Ted Audio Collective.

Audio Collective.

This is Design Matters with Debbie Millman from Design Observer.com.

On this program, Debbie Millman talks with writer Margaret Roach

about her career working with Martha Stewart, about her love affair with

her garden, and about the importance of stepping back from our busy lives.

Silence and complete stillness are so undervalued in our contemporary society.

Here's Debbie Millman.

In an age of global warming and species extinction, our culture has become intensely interested in sustainability.

This trend has extended to food with concerns about obesity and healthy eating now front page news.

All of these topics converge on gardening, which has taken off as a passionate hobby as never before.

Chronicling that wave and inspiring it along is Margaret Roach.

Margaret is a writer who worked for the New York Times Newsday and was the gardening editor for Martha Stewart

living magazine before taking on the life of a solitary gardener.

Welcome to Design Matters Margaret.

Nice to be here and finally meet you. Yes, nice to meet you too.

The first thing I want to ask you about is your Girl Scout sash from Troop 4334,

folded away with your table linens in your sideboard. Why have you kept it?

I kept it first because my mother threw out everything else and there was very little left of my childhood she got rid of my beloved trolls and my

barbies and the sash was breaking.

Yeah and the sash was one of the few things that she didn't get rid of, but also because it, every time I see it, and I don't

wear it around the house, but I do take it out from time to time and look at it, the badges

...