This Week's Podcast: A Rebroadcast: Gardening Equals Living: Margaret Roach
Click on the small black arrow on the bar to listen, or the MP3 to download the show:
Margaret Roach is the former garden editor of Martha Stewart Living magazine and the Editorial Director of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. And since she retired from corporate America, she has become one of if not the most influential voices in gardening. She is to gardening what Barry Lopez or Aldo Leopold are to nature writing. There are few people writing today, who are talking about what I might call “truth in gardening.” We both hope that someday, gardens will also be recognized in America as the works of art they can be.
Margaret is not an HGTV-type — “Gardening is not outdoor decorating,” she says. We talk about how, although gardening is a living metaphor for all parts of life, it is still treated like it is only a hobby. 
This philosophy is chronicled in her new book, The Backyard Parables: Lessons on Gardening and Life. Parables, she says, are stories with intent.
Margaret talks about the special relationship people can have with plants, animals and the earth. “Gardening is a meditation. We learn to look close up with our eyes, our noses and ears.” People who regularly visit awaytogarden.com know that gardening teaches us to feel part of a vast, complex organism and story. To read an interview Margaret did with me on garden photography, and find a link to her wonderful podcast on which I was a guest, click here.
I have been a big fan of Margaret for a long time. I cant wait until the year that I can visit her garden on an Open Day. Every year I have missed has been an agony, because I can see her garden in my mind through her writing and her blog. To see it in person would be heavenly!