Meet Barbara Martin
Barbara Martin, a passionate gardener and skilled writer, began as an avid hobby gardener and honed her enthusiasm for garden communications while working part-time at an independent nursery in small town Missouri. Her mentor there was nursery owner, Carla Parrill who always insisted on taking time to answer customers' questions with good humor, enthusiasm and horticultural accuracy. Barbara remembers receiving her weekly paycheck and using it to cover the bill for plants she had taken home that week.
Barbara's career as a garden writer began with a column in a small local newspaper in Pennsylvania. She then leaped on to the Internet in 1996, handling the broad-ranging "Cottage Garden" topic at Suite101.com for many years. Based on her demonstrated, solid horticultural knowledge and writing ability, the National Gardening Association, Garden.org , offered her a telecommuting position helping to build the largest Q&A gardening archive on the Internet for a variety of clients - including Scotts, Burpee, Monrovia, The Home Depot and PBS' GardenSmart, as well as others. She also wrote the popular Mid-Atlantic Regional Reports for their award-winning web site from their start in 2000 through December 2005, adding her own photos to complement the columns. Meanwhile, her garden writing has appeared in magazines such as the National Home Gardening Club's Garden How-To and has been reprinted as far away as Australia. A recent move to southern California has Barbara studying to become a certified nursery professional in that state. She's also learning about growing many Mediterranean and South African subtropical and tropical landscape plants such as palms, citrus and jasmine - as well as fascinating desert natives.
In addition to writing, Barbara has worked as a garden designer. She described this part of her life as challenging because good design requires not only "right plant, right place" determinations, but also combines the client's lifestyle and design goals along with practical considerations, such as allowing for different uses like children's play or entertaining, as well as allowing for the plantings to mature gracefully over time. Gardens, Barbara says, develop in four dimensions: height, width, depth and time. When we asked Barbara about her personal garden and what her favorite plant is, she responded "Whatever's blooming today! I can't pick just one. It's like choosing between your children." Although Barbara doesn't like winter much, she loves the four seasons for gardening. "There's lots going on, even in winter. You begin to notice things like branch and bark patterns and the silhouettes of plants."
On top of her writing and design work, Barbara has taught gardening classes and workshops for the general public and is an accomplished speaker, keynoting at symposia and Master Gardener conferences as well as garden clubs, often using her own color slides as illustration. Her favorite part of any presentation is the Q&A!
We think Carla would be pleased with Barbara today because she is following her mentor's example. She's answering people's questions and making gardening fun for everyone. Thank you, Barbara, for your patience and your passion.
Barbara Martin can be reached via email at cottagegardenpro@yahoo.com.