— Nan Sterman On this Father’s day, I am honoring my grandfather, Ed Miller. Grandpa Eddie, as we called him, is the reason I am a gardener. In one of my earliest memories, I am standing in a “forest” of tomato plants. They tower over my head and I smell the musty fragrance of t

This week’s episode of A Growing Passion takes us behind the scenes with the San Diego Zoo and Zoo Safari Park’s amazing horticulture staff. My long time friend Stephanie Shigematsu is the Zoological Society’s Curator of Horticulture, which means she oversees everything plants.

–Nan Sterman From Anza Borrego Desert to the beaches at La Jolla, this is San Diego County’s garden tour season. This time of year, gardeners open their gates and invite the public in to enjoy the fruits (sometimes literally) of their labors. If you love seeing what’s behi

Gardens and art were part of this past week’s adventure as I worked on recharging, reinvesting, and reinventing myself at the annual conference of the GWA, the Association of Garden Communicators (www.gardenwriters.org). This year, more than 300 of us gathered in Atlanta, Georgi

— Nan Sterman After our group of enthusiastic garden travelers left Cordoba, Spain we went on to Seville. We toured Seville’s historic old city on foot, then headed to the Alcazar, one of my favorite gardens in the world. These gardens also hugely influenced San Diego arch

— Nan Sterman   Thirty-six people, nine days, five cities, more than 35 gardens, and nearly 3,000 photos. Those are the numbers for the tour I co-led last month to visit the romantic gardens of Spain. We toured by private coach, starting in Malaga, a beautiful seaside town

— Nan Sterman It’s emerald green. It’s soft underfoot. It smells great when it’s cut. It’s fun to play on. There are many reasons to like grass, but there are also reasons not to have a lawn in your garden. How grass lawns got here Lawns are new to California. They arrived durin

— Nan Sterman Take a deep breath in the garden. What do you smell? If you grow citrus, chances are you’re smelling one of the headiest, most intoxicating fragrances imaginable. This is the time of year when backyard citrus erupt in small, fragrant white flowers that will become

Celebrating Balboa Park – Part V: The Exposition and Its Legacy — Nan Sterman On January 1, 1915, 50,000 bright red poinsettias welcomed visitors to the Panama-California Exposition. The choice of plants was a bit prophetic since San Diego County would soon be known as the epice

Celebrating Balboa Park – Part IV: Farms and Gardens — Nan Sterman While Balboa Park’s planners and designers were jockeying for position, the park’s horticulturists were scurrying to propagate plants for the exposition gardens. They had only five years to landscape