Resume of Susan Harris

Susan Harris

Susan does online writing and social marketing for independent garden centers as the Garden Center Blogger. Her clients include Homestead Gardens, Mahoney‘s and Behnkes Nurseries.
She founded the national team blog GardenRant with her partners in 2006. It’s been voted Garden Blog of the Year, Best North American Garden Blog, Most Innovative, and Best Written Garden Blog by a jury of its peers. GardenRant has been featured in the Washington Post, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and numerous gardening publications.
Her home blog is GardenerSusan. It’s mostly about gardening, and was once voted “Best Organic Blog” by Blotanical. It goes off-topic, too.
Susan’s website Sustainable Gardening combines her articles with contributions from top horticultural researchers and writers.
Her articles have appeared in Fine Gardening, Organic Gardening, Landscape Architecture Magazine, and the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens periodical, among others.

In 2009 Susan formed the national Lawn Reform Coaliti on, dedicated to promoting natural lawn care, regionally appropriate lawn species, and design alternatives to lawn. Her comrades in lawn reform include garden communicators and plant suppliers across the U.S.
Susan co-founded the network of 800+ green gardeners called DC Urban Gardeners.
Susan has spoken to to the Garden Writers Association national convention and many DC-area journalism classes about how to succeed at blogging.
Her other speaking engagements include talking about urban and sustainable gardening to DC’s EcoWomen, the DC Historical Society and Exploritas visitors to Washington.
Susan’s an active advisory board member to Montgomery Victory Gardens, a local campaign to encourage and teach edibles gardening.
In November of 2008 Susan was contacted by Michelle Obama’s office about the impending garden and in response, wrote a proposal for changes to the whole White House grounds. It then morphed into Green the Grounds, a resource about official residences adopting sustainable landscaping practices.

Susan began garden coaching (teaching gardening one-on-one in the garden) in 2004 and since then has been featured in the New York Times, on “CBS Sunday Morning” and many others. (Click here for a full list of media appearances about coaching, gardening and writing for the web.)
To help promote this new low-cost service, she started the World Wide Directory of Garden Coaches and the Gardening Coach Blog. She also mentors new coaches around the country.