Southern California garden expert, award-winning TV host, and celebrated garden designer.
My love affair with plants began as a small child…
When I was a toddler, my grandfather turned a bit of dirt in my parent’s backyard into a tomato patch. I remember the musky smell of tomato plants that loomed over my head like a forest canopy. I remember my grandfather picking a huge, ripe beefsteak tomato and biting into it like an apple. The juice ran down his chin and the look on his face was pure heaven. From that moment, I was drawn into the magical spell of the garden.
First, it was writing.
After I spent years dedicated to the environment, studying photosynthesis, and earning multiple graduate degrees, I was hired as the garden editor for San Diego Home Garden Lifestyle Magazine. Soon, I was writing articles for Sunset Magazine, Better Homes and Gardens, the Los Angeles Times, the San Diego Union Tribune, and many more. I’ve also written three garden books focused on ways to create thriving gardens in the West’s water-limited environments
Then, garden design.
I never intended to design gardens. But after all those years spent looking at gardens, talking with designers, and thinking about their composition, combinations, and colors, I realized I had undergone an apprenticeship. Today, you can find my San Diego garden designs at homes across the county—and in Balboa Park’s Botanical Building!
Next came A Growing Passion.
As much as I loved writing articles, I wanted more. I wanted my audiences to see the way people’s eyes lit up when they talked about plants, and to hear the emotion in their voices as we strolled through their gardens. I realized that the best way to really convey what I was seeing was to show it to others. And so, A Growing Passion was born.
We spent eight seasons Connecting Plants, People, and the Planet.™ We showed people how plants impacted their daily lives in ways they couldn’t imagine. We covered more than pretty gardens. We explored topics ranging from sustainability to global warming and food justice.
A Growing Passion is a proud recipient of five Emmy Awards from the Pacific Southwest Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences
Today, it’s Nan Sterman’s Garden School.
After spending years helping gardeners be successful in California’s unique climate, I formalized those lessons and made them available with Nan Sterman’s Garden School. I teach gardening classes online and in-person for everyone from beginning gardeners to landscape professionals. I don’t just teach what works, I teach why it works, and how it works, too. And I’m there as your science-based garden expert along the way. That’s the Garden School difference.
