GARDENING: Margaret Roach creates a new life and landscape

Written by

Paige Smith Orloff

Photography by

Margaret Roach

Margaret Roach And Her Meditative Garden

Animals are often the first to welcome visitors to Margaret Roach’s Copake Falls, New York, garden. The grounds are home to sixty-two species (at last count) of wild birds, every native type of toad and frog, and one large black-and-white cat, Jack, who appeared at the house on September 11, 2001, and never left.

Roach, lithe and birdlike herself, is rarely still, and is as likely to be found riding her Kubota tractor as dividing cuttings in the newly built barn that doubles as an overscale potting shed or weeding one of the many beds forming a variegated tapestry across the hilly terrain.

When Roach purchased the 1880s farmhouse and land (fewer than three acres) nearly twenty-three years ago, the former Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia editorial director’s plan was to balance the life of an ambitious, urban journalist with a rural—very rural—retreat.

“There was no one here, then,” she says of the property she describes with a sardonic laugh as rinky-dink. “No year-rounders, except one couple, because when the snows would come you couldn’t get plowed out.” Drawn to the setting, she made the deal in a day, before the house even came on the market. (She thinks her real estate agent felt guilty, after her first attempted purchase—a seventy-nine-acre farm in Stuyvesant, New York—fell through.)

Bordered on three sides by state park land, nearly the entire property is a steep hillside. The slope creates dramatic views from the house—and prodigious challenges for even the most confident gardener. Indeed, Roach’s serene hideaway is tucked out of the way in an area known more for its day hikes than for weekend socializing.

And that’s just how Roach prefers it. Though she routinely opens the garden to the public as part of the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days program (she’ll also share it with visitors as part of this year’s Copake Falls Day, on August 22), her garden is very much a personal retreat and laboratory, where Roach practices what she calls the “moving meditation” of gardening.

It’s a fair bet that few of the hundreds of visitors who tour this serene landscape every year could guess Roach’s original inspiration in setting down roots, albeit part-time, in the country. With sophisticated ornamental plantings, judicious use of subdued fieldstone hardscaping, and hilly vistas, the garden doesn’t suggest a gritty homestead, though that’s what Roach initially had in mind. Books such as Scott and Helen Nearing’s 1954 how-to memoir, Living the Good Life, and Maurice Kains’s Five Acres and Independence, both major influences on the 1960s and ’70s “back to the land” movement, also inspired her.

But before she could grow a single tomato, Roach had to conquer that slope. Ideally, the hill should have been terraced, but with no money for stonework and those do-it-yourself ideals, Roach needed a different strategy. Dwarf fruit trees, endless berry bushes—blueberries, gooseberries, raspberries, and blackberries—as well as other crops, such as asparagus and rhubarb, that she knew would need many years to establish, were mostly contained in tiny, two-foot-wide plots creeping up the hillside around the house. Those beds, she now knows, were too small, too tentative, and vulnerable to washing out in the inevitable torrential rains. “Those same beds still exist,” she explains, “but they’re now fifteen feet wide and forty feet long.”

Today, Roach still plants a vegetable garden on the bottom of the slope and gathers apples from elegant elder-statesmen trees, the gnarled remnants of a long-ago orchard. But in the early 1990s her focus shifted and her palette expanded when, as garden editor at Newsday, she interviewed Marco Polo Stufano, the founding director of horticulture at Wave Hill, a 28-acre public garden in the Bronx. The legendary horticulturalist became her friend and mentor. Thanks to him, she says, “my world opened up beyond growing a tomato and a potato. It was like hitting the jackpot."

That jackpot was access to the cutting edge of horticulture: growers, importers, and designers all became the subjects of Roach’s stories. Her reporting caught the eye of Martha Stewart, leading Roach to her next job, but it also influenced her own landscape, steering her toward a range of ornamental perennials. “This quickly became a collector’s garden, which can mean either ‘that person’s a real plantsman who has an eye for great things,’ or that ‘it’s a horticultural zoo—one of everything.’”

“Zoo” was not the goal, but Roach found herself amassing a growing nursery of exotic plants. Instinct, rather than classical garden design, saved her. A confirmed homebody, Roach’s insight was to design her garden solely from her point of view. “I placed things where they’d be viewed from key windows in my house so I could enjoy them,” she says. The result is a symphony of large woody plants: a “Ballerina” magnolia (Magnolia loebneri) outside the kitchen window; more than a dozen lilacs of different varieties; a copper beech; flowering crab apple trees. Around each are under-plantings, in a style Roach labels “mosaic.”

Rather than uniformly blanketing the ground, she uses plants with different blooming periods and complementary foliage to create an ever-changing vista around the trees. Perennial beds follow the curve of the hillside, embrace small pools, and lead visitors into gardens within the garden.
Roach didn’t do all of this alone.

Early on, she knew she needed help managing her plant menagerie. Several years earlier, when Seattle garden designers Glenn Withey and Charles Price, friends of Roach’s mentor Stufano, needed a place to experience Northeastern fall foliage for the first time, Roach lent them her house. She decided to ask the designers, who had become friends, for their counsel, which soon became the center of an annual ritual. Price and Withey would visit for a few days every spring, spend all day working with Roach, planning and planting and stopping only for lunch. In the evening, Roach says with a laugh, they’d “drink crazy cocktails and talk plants.”

The designers admire Roach’s knowledge and the dedication and hard work it takes to create a successful garden in a harsh climate. But it wasn’t entirely fun—all three recount tales of trial, error, and trauma in the garden. Sometimes the two designers ended up giving Roach, via her plants, some tough love. All three remember the horror on the day Price decided it was time to divide Roach’s treasured Hylomecon japonicum in order to use it in multiple areas in the garden.

The rare plant from the poppy family pops up in the spring with bright yellow flowers, then disappears for the rest of the year. Quips Withey: “The first time that Charles divided Hylomecon, Margaret lost it. [Charles] was shouting, Margaret was crying ...” Price concurs, “She went back to the house and cried. But the next year, it was ‘Oh, it looks beautiful! Thank you!’”

Despite the occasional drama, Roach says that the help of her friends was exactly what she needed to reinforce her own instincts and to give her the confidence to use plantings in unexpected ways. One of those surprises is her use of a perennial, bigroot geranium (G. macrorrhizum). The plant, she states, is “practically evergreen, good for smothering weeds, and can handle sun or shade or dry ... anything you throw at it.”

Roach thought it might be a low-maintenance choice along her roadside fence, but had never seen it used as ground cover; it now flourishes throughout the property. Roach believes in gardeners learning how plants work best for them, regardless of conventional wisdom.

Roach’s greatest joy seems to be watching the garden as it progresses through the seasons. She’s not into the showy or the splashy: no roses for her; peonies and tulips are hidden away, used for cutting and display inside, not garden color. She’s always loved foliage more than flowers, so it’s no surprise when she muses, “Fall might be my favorite season.” But then there’s winter: “I love walking in the garden in the winter, seeing the undulation of the land.” In the end, she can’t choose a favorite: she shrugs. “To me it’s interesting all the time.”

The animals seem to agree. Because she gardens without chemicals, Roach’s acreage is a haven for all, hence the proliferation of songbirds (with no bird feeders, they graze on the plantings) and happy amphibians. (Deer, every local gardener’s nemesis, are the exception, kept at bay with a system of double fences.) True to her original goal, Roach has created a sustainable environment that also keeps her stocked with homemade tomato sauce all year long.

Two years ago, Roach decided to make Copake Falls her home year-round. Before, she says, “I always brought my favorite things here, and so I always lived away from my favorite things. As a gardener, when you choose where to garden, you’ve chosen your home…. For twenty-one years, I had a long distance relationship with my home.”

By all accounts, the choice was a fruitful one. Local plantsmen Bob Hyland and Andrew Beckman, whose Loomis Creek Nursery in Hudson, New York, is a favorite of Roach’s, have known her separately and together for nearly fifteen years. After the move, says Beckman (who is also the editorial director for gardening at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia and worked with Roach there), if anything, “She is more neurotic than ever. But she is also getting more in tune with her garden and the natural world.”

Roach’s tune, though, is still one of a hard-driven workaholic. “That’s indelible,” she confesses. “I didn’t leave to get away from that; I just left to workaholic myself around my own projects instead of somebody else’s.” Those personal projects have quickly achieved public success. An architect of Martha Stewart’s online presence, Roach is an impassioned advocate of new media, and she decided to start a blog as a way to familiarize herself with open source software.

Gardening was the obvious subject, and her first blog, A Way to Garden (the title is shared with her book of the same name, published in 1998, now out of print), went live in March 2008 . Both the New York Times and Washington Post have sung the site’s praises. A second website, The Sister Project, created with her sister, writer Marion Roach, followed late last year, and a third, Frogboys.com, dedicated to all those amphibians who share her garden, is the latest venture. (Jack the cat has his own heated house, a converted toolshed, but has yet to get his own website.)

Now, Roach is under contract to write a memoir about leaving corporate life to rediscover her creativity and her true home. Sounding true to those long-ago hippie dreams, Roach refers to the book as her “dropping out” story. No dropout has ever achieved a more beautiful or bountiful success.

THE GARDEN ACCORDING TO MARGARET

Margaret Roach’s website, A Way to Garden, is full of tips, resources, and tricks for gardening, but even better, much of what Roach has to say is specific to our (challenging? finicky?) gardening clime. A few of our favorite offerings:
Monthly Garden Chores

This sidebar of the blog is updated monthly, as the name suggests, and it serves as both a primer for beginning gardeners and a reminder for those more experienced. Roach categorizes tasks for vegetable gardens, flowers, lawns, trees, and shrubs, and tells you what to do, right now. The list is exhaustive without being exhausting.

“A Plant I’d Order ...”

Every few weeks, Roach suggests a particular plant that she loves to grow, one that thrives here in Zone 5B. These tend to be hardy perennials that combine gorgeous foliage with nice structure.

Where to Buy

Roach combines the best of mail order and buying local in her list of sources. Around here, she patronizes Windy Hill Farm & Nursery in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and Loomis Creek Nursery, in Hudson, New York, among others. She also recently discovered a source for local seed, the Hudson Valley Seed Library, and a great resource for native plants, Project Native, in Housatonic, Massachusetts. She’s always looking for new sources and is quick to support local growers.

Pest Control

We all want to rid our gardens of pests large and small; Roach has tips to repel the worst and tends toward natural remedies whenever possible. But perhaps more important is her recommended tick-remover, the Tick Twister, available online at www.ticktwister.com.

Labels That Last

Say goodbye to tattered tags and long-lost plastic labels if you take Roach’s advice and use the M11 Dymo Labeling System (global.dymo.com), a tool that embosses half-inch wide metal tags for all your plants. Not cheap, but worth the investment for serious gardeners.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Roach’s number-one way to create a new bed? Layer the area with flattened cardboard boxes or a thick blanket of newspaper. Cover with mulch and plant through. Most weeds are eliminated, and the paper simply composts into the soil. Genius.

Start From Scratch

Growing from seed can be intimidating around here, where so many seeds require indoor starting well ahead of the end of winter. Roach gives detailed instructions and recommendations for tools to make it easier, from building your own lighted shelves to snipping (instead of dividing out) excess seedlings.

Use What You Grow

No one wants to see tomatoes rotting on the vine, or worse, the ground. Roach offers recipes for over-bounteous crops, and more come in via readers. If you follow her lead, you too can spend the winter feasting on oven-dried tomatoes, green pesto, or tomato sauce from your own garden. Watch for her weekly FoodFest posts offering recipes for produce that’s ready for harvest.

When in Doubt, Ask

The site features active reader forums intended to answer Urgent Garden Questions. Some of these forums are specific to our region, and Roach dives into them daily to answer
readers’ queries. [JULY 2009]

Paige Smith Orloff is a writer, home cook, and aspiring gardener who lives in Spencertown, N.Y.

THE GOODS

Copake Falls Day

August 22

Copake Falls, N.Y.

www.copakefallsday.org

Loomis Creek Nursery

29 Van Deusen Rd.

Hudson, N.Y.

www.lommiscreek.com

Windy Hill Farm & Nursery

686 Stockbridge Rd