In a nutshell, Susan’s a garden-center blogger, GardenRant blogger, Master Gardener, garden writer, gardening coach, and activist for urban and suburban greening. On this website you’ll find her articles, plus contributions by 23 top horticulturists and garden writers from around the country. The blog here is all Susan, with an occasional guest post, and fair warning – she ventures off-topic occasionally, especially in winter.
Where? In Takoma Park, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C., in USDA Zone 7A and the Mid-Atlantic Humidity Belt.
Writing
- Susan founded Garden Center Blogger to help independent garden centers blog successfully. She writes for the Homestead Gardens Blog and up next – the Mahoney’s Blog.
- Susan’s Sustainable and Urban Gardening Blog launched in 2005 and was voted “Best Organic Blog” in an international vote.
- Susan writes and produces the rowdy, award-winning blog GardenRant with her co-conspirators, grinning in the photo right.
- Her articles have appeared in Fine Gardening, Organic Gardening, Landscape Architecture Magazine, and the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens periodical, among others.
Garden Coaching
- Susan’s Garden Coaching has been featured in the New York Times, on “CBS Sunday Morning,” and just about everywhere.
- In order to promote this low-cost service to beginning gardeners, she created a blog for and about garden coaches and a Directory of Garden Coaches.
Networking
- Susan co-founded the DC Urban Gardeners and manages their website.
- She speak to local journalism classes, community groups and the Garden Writers Association about writing online, primarily blogging. She also talks about urban and sustainable gardening before such groups as DC’s EcoWomen, the DC Historical Society and Exploritas visitors to Washington.
- After writing a proposal about Greening the White House Grounds, Susan launched the national media campaign Green the Grounds to encourage America’s First Families (including governors and mayors) to practice and promote sustainable landscaping on the grounds of their official residences.
- In September of 2009 she recruited 9 other garden communicators across the U.S. to form the Lawn Reform Coalition, dedicated to promoting natural lawn care, regionally appropriate lawn species, and design alternatives to lawn.
- Susan is active on the Advisory Board of Montgomery Victory Gardens, a nonprofit encouraging and teaching the growing of edibles in Montgomery County, Maryland.
