Our Writers
Savvy Gardening features the voices of three gardening experts. Read about each contributor below, as well as our goal for sharing our gardening expertise.
Jessica Walliser is a horticulturist and the award-winning author of seven gardening books, including the Amazon best-seller Good Bug Bad Bug, the American Horticultural Society Book Award winners Attracting Beneficial Bugs to Your Garden and Plant Partners: A Science-Based Guide to Companion Planting for the Vegetable Garden, along with Container Gardening Complete. For 15 years, Jessica contributed two weekly columns to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review where she had the pleasure of covering a wide range of gardening topics. Jessica was also the long-time co-host of The Organic Gardeners, an award-winning program on KDKA Radio in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She has a degree in horticulture from the Pennsylvania State University and is the former owner of a 25-acre organic market farm. She is also the Editorial Director for The Quarto Group’s gardening imprint, Cool Springs Press.
Niki Jabbour is the award-winning author of four books – The Year Round Vegetable Gardener (2012 American Horticultural Society Book Award), Groundbreaking Food Gardens: 73 Plans That Will Change the Way You Grow Your Garden, Veggie Garden Remix: 224 New Plants to Shake Up Your Garden and Add Variety, Flavor, and Fun (Winner of the 2019 American Horticultural Society Book Award, Winner of the Gold Book Award from GardenComm, and winner of the 2019 Silver Award from Taste Canada), and Growing Under Cover: Techniques for a More Productive, Weather-Resistant, Pest-Free Vegetable Garden. She also writes for magazines like Fine Gardening, Horticulture, and Birds & Blooms. Niki is an in-demand speaker, offering seminars and keynotes at events, shows, societies, and greenhouses across North America such as the Northwest Flower & Garden Show, The Dow Gardens, The Philadelphia Flower Show, The Boston Flower Show, and Canada Blooms. Since 2006, Niki has hosted and executive produced her popular radio show, The Weekend Gardener which airs on News 95.7 FM in Halifax as well as online. For her broadcasting work, Niki won the Gold Award from GardenComm as ‘Best On-Air Talent’. Niki is very active on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter and you can find her gardening videos on Youtube. When she’s not writing, speaking, or broadcasting about food gardening Niki is harvesting year-round from her thirty raised bed vegetable garden in Halifax, Nova Scotia which is filled with an eclectic mixture of popular vegetables like tomatoes, cucumbers, and beans, as well as unique heirloom varieties, and crops from around the world like cucamelons, snake gourds, and za’atar.
Tara Nolan is a gardening writer, speaker, and author from Dundas, Ontario. Her first book, the best-selling Raised Bed Revolution: Build It! Fill It! Plant It! Garden Anywhere (Cool Springs Press), was published in 2016. Her latest book, Gardening Your Front Yard: Projects and Ideas for Big & Small Spaces (Cool Springs Press) was published in March 2020. Tara loves planting a mix of food and flowers in her multiple raised beds and perennial gardens. In 2016, Tara appeared on WNED Buffalo’s Garden Wisdom program as an edibles expert. For six years, Tara was the award-winning web editor of Canadian Gardening magazine’s website. Her lecture experience includes talks at Canada Blooms, Canada’s largest flower and garden festival, Royal Botanical Garden, Toronto Botanical Garden, and Lee Valley Tools, as well as garden clubs and horticultural societies. Tara has also written about gardening for the Toronto Star, CBC Life, Garden Making, The Globe and Mail, Reader’s Digest, Canadian Living, and Style at Home, among others. When she’s not in the garden, this card-carrying member of GardenComm, formerly the Garden Writer’s Association, is on her mountain bike or traveling somewhere to check out public and private gardens. Tara also considers herself to be pretty crafty (meaning creative, not sly), and while you probably aren’t going to learn about her talent with a needle and thread here, you will learn about the amazing (and crafty!) garden creations growing right outside her back door.
Our Mission
Our mission at Savvy Gardening™ is to provide you with high-quality, high-value information, as well as plenty of inspiration to help you create the garden of your dreams. We are three garden writers, from two different countries and three different hardiness zones, each with a unique knowledge base, a passionate voice, and a weighted opinion. Savvy Gardening offers gardeners of all abilities and experience innovative solutions, novel ideas, enlightening research, and a solid dose of sensible advice. We believe that gardens not only offer beauty and food, but they’re also life laboratories. Our gardens give us the opportunity to experiment, discover, dissect, and reconnect with nature in all its forms. We believe that providing gardeners with confidence and trusted information is what Savvy Gardening is all about.
Savvy Gardening and its experts have been featured in PBS, HGTV, Real Simple, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Hobby Farms, Garden Gate, Fine Gardening, Garden Design, Birds & Blooms, Chicos, Horticulture, Epic Gardening, Garden Therapy, Empress of Dirt, The Globe and Mail, The Joe Gardener Podcast Show, Gardenerd, Buzzfeed, and more.
To Reach Us
Want to contact one or all of the Savvy Gardening™ experts? You can reach us by emailing this address:
savvygardening [at] gmail.com.
The Savvy Gardening experts are open to discussing brand partnerships, sponsored content opportunities, and advertising. Please contact us for a copy of our media kit.
The Savvy Gardening experts are also available for speaking engagements, radio segments, podcasts, magazine and newspaper interviews, and writing opportunities.
