Ask This Old House Season 23 Episode 25: Thank You, Roger Cook, and the Persian Ironwood at the Barn

Season 23, Episode 25 of Ask This Old House is not a repair episode. Roger Cook died, and Kevin O'Connor, Tom Silva, Richard Trethewey, Jenn Nawada, and two of Roger's crew, Fred and Pica, spend the hour remembering him. The only physical job in the whole broadcast is planting a tree at the barn, which is exactly the right shape for a memorial: dig a hole, set something in the ground, and let it get bigger than you.

If you came for a fix, the useful material is still here. Roger explained pruning, tying, planting depth, and site selection in a way that has aged better than most how-to television.

First Impressions and the Ogre at the Barn Door

Kevin's first scene on the show had him wandering into the barn while Roger asked who he was and then delivered the line: you're late. Richard's read on it is the one that sticks. Nobody played the ogre better. He was a teddy bear, but he played the ogre. Jenn Nawada admits she was intimidated when she started, because Roger Cook was already the reference point for landscape work on television, and suddenly he was standing in front of her. His advice to her was almost annoyingly practical: do what you'd do on your own job, and it's easier with a shovel in your hand. She still repeats that. Anybody who has taught a trade will recognize why it works. A tool gives your hands something to do while your brain catches up.

Tom's first impression was a gentle giant with no frills. Let's get going, what do you want, let's get it done. Coming from Tom, that's a compliment with a specific edge. Tom talks about Roger's explanations as simple but concise, and then adds the part that matters: Roger told you why not to do something before he told you what to do instead.

The Pruning and Planting Rules Worth Stealing

Roger's on-camera teaching shows up in clips throughout the hour. The three-cut method for pruning gets named but not fully demonstrated, which is a shame, because it's the technique that keeps a heavy limb from tearing bark down the trunk as it falls. The other pruning lesson is fully explained. Wire ties girdle a branch. Roger points at the swelling on a stem and says so plainly, then shows the alternative: a half-inch plastic locking tree tie that flexes as the tree grows instead of strangling it. That's a two-dollar fix for a problem that can kill a young tree over five years, and it's the kind of detail that never makes it into a garden-center tag.

Then there's the rule about any branch he'd hit his head on while mowing. It gets cut. It is not arboricultural science, but it is honest maintenance logic, and it explains why so many mature yards have a clean seven-foot zone above the turf.

His turf advice is the same message Lee Gilliam delivered in the overseeding segment we covered earlier at /posts/ask-this-old-house-season-23-episode-24-duct-noise-overseeding-stucco-austin , where core aeration and compost topdressing were the tools and sun was the underlying constraint. Roger says it more bluntly: a lawn wants a lot of sun and a lot of water, and sometimes you have to admit grass is not the right plant. Turf-type fescue will hang on in partial shade. It won't thrive there. Homeowners spend real money fighting that fact every spring.

The Latin names fly all episode, and they aren't decoration. Hydrangea macrophylla lace cap. Microbiota. Clethra alnifolia hummingbird. Ampelopsis pedunculata. Jenn points out that horticultural people talk to each other in Latin names, which is why she and Roger traded them like passwords. Common names vary by region and by nursery tag. Botanical names don't, and if you're ordering a specific cultivar or asking whether a plant will survive your winters, that's the language that gets you the right plant.

Roger's rain garden segment is the one I'd hand to any homeowner dealing with a wet corner. The purpose is to filter water, and native wetland plants do the filtering. That thread runs straight into Jenn's drainage work from earlier in the season at /posts/ask-this-old-house-season-23-episode-6-drainage-determination , where the lesson was similar: manage where water goes on the site before you start patching the consequences indoors.

Ten Hours of Prep for Two Minutes of Television

Richard says Roger did ten hours of work the day before to prep a two-minute scene. That line should be printed on the wall of every production office. What viewers see is the planting, the tie, the backfill. What they don't see is the tree that got moved, the bed that got amended, the tools staged within reach of a camera, or the soil that got swapped because the native stuff was too heavy to work. Television compresses labor into something that looks effortless, and landscaping is particularly guilty of this because the visible result is a plant sitting in a hole. It looks the same whether it took twenty minutes or two days.

Roger's hiring rule lands in the same territory. He hired nice people and trained them, on the theory that a crew of nice guys gets a lot done. Fred, who started at fourteen and had thirty seconds to get in the truck before Roger drove off without him, paid for his rides in coffee. Pica describes Roger bear-hugging a tree off a truck that two men were struggling with, then saying, this is how it's done. That's not a training program. That's an example, and it stuck.

Also worth keeping: the stump won. Roger says so himself. He and the stump had a whole bit about it.

The Parrotia persica at the Barn

The planting is the episode's only job, and it is done properly. A magnolia Roger put in over twenty years ago is about to bloom at the barn, so the crew adds a Parrotia persica, Persian ironwood, chosen by Jenn for full sun. Kevin and Jenn do the work.

The steps are Roger's steps, and they hold up:

• The hole is dug to twice the diameter of the root ball. Wider, not deeper. Loose soil around the sides gives roots somewhere to go.
• Depth gets measured rather than guessed. Tom measures and calls out fourteen inches. The root ball tells you where the tree wants to sit.
• Plant high, they won't die. Plant low, they won't grow. Roger's saying, and it's the single most common planting mistake. Sink the root flare and you smother it.
• Every tree has a face. The best side goes toward the house, which is the side you'll actually look at.
• The burlap comes off the ball, and the crew digs to find where the trunk widens into the root flare. If that flare is buried, the tree is already in trouble.
• Superphosphate and starter fertilizer get mixed into the backfill to support root establishment.

Two things to be honest about. First, the fertilizer choice is a judgment call, and soil tests are the only way to know what your ground actually needs; phosphorus runoff is a real concern in many watersheds. Second, Persian ironwood is not a universal pick. It wants full sun and reasonable drainage, and Jenn says as much when she names it. Roger's principle applies here more than his plant list does: right plant, right place.

Jenn's fruit-tree segment earlier this season at /posts/ask-this-old-house-season-23-episode-3-fruit-trees-roof-tools-smart-lighting is the same inheritance in miniature. She's the one naming cultivars and talking site conditions now. Roger gave her permission before she took the role, and told her to carry on the passion. Fred and Pica are doing the same thing with the company, admitting it takes two of them to cover what Roger did alone.

DIY Confidence Scale

Digging the hole and planting the tree: 3/10. A spade, a hose, and a couple of hours. The physical work is not the hard part, and if you can lift the root ball without hurting yourself, you can do this.

Getting the depth, the root flare, and the site right: 7/10. This is where trees get killed. Measure the root ball, find the flare, resist the urge to bury it deeper because it looks better, and match the species to your sun and soil before you buy. Amending the backfill and fertilizing at planting is a judgment call that depends on your soil, so a test is worth the money before you dump anything in the hole.

Additional Resources

• Watch on PBS
• Official This Old House episode page

Kevin reads one viewer message on air: a man who plans to plant three trees in Roger's name and teach his three kids how to care for them. The circle closes elsewhere in the episode, when Kevin notes that the young people Roger used to pick up and drive to job sites were, at the end, driving him. If you plant something this year because of this episode, what's going in the ground, and did you check the root flare before you backfilled?