Margaret Roach

"I garden because I cannot help myself," says Margaret Roach, and "The Backyard Parables" (January 2013) shares what she has learned about horticulture, and life, in the process of digging ever deeper. In December 2007, Roach walked away from New York City and her job as EVP/Editorial Director of Martha Stewart, because she craved other rewards: solitude, a return to the creativity of writing, and a closer connection to nature and her first passion, the garden she'd been making on weekends for 20 years. Roach moved to a rural New York town of 300, began AWayToGarden.com (called "the best garden blog" by the New York Times and named for her prize-winning 1998 book), and wrote the dropout memoir "And I Shall Have Some Peace There." She is the former garden editor of Newsday newspaper, and was an editor at the New York Times. Today she lectures, teaches and blogs about what she calls "horticultural how-to and woo-woo." (Erica Berger photo.)