Fall Foliage in my Townhouse Garden
This was the view of my back garden, where some recent shrub- and tree-buying was really paying off, small space be damned. My one perennial that still looks good is [...]
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.
Visiting Daybreak, UT, a Planned Community
This is my third and last post about Salt Lake City, which I visited for the garden communicators annual conference in September. I live in a town that's famous in [...]
Patrick Dougherty’s Stick House at the US Botanic Garden is OPEN for Fun
If you come to DC any time over the next two years, I recommend visiting this magical stickwork piece called "Oh Say Can You See" by Patrick Dougherty, that just [...]
Ed Lyon on How to Write about Native Plants
I'm back with another report about a terrific talk I heard during the garden communicator conference in Salt Lake City. This time, it's a talk by Ed Lyon, director of Reiman [...]
On Replacing a Public Perennial Bed with Turf, and the Public Reaction
Summer of 2019. Last year I wrote about the weedy mess of a perennial bed in front of my town's most important historic building. In 1985. [...]
What’s the Point of Pergolas?
Pergolas in Daybreak, UT, outside Salt Lake City. A pergola in Maryland I saw way too much water-sucking landscaping when I was in Salt Lake City, [...]
Gardening in the Utah Desert and the Push for “Localscapes”
Temple Gardens, Salt Lake City As soon as I arrived in Salt Lake City for the national conference of garden communicators last month I heard from multiple sources [...]
I Hate my Arborvitae Hedge
I'm here to vent. In order to provide some enclosure and block the primary view from my house of a parking lot, I did the only thing that my co-op's [...]
September Visit to the Smithsonian Gardens
I feel lucky every time I ride the subway down to the National Mall, where the many museums and gardens are free - and fabulous. I did that recently and [...]
Scott Beuerlein Wins 2 Gold Awards at GardenComm 2019!
Saturday night in Salt Lake City was awfully good to GardenRanter Scott Beuerlein. First he collected a gold GardenComm Media Award for writing his magazine column. In the photo above [...]
First Comic Film Ever was about Gardening
I have a back-to-school post! Readers may remember my posts about the History of Landscape course I took last semester at the University of Maryland (as a free-tuition retiree – [...]
Easy Rain Gardens, Walk-in Tomato Cages and More from a Baltimore Master Gardener
Robert Cook in rain garden, with elderberry. My post about a recent tour of Baltimore gardens omitted one because it was SO interesting, I wanted to go back and [...]