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PODCAST

The Garden Mixer

Leslie Harris and Marianne Willburn

The Garden Mixer is a bi-weekly gardening podcast hosted by Marianne Willburn, garden author and columnist, and Leslie Harris, host of Into the Garden with Leslie. Each episode blends practical gardening advice for beginners, thoughtful insight for experienced gardeners, and plenty of humor, as Marianne and Leslie mix opinions, strategies, listener questions, expert guests, and the occasional cocktail. If you’re looking for a gardening podcast that’s honest, informative, and genuinely fun — not

leisure home & garden

All Episodes

01:19:45

How to Build a Deer Fence when One Type Won't Do.

The Garden Mixer ·

2026/10/02

Last December, Leslie and Marianne talked deer fences on the podcast — and Marianne’s imminent enclosure and ironic freedom. Somewhere in the middle of that episode, Founding Mixer and friend Erin Schanen, The Impatient Gardener, decided she’d had enough. Not of the podcast. (uh, obvs!) Of the deer. So she did what any reasonable person does when pushed past the breaking point by a herd of four-legged garden criminals: she went all in. Not with one kind of fence. With four. Simultaneously. On a

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00:25:55

Garden Paths

The Garden Mixer ·

2026/09/25

What makes a good garden path? Gravel? Grass? Pavers? Wood chips? Flagstone? And why does something that looks gorgeous in one garden become a maintenance nightmare in another?In this Barrel Aged One More Sip, Leslie and Marianne head down the garden path—quite literally—to talk about the materials they’ve used, loved, regretted and sworn never to use again.Marianne is preparing to replace nearly 100 feet of struggling turf path with gravel, which leads to a conversation about pea gravel, stone

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00:46:03

Golden Hour in the Garden: Plants for Fall Color

The Garden Mixer ·

2026/09/18

With some surprise and not a little relief, the garden is hurtling towards late middle age by mid-September. The promise of spring and the relentless drive of summer have departed, and with them the cultural expectation that the garden needs to look good in a crop top and pretend that it’s still May. There are some big bonuses to late middle age. With lowered expectations now the norm for those around you who don’t garden, your plot is well positioned to surprise and delight visitors with color,

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00:24:12

Putting Your Best Friend Plants in Storage

The Garden Mixer ·

2026/09/11

Gardeners in cold climates dabbling with tropical and subtropical plants in their summer gardens are about to come to a hard stop: First Frost.If you’re a gardener who loves these plants outside, but doesn’t particularly want them rubbing shoulders with you over the winter, you may be interested in which ones Marianne terms “Best Friends” in her last book, Tropical Plants and How To Love Them — plants that can be stored in dark, dormant conditions in a frost-free location.Today on One More Sip the

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01:07:32

Garden Center Secrets: Just in Time for Fall!

The Garden Mixer ·

2026/09/04

It’s planting season once again for many of us in the Northern Hemisphere – which of course means buying season, and splurging season, and did-I-really-need-that-many-clearance-plants season. Need a strategy? Today we welcome Louisa Zimmermann Roberts, co-owner of Thanksgiving Farms in Frederick, Maryland who’s been watching the buying habits of customers for decades, and has more than a little insight on what you should be doing when you fill that cart. She’ll have you examining that root system,

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00:19:23

10 Things to STOP Doing in Your Garden

The Garden Mixer ·

2026/08/28

On this Barrel Aged and decanted episode of One More Sip of The Garden Mixer, Leslie and Marianne go full listicle and shelve the “Do!” for the “Better If You Don’t Do” on a range of issues in the garden — from design considerations, to maintenance considerations, to yes…psychological considerations.While gardening is a creative, subjective exercise, we can definitely make it harder on ourselves than it needs to be — and the girls try their best to help you learn from their mistakes (…and the

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01:08:19

Garden Travel: How to See a Garden Without Missing It.

The Garden Mixer ·

2026/08/21

Each year, millions of gardeners prowl the globe seeking ‘aha!’ moments that they can bring back to their own gardens at home. Are you one of them?Leslie has been visiting gardens abroad for decades, and over the last two years, Marianne has built a company dedicated to bringing great gardens to great groups of people. Together they’re heading to Normandy next week to see gardens such as Giverny, Jardins d’Etretat, Chateau de Boutemont, Le Jardin Plume, and Chateau Champ de Bataille. And they want

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00:23:28

Should You Keep Bees?

The Garden Mixer ·

2026/08/14

This week, Leslie & Marianne dive into the sticky world of beekeeping as a gardener.Leslie is buzzing with questions (and incredibly bad puns) and mercilessly questions Marianne who kept bees for over 15 years and can’t let go of the possibility to do so again (just as soon as she gets her resident bear problem under control and/or moves out of her valley). Is she delusional or just in love?Whether you’re thinking about plunging into this fascinating world — or simply need motivation to keep

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01:20:03

Drought & Heat Strategies with Carol Reese

The Garden Mixer ·

2026/08/07

In the heat of August, it’s not just gardeners that want to check out — it’s their plants. But there’s a lot plants can tell us about the conditions we’re all navigating, so it’s worth paying attention when the temperatures soar. To channel those thoughts, Leslie and Marianne welcome Carol Reese — horticulturist, writer, humorist, retired University of Tennessee extension specialist, and keeper of approximately three to four hundred dogs — though not all at once. Carol gardens on 118 acres in West

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00:20:30

Botanical Latin: Tool or Weapon?

The Garden Mixer ·

2026/07/31

Botanical Names: Those complicated, two-part, dead language elements of tongue- torture that every gardener looking for a special plant will face at some point in their horticultural journey.Should you embrace the challenge, and feel vulnerable? Or dismiss the challenge and [possibly still] feel vulnerable?This week on One More Sip of The Garden Mixer, Leslie and Marianne discuss the third option — studying with curiosity, speaking with confidence, and ignoring those who use botanical nomenclature

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00:49:48

Garden Ornaments: Can We Go Too Far?

The Garden Mixer ·

2026/07/24

Every gardener has a tchotchke threshold — the point at which a garden stops being a garden and starts being a yard sale with better plants. But where exactly is that line, and who gets to draw it? After decades of embracing, avoiding, judging, and occasionally defending their own questionable choices, Leslie and Marianne weigh in on the art of garden ornamentation — how to use it well, when to put the hedgehog down, and why Fergus Garrett's favorite garden in Hastings has hardly any plants in

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00:17:46

Flopping Perennials? To Stake or Not to Stake

The Garden Mixer ·

2026/07/17

It’s mid summer and if you haven’t been staking your floppiest floppers, the chance is you haven’t quite gotten away with it. Some plants stand tall on their own. Others need a little help.In this Barrel Aged One More Sip of The Garden MIxer Leslie Harris and Marianne Willburn tackle one of gardening's most practical—and most overlooked—skills: staking. They discuss which plants are worth staking, which ones are better left alone, how to make supports nearly invisible, and why choosing the right

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01:05:44

Big, Juicy, Garden Regrets

The Garden Mixer ·

2026/07/10

Every gardener has them. The plant that ate the house, the catalog seduction that ended in tears, the tree you loved that didn’t love you. Regrets are how gardeners learn — or in Marianne’s case, how they beat themselves up while learning. Leslie chose the topic. Marianne suffered through it. Both of them had more material than an hour could possibly cover.Welcome to a guided tour through the taxonomy of gardening mistakes — organized by category, confessed to with varying degrees of shame, and

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00:18:02

Deadheading, Chelsea Chops & Other Garden Surgery

The Garden Mixer ·

2026/07/03

Deadheading, do we or don't we? The answer, as you expected, is complicated. And Leslie and Marianne want to dive into the nuance on this week’s One More Sip.In fact they’re going to discuss a lot of heinous herbaceous amputations in the name of beauty, such as Chelsea chopping, tiered pruning, and post-pruning. Why does it work? And when doesn’t it? And do you really have the patience to snip 235 cornflower heads into a basket when you can simply rip it out and let the Verbena bonariensis take

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01:12:43

Hydrangeas Reconsidered: All You Need To Know

The Garden Mixer ·

2026/06/26

America has a hydrangea problem. In the best possible way. They’re consistently among the best-selling flowering shrubs in the country, they colonize every garden center and big box supercenter from May to August, and, if you don’t have a deer problem, you’re likely to succumb to the latest plump, end-of-aisle offering every time you go out to buy some milk. Erin Schanen, The Impatient Gardener, and Founding Mixer, describes what has happened to us in one word: Hydrangification. Marianne did not

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01:00:51

All About Alliums

The Garden Mixer ·

2026/06/11

Alliums are more than just big purple lollipops — though those are magnificent and need no apologies. This episode covers the full arc of the genus: from the early-season small species to the big June globes, through the alien-landed wonders of late spring and early summer, into the summer-blooming perennial types that changed how many gardeners think about late-season color. Whether or not Leslie and Marianne can do a 24/7 Allium channel based on the amount of species in this cool genus (970), they

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01:13:02

Container Gardening Hacks Beyond “Thriller, Spiller,...

The Garden Mixer ·

2026/05/29

HACK YOUR POTS: SMART PLANTS. PERFECT PLACEMENTIt’s prime container gardening season, and everywhere gardeners are spending more than they should to achieve the dream of pots that stop people in their tracks and make their neighbors slightly jealous. But as anyone who has watched a lovingly assembled pot turn into a crispy disappointment knows — it’s not quite as simple as thriller, spiller, filler. (Those words. So useful. So annoying.) Today on The Garden Mixer, Leslie and Marianne are getting

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00:25:08

Hot Flashes in the Garden! (actually, microclimates)

The Garden Mixer ·

2026/05/22

Before “microclimates” became a gardening buzzword, Leslie and Marianne were already having hot flashes in the garden. 🔥🌿In this vintage One More Sip episode of The Garden Mixer, we talk about:• hot vs cool pockets in the garden• why some plants fry in summer and freeze in spring• raised beds, slopes, walls, and heat traps• tropicals, hostas, wisteria heartbreak, and elephant ears• Thomas Jefferson’s surprisingly clever vegetable garden design• and how understanding your own garden is the real

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01:16:14

High Impact, Low Effort Flowers

The Garden Mixer ·

2026/05/15

HIGH IMPACT, LOW EFFORT FLOWERS THAT DO THE WORK FOR YOU When the growing season is moving at breakneck speed, an easy win in the form of copious, gorgeous, hey-I-forgot-about-THOSE! flowers is not only cherished, but longed for. Even gardeners who insist on making things more difficult for themselves (ahem…Marianne?) can enjoy the guilty pleasure of high impact, low effort blooms that do a disproportional amount of the work, and make you look like you know what you’re doing. In this week’s episode

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01:13:22

The Big Fat Peony Episode

The Garden Mixer ·

2026/05/01

Flamboyant, sophisticated, blousy and beautiful - the peony tops the favorites chart of so many gardeners (and non-gardeners), that we had to devote a spring episode to them. They are delicate, but tough, and can live for up to a century -– so it makes sense to figure out what you want and where you want it before you plant one. Leslie & Marianne start that conversation with their favorites today, on The Garden Mixer.___________________Please hit the subscribe button so we can keep you smiling

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