Book excerpt: “Martha Stewart’s Gardening Handbook”

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The weather is finally getting warmer, the ground is about to thaw, and Martha Stewart is here to get you ready with her biggest gardening book in more than 30 years.

“Martha Stewart’s Gardening Handbook: The Essential Guide to Designing, Planting, and Growing” (Harvest) offers her expertise to green thumbs of all levels. This guide to trees, shrubs, specialty gardens and vegetables is packed with advice on plant care, year-round maintenance and planning, and is filled with color photos to inspire you.

Read an excerpt below. 

“Martha Stewart’s Gardening Handbook”

Daffodils

Sprouting in beautiful shades of yellow, orange, peach, white, cream, and even pink, daffodils—known by their botanical name Narcissus—are an early sign that spring has sprung.

Some tried-and-true cultivars are the ‘Golden Ducat’, ‘Rip Van Winkle’, and ‘Petit Four’—all examples of the double daffodil, featuring one or more flowers to a stem. Another common variety is the trumpet daffodil, which has a center that is as long or longer than its petals. Large-cupped daffodils are defined by their prominent cups, while small-cup iterations have short cups that are less than one-third the length of the petals.

Don’t worry about recognizing all the different varieties; just choose what you like from your local garden center or online resource. Because no matter the type, daffodils (and other small bulbs) are so rewarding. The blooms last for two or three weeks in the garden and bring such color to your landscape. They are also low maintenance.

Here are some tips to help you make the most of these perennial crowd-pleasers.

• Daffodils are winter-hardy in zones 3 through 8 and will return to bloom again year after year so long as they are planted in full or partial sun and in any soil that’s not soggy.
• If your goal is to have drifts of daffodils, include varieties recommended for naturalizing and forming carpets on lawns and into woodlands. That way, the 100 bulbs you plant this fall will gradually multiply to 300, then 600, then 1,000, and so on.
• When planting en masse, it helps to create a planting “map” in advance on paper that can be transferred onto the ground with granular lime, as Martha does (see photo).
• Daffodil bulbs should be planted about two to three times as deep as the bulbs are high, so if you have one that’s 2 inches tall, plant it 4 to 6 inches below the top of the soil.
• When harvesting for arrangements, grasp the stem at the base and pull rather than cutting, as viruses in bulbs can be passed along to other plants when using pruners to trim stems.
• Don’t cut back daffodils too soon. Once the flowers bloom and fade, allow the whole plant to die back to the ground to create food for the bulbs so they can multiply.
• After removing spent foliage, apply a balanced 10-10-10 fertilizer over the entire area, and then add a layer of mulch. Fertilize the area again in the fall.

Excerpted from “Martha Stewart’s Gardening Handbook: The Essential Guide to Designing, Planting, and Growing.” © 2025 by Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, L.P. Reproduced by permission of Harvest, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.

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“Martha Stewart’s Gardening Handbook”

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