to reply the query.” It was easier than fixing the larger issues at first, and it helped to do this. It made a bridge.
However what occurs with gardening questions, it would begin out as plant I.D. or, “Oh, is it time to transplant the tomato seeds outdoor, or do I wait one other two weeks?” Or issues like that.
I all the time say there’s the “how-to and the woo-woo” of gardening [laughter], and the how-to is the place we begin with our questions. We wish to get all of the how-to down, however they evolve. The questions evolve, and I believe all of the gardeners listening will know that the questions such as you simply alluding to in regards to the birds, all the questions that nature provokes in us, are larger additionally. And so there’s lots of aha’s that come about, kind of life-lesson ahas, and considered one of them is restraint. [Laughter.]
Marion: No, I nonetheless don’t have restraint. You’ve; I’ve none. That’s the sister story. Yeah, no, I do know it.
Margaret: Proper. And I hinted at it, and we’ll discuss it extra in a minute. We talked about your dahlia tubers that multiplied and so forth [laughter], however when do we now have sufficient and when do we now have to cease ourselves from shopping for extra, extra, extra crops and issues like that?
However anyway, as we’ve kind of stated, I had grow to be the gardener first. And early on you’ll go to my home and by the driveway, I’d have the kind of half-dead issues, the rejects, proper?
Marion: Yeah. And guess you bought these?
Margaret: Proper. But it surely wasn’t that I used to be making an attempt to drive them on you. You requested for them; I used to be eliminating them. After which it could simply fully worsen me [laughter] to see them months or years later having risen from the lifeless at your home, doing fantastically at your home.
Marion: Flourishing. Sure. The factor that’s so pretty about that’s that in fact, you’re my older sister, so every little thing you put on, every little thing you say, every little thing you do, I wish to do. And there’s nothing extra annoying I think than having a bit sister. However them’s the breaks, expensive. So I see crops that you simply’ve bought, “Oh, she’s bought that,” “Oh, she has that.” So in fact I’ve essentially the most weird houseplants on this planet since you like issues that aren’t typical.
So it’s very humorous, when folks come to my home, they’re like, “What’s that?” And it’s a Boweia, in fact.
However within the driveway of your home. I bear in mind particularly seeing these half-dead rejects, and one was a rose that you simply stated, “Oh, it’s lifeless.” And I believed, properly, possibly it isn’t. Possibly I may… And sure, it was not solely did it thrive, however it’s the rose from which my husband carried down a bud at hand to me after I met him on the altar after we bought married. And that got here out of your property.
Margaret: And from my “lifeless” rose.
Marion: Out of your lifeless rose. You stated, “Oh, that one’s lifeless.” And I believed, properly, possibly it isn’t. And I went residence and soaked it and planted it, and it offered the bud that I bought it on the altar of my wedding ceremony. It’s a stupendous, actually attention-grabbing, weirdly metaphoric story for all of this relationship that we now have. And it’s true. I’ve gotten some nice crops from you, however principally it’s those that you simply thought have been lifeless. [Laughter.]
Margaret: I’m so beneficiant. It’s great.
Marion: You’re truly bountiful together with your lifeless crops.
Margaret: And we’ve had different experiences earlier than and since with kind of hand-me-down crops. Our grandmother, as I discussed within the introduction, was a gardener, the grandmother Marion that you simply’re named for, and he or she was an important gardener. And there’s footage of us as youngsters sitting underneath the wisteria trellis at her home and so forth and so forth.
And he or she grew this houseplant, Clivia, that form of appears like an enormous Amaryllis, however evergreen. And I ended up with—properly, our household, our mom, ended up with the plant when her mom died. And I ended up taking it when our mom may now not stay in the home, after we offered the home and so forth, when she was too disabled. And so then I believe in recent times, I gave you a division of it. Is that what occurred? [Above, several pots of Clivia at Margaret’s from Grandma’s original plant.]
Marion: A stay one. You forgot to say you gave me a stay plant. This wasn’t lifeless.
Margaret: O.Okay., sorry. Issues have improved.
Marion: Properly, the factor is, what you may’t, no, until I let you know is how a lot this meant to me that you simply trusted me. It stated to me, and I actually imply this, it stated to me that you simply gave me a plant that was our grandmother’s, that I had lastly achieved the respect from you that I might be trusted with a stay plant [laughter].
Margaret: Proper. Not simply the driveway rejects.
Marion: I held it like a child on the way in which residence within the automotive. My husband was like, “O.Okay., that is getting bizarre.” However no, I stated, “Look, look, she gave me a stay plant this time.”
Margaret: And the factor in regards to the Clivia is our grandmother was like a late-Victoria- period girl. I imply, our grandmother, she’s been lifeless, I don’t know what, 50-something years or one thing.
Marion: She’s been lifeless 50 years. She was born within the late-1800s.
Margaret: And so it is a plant that she may’ve had…the plant is actually 80 years outdated or one thing, and this plant may stay without end. And so it’s actually attention-grabbing to have this piece of legacy like that. We consider timber as residing a very long time, however there are different crops that do, too. And so it’s form of nice.
Marion: Properly, the laying on of fingers here’s what’s so extraordinary to me within the backyard. I’ve crops from so many associates and I’ve given to so many associates, and that’s what that is to me. It’s this portal, this gardening portal, the data that your good friend Marco Polo Stufano gave me standing at a backyard tour final 12 months in regards to the ‘Betty Corning’ clematis. And I went and bought one. And I consider him each time I have a look at it, and it’s lovely and bountiful, simply the way in which he promised it could be. So although he didn’t give me the plant, he gave me the plant, he gave me the data.
Margaret: He tipped you off, proper? That was the one to get.
Marion: I like that. And he was proper. It’s good for me. It’s good within the house, however it’s an inheritance. And we develop up considering inheritance is like silver providers or teacups or no matter. No, it’s concepts. And on this case, it’s the data that I can develop that, too.
Margaret: And it’s the piece of the Clivia of Grandma’s and so forth. Yeah, adore it.
And generally it’s crazier issues, like I could have our bassinet that every of us slept in as infants, one after the opposite, a few years aside all these many years in the past. I’ve that stashed within the attic; I don’t by some means, I can’t make myself throw it away. However you might have my very first seed-starting rig, this huge wood factor {that a} good friend constructed for me 1,000,000 years in the past, that was simply too huge for me.
And also you and your husband, Rex, you adopted it nonetheless a few years in the past if you began doing formidable seed-starting. And I do know you deliver it into your workplace [above] in the course of the late winter, early spring, and it’s simply loaded; it’s a stand that holds two tiers, I believe, of lights and so forth. And also you simply fill it with seedlings, with flats and cell packs and no matter, and that’s the place your crops get began. So hand-me-down stuff, too.
Marion: I like that. And I can’t consider you haven’t turned the bassinet right into a planter, as a result of that form of is on model for you simply wish to say that on the market. However I bear in mind your first backyard that had mattress frames holding roses, and I simply bear in mind considering, oh, she’s much more eccentric. And I like that phrase; I imply that with all love. You bought to be much more so that you if you began to backyard, which I discovered fascinating.
And the seed-starting trays, you not solely gave me the sunshine, the fixture, this unbelievable A-frame fixture, however then when a good friend of yours was accomplished with hers, I bought that one, too. So my workplace is crammed from regardless of the center of March to the center of Could with a whole bunch and a whole bunch and a whole bunch of seedlings. And folks snigger at me, however I maintain my infants; I’m right here working with them, and I can speak to them and we simply be sure that they’re O.Okay. And this 12 months, one hundred pc, they’re in nice form. They’re within the floor.
Margaret: Properly, and seed-starting, which is a bit more superior actually in gardening than a few of the starting classes. It’s a bit more durable than going to the backyard middle and shopping for six tomato seedlings to transplant—shopping for the seed packet and doing what you simply stated. And one of many nice classes is, once more, that phrase restraint [laughter]. If there’s 100 seeds within the pack or nonetheless many are, even when there are solely 50, we don’t want 50 tomato crops in our gardens. Proper?
Marion: Actually? Oh, O.Okay.
Margaret: Yeah, yeah. Get that straight. In the identical means that we don’t want a few hundred zinnias.
Marion: Now you simply crossed my line.
Margaret: I do know, I do know.
Marion: My file is 750, beginning 750 zinnias. This 12 months I dialed it down; I solely began 500. And I simply gave a tray to a good friend of mine whose son runs a camp within the Catskills, and so they’re taking the tray there. How great, proper, that it’s going to be within the Catskills? And the remainder of them are within the floor right here. And yeah, 500 zinnias. Why? As a result of zinnias are pleasure. That’s all. They’re simply zany pleasure, no less than the way in which Johnny’s Seeds makes them. I like them.
Margaret: But it surely took me a very very long time to be taught, and it’s good should you’re going to share them; that’s great. However within the early years after I began, I believed you have been speculated to do the entire packet. And in our porch at our home the place we grew up, the place I used to be residing on the time with our mom who was more and more disabled—within the solar porch, I began each seed in each packet that I purchased after studying one backyard e-book, barely studying one backyard e-book. And it was a catastrophe.
There wasn’t sufficient mild, there wasn’t sufficient house. I imply, it was simply ridiculous. So we now have to know when is essential to have restraint, and you’ve got realized to share the stuff, to not simply let it wither and perish and have all of that effort go to waste. I imply, I believe you had a bumper crop of white pumpkin seedlings not way back, too, didn’t you?
Marion: Sure, sure. I began the entire pack and I’ve given away about 30 of them. The restraint just isn’t my forte and by no means has been. So I’ll begin them and attempt to give all of them away. However I do discover that the lesson of saving seeds and having the enjoyment of getting them there subsequent 12 months can be important. Sharing seeds, giving 12 pumpkin seeds to any individual, letting them begin them, has additionally began a few of my associates on their very own gardening journey.
However sure, my first 12 months I had seeds in each windowsill and I failed, as a result of I didn’t even perceive that it needed to be like a sunny windowsill. I simply thought, “O.Okay., each windowsill in the home.” And I turned hyper-vigilant, and I additionally actually judged myself fairly harshly for failing at it. And what we wish to do as an alternative is, in fact, be affordable. It’s exhausting.
Margaret: And I believe, I imply, I teased to start with within the introduction in regards to the dahlias as properly. You bought, I believe, what did you get, 18 tubers or one thing? [Above, Rex planting a bed of dahlias.]
Marion: I bought 18 tubers, 18 completely different great varieties like let’s say seven years in the past, or 10 years in the past. Sure, 18. And final 12 months after I dug them up—as a result of I nonetheless stay in a zone the place we’re digging them up within the fall—I dug up after which within the spring divided them and ended up with 175 viable tubers, which was stunning. It took me a short while, however I known as you: “Margaret, I’ve an pressing gardening query.” I despatched you pictures of the wheelbarrows.
Margaret: That was fairly humorous.
Marion: Plural, wheelbarrows, crammed with tubers. And I bear in mind saying to you, “Margaret, are they having intercourse down there?” [Laughter.]
Margaret: Multiplication?
Marion: Yeah. I imply, it’s stunning. What appears like one little candy potato goes within the floor, and if you come again and get it, it’s not alone.
Margaret: Proper? No, it’s loopy. It’s fully loopy. And also you simply discovered an important place to share a few of these this spring?
Marion: I did. I went and I bought a bunch of pretty clear, brown paper luggage, and I crammed them—many, many luggage—and I made reward luggage. After which I dropped them off at my CSA, my group supported agriculture farm, from which I’ve been getting meals for 35 years up in upstate New York. They usually gave them out as giveaways to folks.
And it was so joyous, as a result of I arrived with them and it was vegetable-pickup day, and so they let me even greet folks and say, “Right here, would you want some free dahlias?” And no person stated no, which I actually liked. Everyone was form of, the enjoyment was obvious. That’s the factor in regards to the backyard.
And I introduced a field, an enormous field as much as St. Lawrence College, as a result of I’m a board member, to a good friend of mine who gardens in Rochester, and he or she couldn’t consider it. I imply, it took up the again of my automotive mainly—it was very large and with all of the sawdust in it—however I most likely gave her 25 tubers. And he or she was thrilled as a result of she forgot to take hers out the primary 12 months.
And in order that’s the factor, it’s this sharing throughout… Consider all of the crops and the way far they’ve traveled. And whilst you and I each agree on native crops in our gardens, and we wish to make sure we don’t simply share every little thing, however it is a pleasure past phrases.
Margaret: Yeah. The backyard you share at the moment together with your husband, with Rex, features a comparatively new kind of fence-in space as a result of you might have deer. It’s like a collection of raised beds.
And I don’t know the way you found out the place to place it or no matter. However one of many nice issues that to me is without doubt one of the backyard classes—one of many solutions to pressing backyard questions that you simply appear to have realized—is that you simply positioned it in a spot, this backyard, this enclosed backyard, the place you might have an important view of it from varied key home windows in your home.
And I all the time assume if we’re going to start out a brand new backyard, look out the window first; go inside and look out the window. I believe that’s one of many huge aha’s of gardening. And also you’ve positioned your major backyard, this little wonderland inside a fence with all these raised containers and so forth, the place you may actually have a look at it and admire it and luxuriate in it if you’re inside making supper or if you’re studying a e-book in your bed room or no matter. You’ll be able to see it.
Marion: One of many issues that I like about gardening is the belief as we grow old that you may proceed to do it should you make it hospitable to the physique you might have now. So the physique I had after I began was the physique that would go all day. I had a horse, we might fill the pickup truck with masses and a great deal of manure, possibly three masses a day after I was beginning the gardens. We have been simply indefatigable, however not a lot at this age.
So placing a backyard in, pivoting to a spot the place I stated, to begin with, it must be secure. So our authentic backyard again there was not secure. We made the error of slate walkways, and we made each mistake. This time it’s secure. I can sit on the raised beds; they’re fairly excessive, they’re three timbers excessive. And I put it in a sight line the place I can be getting older. That’s the bed room the place I can be, if I’m very, very lucky, the place my life will finish. And even considering that means, and I’m snug considering that means now, it’s what would I wish to be taking a look at ultimately? And that could be a recognition that I’m happy with. As a substitute of being afraid of, I say: “Proper right here, looking at these crops which have come to me from throughout and that I’ve shared with others, that is the place I wish to be.”
Margaret: I wish to simply discuss some variations. In our plant palettes, you might have much more flowers. You’ve confessed to your 9,000 zinnias and 40 billion dahlias and so forth. And I’m not as a lot of a flower individual as a foliage individual. However one factor that you’ve got that was there if you bought there to the home a few years in the past, you had a redbud or two, a Cercis, a local redbud tree, and also you’ve form of moved some extra round some seedlings and so forth. I imply, that’s one of many timber that you simply actually love.
Marion: The marvel of the redbud reduces me, or heightens me, to tears yearly. The way in which that it produces the colour after which follows with these heart-shaped leaves transfixed me after I first noticed the primary one, our first spring on this home. We had two, and each of them have been in very tough form, and an area artificial a criminal, like a crutch, for the one trunk that was rising sideways out of the bottom. And it’s nonetheless there. It’s 30 years and that factor and has come again to life.
And the opposite one, he cabled a few the trunks collectively and that’s thriving. And so what I’ve accomplished over time is after I see them—and so they love to only spontaneously volunteer—I dig them up and I put them the place I would like them, and now I’ve eight. And my subsequent door neighbor actually stopped over this spring and stated to me, “I’ve by no means seen something extra lovely.” It was so form of him. They have been all in bloom. They’re ringing the property and they’re doing their finest to supply the form of pleasure the timber can present. I’m so happy with them. I like them a lot. Certainly one of them is I’m going out and I hug it usually. It’s only a reward in my life.
Margaret: Yeah, it’s like my outdated apples that have been right here; I simply have the identical relationship with them. They’re supposedly 150 years outdated and so they’re similar to associates. They’re simply so essential.
Marion: And yours are like their arms are out. They really feel like they’re saying, “Come right here, let me embrace you.” I like your apple timber. And I additionally love how the care you’ve given to all of them these years, they’re thriving due to it.
Margaret: So do we now have like a 60-second pressing backyard query? Something pressing that it is advisable know proper now?
Marion: Properly, I’m having a bit wrestle with the chipmunks consuming issues, and so I don’t kill something. I lure issues and take them someplace they could favor to stay, let’s simply say, which possibly I don’t take them far sufficient, which might be my fault. But it surely’s residing with the drama of the weather, let’s say, is all the time what I come to you about, crying when the frost comes-
Margaret: Or the deer.
Marion: Or the deer. So I believe it’s simply that. It’s how can we develop the acceptance with the issues which might be inevitable, which might be going to take our gardens?
Margaret: And as a lot as I learn about gardening, I don’t know the reply [laughter] to that pressing backyard query, apart from that there are forces larger than us at work on a regular basis. And I simply attempt to come to a spot of peace with that, I suppose.
Marion: You’ve all the time stated that to me. I imply, I bear in mind you calling me when there was a heron sitting in your pond. And he was lovely and he was mighty-
Margaret: However he was consuming all of the frogs.
Marion: However he was consuming all of the frogs. And there’s an acceptance that I believe you and I, simply to circle again to the place we began, we didn’t settle for one another for one interval of our lives. And now we not solely settle for one another with nice pleasure and share our plans, however there’s an acceptance that there are forces bigger than we’re. And that’s why you construct a backyard proper exterior your window as a result of sometime that is all going to be over and also you wish to be in a stupendous place. Yeah.
Margaret: Properly, it’s good to speak to you, and I count on I’ll be getting some extra pressing backyard questions at any second on the phone [laughter]. So thanks for making time.
Marion: Thanks. You’re one of the best sister or individual may have.
Margaret: Oh, thanks very a lot.
extra from marion roach smith
enter to win a duplicate of ‘the memoir challenge’
I’LL SEND A SIGNED COPY of Marion Roach Smith’s “The Memoir Mission: A Totally Non-Standardized Textual content for Writing and Life,” to at least one fortunate reader. All you must do to enter is reply this query within the feedback field under:
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MY WEEKLY public-radio present, rated a “top-5 backyard podcast” by “The Guardian” newspaper within the UK, started its fifteenth 12 months in March 2024. It’s produced at Robin Hood Radio, the smallest NPR station within the nation. Pay attention regionally within the Hudson Valley (NY)-Berkshires (MA)-Litchfield Hills (CT) Mondays at 8:30 AM Japanese, rerun at 8:30 Saturdays. Or play the June 2, 2025 present utilizing the participant close to the highest of this transcript. You’ll be able to subscribe to all future editions on iTunes/Apple Podcasts or Spotify (and browse my archive of podcasts right here).
