For Journalists: El Niño Coverage

Nan Sterman is a botanist, garden designer, and journalist who has spent decades explaining how plants survive and fail in Southern California‘s Mediterranean climate. With a background in marine botany and first-hand study of past El Niño events, she’s uniquely qualified to inform and educate on this impactful phenomena.

She hosted eight seasons of A Growing Passion on PBS and CREATE TV, earning five Emmy Awards, and has written for Sunset, Better Homes and Gardens, the Los Angeles Times, and the San Diego Union-Tribune. She is the author of three books on gardening in the arid West and designed the plantings for Balboa Park’s Botanical Building. This winter she is available to explain what a wet El Niño season actually does to landscapes that have spent three years in drought, and why the first big storm often does more damage than the dry years that preceded it.

Story angles she can speak to:

• Drought-stressed soil meets heavy rain: why hardpan sheds water instead of absorbing it
• Tree failure during storms: which species topple, and the root-zone conditions that predict it
• Root rot and overwatering: the plant deaths that show up 3 to 6 weeks after the rain stops
• Slope and erosion risk: what homeowners can and cannot fix before the next storm
• Planting decisions: what a wet winter changes, and what it does not
• Post-storm weeds and pests: what emerges, and when

Availability: Phone, video, in-studio, and on location. Encinitas garden available for filming and stand-ups. Same-day response on deadline requests.

To book: info@waterwisegardener.com