Inspiration, Instruction, and Live Q&A from Margaret Roach and Ken Druse
MY LONGTIME FRIEND Ken Druse and I have been swapping garden advice since we met 30-something years ago. It’s safe to say that our relationship has made us both better gardeners, and we continue to grow together.
We invite you to join us in these conversations, and ask your own questions for us to answer, too—that’s what our Virtual Garden Club is about. Join us live on Zoom, or watch the recordings at your convenience. This fall semester marks the start of our fourth year of the club, and to celebrate, we’re offering something different!
The Virtual Garden Club returns starting January 16, for its five-session pre-spring 2025 semester—our fourth year of the popular club’s most popular season.
As we always do at this time, Ken Druse and I will cover “must” winter topics like seed starting and dormant pruning, and share our recommendations for the best catalogs and gear.
But we’ve also added some subjects we haven’t touched on before—each with a guest expert teacher.
Some Highlights:
- Finally make your houseplants really feel at home, with Darryl Cheng (@houseplantjournal), author of “The New Plant Parent” and “The New Plant Collector.” In a sort of virtual houseplant clinic, Darryl will show us how to evaluate and modify indoor spaces to suit particular plants; what light, water and nutrients they need; and also teach us to read trouble signals—the spots and yellowing or crispy or dropping leaves—and respond accordingly.
- Master soil blocking to grow your best seedlings ever (while reducing the single-use plastic waste of cellpacks). Niki Jabbour, author of “The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener” and other popular titles that teach maximum vegetable-garden success, will show us how to create cubes of compressed germinating mix to sow into. No more roots circling inside tiny compartments, getting potbound and limiting plant growth.
- Expand your herb palette beyond the usual culinary suspects, discovering unusual edibles and also ones for other uses, from crafting to medicinal—or just to love for their stories, and beauty. Our guide will be Carly Amarant, a trained herbalist and horticulturist at the Met Cloisters, part of the Metropolitan Museum in New York City, with its world-renown collection of medieval herbs.
- Plant powerhouse prairie perennials to support more pollinators than ever, with Neil Diboll, founder of Prairie Nursery, a longtime leader in the native movement with more than 40 years of dedication to native plants. Neil is author most recently of “The Gardener’s Guide to Prairie Plants,” the definitive reference to many of North America’s most impactful species.
- Plus, Ken will teach us winter sowing to propagate perennials, biennials and even cool-season annuals—including woodland and meadow natives—for pennies by harnessing the conditions outdoors, skipping the indoor lights and heat mats and such.
- And we’ll prune with confidence: In pre-recorded short talks and videos by Ken, master what’s pruned when, including the how-to’s of corrective pruning that can be undertaken anytime in winter, plus rejuvenation and aesthetic pruning best left till closer to winter’s end. He’ll also cover detailed instruction for different classes of roses, hydrangeas, clematis and more.
That’s just a sampling of the curriculum (more details below) that all begins Thursday, January 16, at 1:00 PM Eastern, with a total of five 90-minute classes (to watch live on Zoom, or as recorded replays at your leisure), and a mini-library of additional resources. All classes and pre-recorded lectures remain available until three months after the final class of the semester.
Also in the 2025 Lineup:
- We’ll help you get your 2025 garden plan started, and make it a garden that lasts, with advice for narrowing down your wishlist to a strategic, manageable one, plus tutorials on succession sowing and other season-stretching tricks.
- Shop our recommended seed catalogs with us—for standout edibles and ornamentals, heirloom and cutting-edge, as well as perennials and biennials for winter sowing.
- Learn to sow like a pro, indoors and out: Whether all cozy under lights or winter-sown outdoors in upcycled milk jugs or an animal-proofed trays of individual pots, Ken’s step-by-step demonstrations cover every detail of the process for annual vegetables and flowers, biennials and perennials.
- From lights to germinating mix and watering devices, we’ll get you set up with just the right seed-starting gear (and even talk about how to wean yourself off the peat moss).
About Our Guest Experts:
Houseplant Clinic, with Darryl Cheng (@HouseplantJournal)
DARRYL CHENG (@houseplantjournal) teaches the art of understanding a plant’s needs and giving it a home with the right balance of not just light, but also water, and nutrients. Darryl—author of two much-praised recent houseplant books—trained as an engineer, and takes what he calls “an engineer’s approach to houseplants.” He doesn’t guess about any needed element, especially light, for instance, which he measures with a meter, and adjusts accordingly. Your houseplants will never be the same. (Class #2, Jan. 30)
Herbs From Medieval to Modern, with Carly Amarant of the Met Cloisters
C
ARLY AMARANT is a graduate of the New York Botanical Garden’s School of Professional Horticulture, and completed a three-year herbalism apprenticeship with Sacred Vibes Apothecary in Brooklyn, and a conservation apprenticeship with United Plant Savers in Rutland, Ohio. She is passionate about sharing not just the what to grow and how of herbal horticulture, but also the compelling lore, and traditional medicinal uses of the plants with a purpose that we label herbs. (Class #5, March 13)
Powerhouse Prairie Perennials for Pollinators, with Neil Diboll
A
PIONEER IN the native plant industry and recognized internationally as an expert in native plant ecology, Neil Diboll has dedicated his life to the promoting the benefits of native and furthering their use in gardens, landscapes and restoration projects. Neil’s philosophy: that we, as stewards of the planet, must work to preserve and increase the diversity of native plants and animals, with which we share our world. He is also an honorary director of Wild Ones, the nationwide membership nonprofit promoting natives. (Class #4, Feb. 27)
Soil Blocking How-to, with Niki Jabbour
N
IKI JABBOUR, who grows edibles in all four seasons in her Nova Scotia garden, is the award-winning author of four books, including “The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener.” Each spring and summer, Niki produces thousands of cubes of compressed germinating mix using her soil-blocking tools to produce multiple successions of robust seedlings for her 30 raised vegetable beds, and her greenhouse. She is a popular lecturer, and a longtime contributor to SavvyGardening.com. (Class #3, Feb. 13)
Inside this Semester of the Virtual Garden Club, You’ll Get:
- Five live, 90-minute Zoom classes to attend in real time or watch afterward. Each session starts with presentations by me and Ken and our guest experts, followed by time for your questions about the week’s topic.
- Your questions answered: Submit questions and photos ahead of each class, and along with our expert guests we’ll devote time every session to answering a selection. We’ll answer others via email, and crowd-source still more answers in the private Virtual Garden Club Facebook group, which you’ll gain lifetime access to as a club member. It’s a place for fellow gardeners to help one another—the way Ken and I have done for decades.
- The club is an opportunity to learn new strategies and perspectives, get more joy out of your garden, and enjoy the company of a supportive online gardening community led by two quirky gardeners you may know from our lively segments on my long-running public radio show and podcast, “A Way to Garden.” This program includes nine hours of live interactive instruction (plus our mini-library of recorded winter pruning how-to to watch on-demand) and is just $197.
What some club members said about recent semesters:
“If you love gardening and nature, this garden club is for you. My gardening and appreciation of nature is stronger, and now I question and wonder with joy.”–D.H.
“The information is relevant to gardeners at all levels, the sessions are expertly moderated, and Margaret and Ken are fantastic!”—L.R.
“Love these two—their passion, knowledge and willingness to share.”—A.J.
“It feels like Ken and Margaret are sharing the nurturing talents that they bring to gardening…with us! So happy I joined this club.”—C.F.
“Margaret and Ken are the best horticultural companions on your journey to botanical bliss.” —C.B.
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Pre-Spring 2025 Dates and Times:
All class times are Eastern; all sessions are on Thursdays, from 1-2:30 PM.
- Jan. 16, 1-2:30 PM Eastern
- Jan. 30, 1-2:30 PM Eastern
- Feb. 13, 1-2:30 PM Eastern
- Feb. 27, 1-2:30 PM Eastern
- March 13, 1-2:30 PM Eastern
NOTE: Each class will be recorded for your convenience, in case you can’t attend live or want to revisit what we covered, with recordings available until three months after the last live session.
Ready to join the club?
We’re inviting you to join us for only $197.
Our Gardening Journeys
KEN DRUSE and I have many overlapping interests, including native plants, but also distinct ones—like I’m obsessed with not just growing but also putting up each harvest of edibles, and he’s more likely to be off propagating more of a cherished rare shrub from cuttings, or even a massive tree from seed.
We’ve traveled around the country to some of its great gardens together, and even collaborated on books (including one 30 years ago about—you guessed it—native plants, called “The Natural Habitat Garden”). A little about each of us:
I was fortunate enough to discover gardening about 40 years ago. It offered me the escape I was looking for after a fast-paced corporate career, and it comforted me as I managed the care for my mother, when she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at age 49.
After 15 years at “Martha Stewart Living” and nearly a decade each at “Newsday” and “The New York Times,” I moved fulltime to my former weekend place in New York’s Hudson Valley, where I experiment with and enjoy my hobby-turned-lifestyle.
The journey has led to an award-winning book, and also lately brought me right back to where my career began, “The New York Times,” where I have written the garden column since April 2020.
Ken’s experiments in the soil started playing with toy trucks in the dirt, and observing the creatures (including bunnies) that shared his family’s suburban quarter-acre. His was a world of forts and dams and holes dug to China. But around age 12 he recalls rescuing a seedling tulip tree from the gutter and planting it, so his propagation obsession started early.
“I find it so thrilling to get a small plant or plant a seed and participate in nurturing it as it grows,” he says.
In college, houseplants took hold of Ken and have never let go. He has gardened on a Manhattan rooftop, a Brooklyn backyard, and for the last 30 years, on an island in a river in rural New Jersey.
Ken is the author and photographer behind an astonishing 20 garden books, including most recently “The Scentual Garden” and “The New Shade Garden,” and has been called “the guru of natural gardening” by “The New York Times.” His books have won many awards, and an archive of 50,000 of his photographs is housed at the Smithsonian Institution in the Ken Druse Collection of Garden Photographs.
Our Personal Gardening Methodology
KEN AND I both believe gardening is a 365-day adventure. And the key to enjoying it isn’t always doing more; it’s opening our eyes and hearts to the beautiful moments happening right under our noses.
We believe in organic gardening, and actually invite insects into our garden, where they generously pollinate our plants and serve as food for the dozens of species of birds that I so enjoy watching.
Some beds in our gardens are more formal, but we believe gardening should be a bit messy, too. It’s nature after all. The goal isn’t to tame your plants; it’s to cultivate them in an environment where they can show off their authentic beauty.
If you resonate with this approach, you’ll love our garden club.
And we’d love to have you.
Let’s spend some time together in the garden!
Save your seat in the Virtual Garden Club for only $197.
