From away to garden.com and Robinhood Radio.com, this is Away to Garden with Margaret Roach. You're a weekly invitation to dig in and grow. Margaret Renkel's newest book, The Weedy Garden, a happy habitat for wild friends, is aimed at children. But it's really for everyone, she says. And indeed, we grown ups too.

Often need a reminder that our gardens are not just hour. is aimed at children, but it's really for everyone, she says, and indeed we

grown-ups too often need a reminder that our gardens are not just our gardens, but critical habitats for our wild neighbors. How we manage these spaces determines whether bees and butterflies and frogs and fireflies and turtles and birds and everybody else out there thrives or not. Margaret is here to talk about the new book and the message for humans of all ages that guides her

approach. and birds, and everybody else out there thrives or not. Margaret is here to talk about the new book and the message for humans of all ages that guides her approach to gardening, so more in a moment but first these messages. Underwriting support for a Way to Garden provided by Colorblends' wholesale flower bulbs, a third-generation bulb company offering top-sized flower bulbs directly to landscape professionals and ambitious residential gardeners on the web, Colorblends.com. And by High Moeng seeds, Wolcott Vermont, Professional Quality Vegetable, Flower, and Urbal seeds that are 100% organic and non-GMO project verified. On the web, HighMoengCedes.com. And by White Flowerflower Farm offering a wide range of carefully selected and expertly grown garden plants on the web, WhiteflowerFarm.com. Like many readers, I got to know Margaret Wrinkle in 2019 upon the publication of her book, Late Migrations. Since 2017, she's been contributing a popular opinion column to the New York Times, and she

also published The Comfort of Crows a Backyard Year in 2023, and now the new Children's Book. She lives and gardens with an ecological focus in Nashville, and I'm glad to welcome her back to the program today. Hello, Margaret R. of the South, as I call you, my alter ego. Hello, Margaret R. of the North, as I call you my alter ego. Hello Margaret R of the North as I call you

I mean what are the odds but it's just

I guess it's but you I'm sure you've had this experience too. So often I've got an email meant for you

I know it's funny right

Before I get started I say that we'll do a giveaway of the new book with the transcript of the show over on A Way to Garden.com. And just before we start talking about the book, as a gardener who's been through a never severe weather events in my time, we all know about Nashville having had horrible, horrible ice and everything not so long ago. And all those trees, the pictures of all the damaged trees, and I'm assuming your garden was stricken as well and all around you, yes. Well, it's a little early to say how the actual garden did. We leave the leaves where they fall, so it's fairly well tucked in, but it is the biggest pollinator garden in my yard is built around an old snag that we left standing at when a maple tree died in a storm. So it is very exposed, but we did lose not whole trees. I don't think waiting for the arborist to come actually tomorrow to tell us if we can save our pantries, but we lost so many limbs. I can't even describe it Margaret. The trees are every sink. No tree was left untouched. We lay in bed that night and listened to limbs crack.

It's like shotguns.

I've been there.

It's exactly like that.

And you're just shaking in your bed

and it's like shotgun blasts.

Like someone's just shooting someone over and over and over.

And then it's the ground and the ice breaks

and it sounds like lash shattering

and you just think you've come to the end of the world.

Yes.

Well, I just wrote a timecom about woodpeckers and that's what I've been working on recently and the woodpeckers are happy when there's a change in withers damage. They like to take advantage of it. So maybe the woodpeckers, more woodpeckers will move in and say, oh, look at this. There's a hole in this tree where there are branches to be I. And I'm going to do something about it. So who knows? Who knows? I like to try to be out to you. We have a lot of woodpeckers. And in fact, right before the storm hit, there was, there's a pilliated that comes and gets. And this one was, it was, we have an old paratory that is not a calorie pair, but a real paratory and it's very old and very damaged and that woodpecker loves it. So the new book, the new book, The Weedy Garden. As I said in the instructions, it's a children's book technically speaking. I got a lot out of it though. So the new book is different from your others. Besides being a children's book It's also a picture book created in partnership with your artist brother Billy Wrankle. So why a kid's book and What about that? Where did that come from? Well, in some ways I'm coming. I think I'm coming full circle as a child I loved books so much and in those days or at at least in my family, you know, you just waited until school to teach, let the school teach the child to read. And so I was, I always felt I was at the mercy of the adults in my life to read to me and they never were available to read as long as I wanted to be read too. And so from the very beginning even before I could read or write myself, I thought this would be my life.

Reading and writing.

The book. wanted to be read too. And so from the very beginning even before I could read or write myself I thought this would be my life reading and writing the books I was interested in then. And you know back in those days in the early 60s there weren't a whole lot of, there just wasn't a lot of media for young children and not so many picture books. But my father would read fairy tales and poems. And I just always thought right up through high school, I wrote my senior turn paper on the wind and the willows and Charlotte's web, animals in middle grade books. And so when I packed for college, I packed a huge carton of children's books. And that was gonna be what I learned to do, was how to write children's books. And a lot of things, life happens, people happen. And I wandered away from the central mission and then Billy said to me, my brother, who's a year younger than I am. Well, could you write a picture book? I really want to do the artwork for a picture book. So in some ways I just came back to what I... Interesting. That's interesting. So even though it's called The Weedy Garden, it's not a book with the text and the illustrations about weeds in the sentence, not weed and kudzu and whatever, right? It's not about eradication of things. It's more about sort of things that give life to other forms of life. And so what is a weed in the context of and the message of the Weedy Garden? What's a weed? Well, I think I think you kind of hit it. We're not we're not trying to talk about pulling weeds. Although I do pull weeds and I know you pull weeds, but just a few Margaret. When you're talking about creeping Charlie or you're talking about henbit or you're talking about chickweed or any of the other invasive plants that end up in our gardens, you're talking about what I agree is a weed. But then when you're talking about wildflowers, often they are considered by other kinds of gardeners also to be weeds. So there's butterweed and there's ironweed and there's milkweed and there are all these plants that actually have the word weed in their name and their common name because our ancestors could sit there to be unwelcome in their gardens. Or at least wild if not, you know, do you know what I mean? They were for the wild places, right? Right. Yeah. Yeah. But I plant them and carefully move them if they get planted by the birds or the chipmunks or the squirrel somewhere else. Because when you are gardening with wildlife in mind, then you have to, as you know, so well, I have written about so beautifully and so persuasively, so many times, we have to plant the plants they need. And obviously some plants are better behaved than other plants and you probably don't want common milkweed right in your perennial border. But if you can find a place where it's where common milkweed gets the right, is in the right conditions and has room to run, then you're gonna have a whole lot more monotone butterflies because those leaves are mammoth compared to butterfly weed or compared to swamp milkweed, the other two varieties and honeybine milkweed that I have in my yard. And it really is true, if you plan that they will come, it really does work. It is a system of related organisms who have co-evolved and no one and other, their ancestors, no one and other. I mean, I'm anthropomorphized, you know, whatever, but you know what I mean? It's... I don't actually think you are anthropomorphizing. I think we made a mistake somewhere along the way when we stopped thinking of the natural world and natural systems as living beings. They do have individual personalities. Some squirrels are definitely a lot more bolder than others. Their individuals and their little life cycles are just as important to them as ours are to us. And you see that when you welcome them. You get to be in, you get to be a wild thing yourself in a way because you see yourself as part of this ecosystem when you can get close. And Billy likes to say when he was working on

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