“Martha Knows Best” is Great, But Does She Really?
I had so completely tuned out HGTV as a source of gardening instruction or inspiration that I totally missed the July 31 premier of their Martha Stewart show "Martha Knows [...]
Susan Harris
Susan’s a garden writer, teacher and activist in the Washington, D.C. area. Co-founder of GardenRant, she also wrote for national gardening magazines and independent garden centers before retiring in 2014. Now she has time for these projects:
- Founding the pro-science educational nonprofit Good Gardening Videos that finds and promotes the best videos on YouTube for teaching people to garden.
- Creating DC Gardens, the nonprofit campaign to promote the public gardens of the Washington, D.C. area, and gardening by locals.
- Creating and editing the nonprofit website Greenbelt Online to serve her adopted hometown of Greenbelt, Maryland (a “New Deal Utopia” founded in 1937).
Susan rants about anything that misinforms or discourages gardeners – from old-school quacks to mistaken do-gooders to local laws that mandate conformity.
Contact Susan via email or by leaving a comment on one of her articles.
Virtual Garden Tours – My Summer Project
My local informal gardening group WAS going to put on a garden tour, so when that couldn't I began experimenting with virtual tours - online but with the option that local [...]
During the Pandemic, is Anyone Else Forgetting to Be Freaked Out about Lyme Disease?
Back in May of 2018 I ranted about the "New Look for Gardeners Freaked out about Lyme Disease" using this image of a hazmat suit for yucks to illustrate the [...]
Even Garden Writers who Hate Trump are Defending the Rose Garden Upgrade
The announcement from the office of Melania Trump that the Rose Garden is getting an upgrade next month came at the worst possible time. It also came from one of [...]
Garden Transformed by Color – in Paint, Plants and Wall Art
Thank you all for your many color suggestions for my front garden, in comments to this post. I love those colors, too! But I had to choose, and for an [...]
Quick, Year-Round Color in the Garden – with Paint!
Before and after in less than a week! Taking me away from the horrors of my newsfeed this week has been transforming the look of my Greenbelt, Maryland [...]
Can people really love urban weeds? Birds are a much easier sell.
I read in The Guardian about "More than Weeds," a French group using graffiti to highlight the "names and importance of the diverse but downtrodden flora growing in the cracks [...]
Review and Give-Away: “The Earth in Her Hands” by Jennifer Jewell
UPDATE: We have a winner! It's Liz Genovese, with this comment (chosen at random): "Remember the days when having the most correct and most beautiful place settings was a thing? [...]
Groundhogs in my Garden!
I suppose most suburban gardeners have some mammals to deal with in their garden - squirrels, rabbits and deer being the top nuisances in my area, so far. That is, [...]
How our Garden Tour Went Virtual
The informal Gardening Boosters group that I helped launch in January planned to have all sorts of in -person gardening events here in Old Greenbelt, Maryland. When those ideas became [...]
I Finally Love my Nook Garden. Thanks, Rant Commenters!
Nook garden in 2012 Back in 2012, the year I bought my New Deal rowhouse in Greenbelt, I had no idea what to do with this space between [...]
Kathy Jentz and the GardenDC Podcast
As a long-time podcast listener I just assumed that listenership would be on the rise during the pandemic, but apparently just the opposite - though they're now coming back. I wonder if [...]