About
I’m a passionate gardener.
I love working outside and can’t imagine life without a garden. It’s been my vocation, passion, source of entertainment and comfort since I first put my shovel into the soil 40 years ago.
My horticultural career has morphed through several stages, each one taking me to another level. After studying art in college, I got interested in plants when I began collecting houseplants. I quickly got hooked into world of gardening, inside and out.
My Training
Most of my training has been hands on. I got my first gardening job in Maymont Park, a public garden in Richmond, Virginia and a few years later, landed a position as the head gardener on a private estate in Wilton, Connecticut. After years of honing my skills on the job and getting further training at the New York Botanic Garden, I established my own garden design and maintenance company, which I operated for 30 years in Fairfield County and Kent, CT. I maintained and redesigned a variety of small suburban lots, modest rural properties, and spacious country estates.
Passion for Problem Solving
I saw the same hodgepodge of garden problems on a routine basis- struggling plants, inadequate or no apparent design, overcrowding, poor siting, improper pruning and general lack of maintenance. In short, lots of underused plants, missed opportunities and unhappy homeowners. The waste of resources drove me nuts, but as I worked with some of these homeowners I got excited about showing them how to use what they already had more advantageously. I got really passionate about the problem-solving aspect of gardening.
Life as a Freelancer
It wasn’t until I moved to upstate New York with my husband in 2003, that I saw an opportunity to share more of my experiences through writing, teaching and consulting. I began freelancing for a variety of gardening magazines; Fine Gardening, American Gardener, Country Gardens, American Nurseryman, The Upstate Gardeners Journal and Rochester Magazine. Writing spurred me on to develop lectures and classes I offered locally at the Rochester Civic Garden Center, a nonprofit horticultural education center in Rochester, NY.
Executive Director
In 2007, I was hired as their executive director and worked for 10 years to develop the education programs further. Throughout my time as director and instructor, I found that most people are hungry for horticultural knowledge they can use in their own garden.
When I retired from that job in 2017, I stepped up my game as a garden communicator, designer and consultant. I began a monthly blog – Gardening With What You Have, as a way of sharing information with other gardeners, homeowners and anyone else who wants to know how to create a more exciting landscape.
I’m a fixer.
As a garden designer and consultant, I love working with homeowners who want to create new gardens or improve existing ones but lack experience, horticultural expertise, and have limited time to spend working in them. They are usually struggling, because they don’t know what to do first.
Let’s face it, gardening is a lot more fun when you get the results you want right? It’s hard to achieve if you don’t have a clear idea of what you have, what you want, what’s working (or not working) and where to start. I can help you figure it out.
Here’s how to work with me.