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.
A Near-Miss in my Search for the Perfect Watering Can
Back in 2015 I wrote about my two perfect watering cans and one that I deemed "flawed," according to the caption (above). I declared cans to be perfect thanks to [...]
Brent Heath Knows his Daffodils
Brent and Becky Heath I thought I knew how to grow daffodils - because who doesn't? They're critter-proof, perennial, drought-tolerant, and so on. Or so I thought until [...]
Gardeners Mourn the Closing of Behnkes, Beloved 89-Year-Old Garden Center
Yesterday my long-time favorite garden center announced it'll close soon. Here's my tribute to the company and its people on a local blog. I'm reposting it here for the Rant's [...]
I Keep 2 House Plants Alive and Kill the Rest
We're hearing and reading everywhere that house plants are having their day, and I'm all in - as long as they're growing in someone ELSE's house. I have a strict [...]
The Latest from Doug Tallamy
GardenRant posts this week have gone there - questioning the rarely questioned conventional wisdom these days about native-plant superiority and those bad "exotics." Today I'm adding to the discussion the [...]
Towns and Public Gardens Pretty in Snow
Greenbelt's Roosevelt Center, by Alexis Beaver Seeing Elizabeth's snow photos of Buffalo made me want to share nice snow shots from MY part of the world, so here goes. [...]
Back at college, I found out the History of Landscape course starts with Stonehenge
As threatened promised, I'm blogging the History of Landscape course I'm taking at the University of Maryland, and here's my first post. The (fabulous) teacher I'll be quoting is Caren Yglesias. Interestingly [...]
Buffalo Garden Book Give-Away and My Best Buffalo Shots
It had to happen - a book about the Buffalo-Style Gardens that have become the talk of the gardening world, especially among garden writers. And it had to be the work [...]
Bravo’s “Backyard Envy”
The Manscaper design/install team starring in "Backyard Envy" Gardeners, especially garden bloggers, have long complained about the dearth of gardening shows on TV, and I had little hope for "Backyard [...]
Scenes from a Nursery Trade Show – MANTS
The Mid-Atlantic Nursery Trade Show is happening in Baltimore this week, and garden communicators (formerly "writers") were there in droves! Here we all are at the breakfast event for media. [...]
Glenstone in Winter
Approach to the Pavilions. Photo credit: Iwan Baan, Glenstone Museum The DC area's biggest art news in 2018 was by all accounts the opening of a much-expanded contemporary art museum [...]