I Dig Your Story

Sometimes a business idea starts in the most unexpected places—even in the cracks of a driveway. Lucas Picciolo, founder of Mossify, has been an entrepreneur for as long as he can remember. From selling homemade bookmarks in elementary school to developing an assistive sleep device as a teenager, Lucas has always been driven by curiosity, creativity and a desire to build something of his own. But...

A north-facing window box that didn’t go quite as planned might seem like an unlikely beginning for a gardening journey. But for Erin Schanen, better known as The Impatient Gardener, that early gardening mishap sparked a desire to understand what went wrong—and eventually grew into a thriving online community and business. Erin grew up around gardening, thanks to her mother, but it wasn’t until sh...

Flowers have been part of Katie Elzer-Peters’s life for as long as she can remember. They are her “thing.” Today, she combines her love of plants with a passion for making art, from botanical drawings and watercolors to cyanotype prints made with leaves, flowers, and even weeds. A horticulturist by training, Katie spent years working in public gardens before building The Garden of Words, a marketi...

Sonya Harris loved teaching special education, but a struggling first-grade math lesson led her and a colleague to discover that nature is the ultimate classroom. With no gardening experience at all, Sonya reached out to a celebrity gardener for help—and the resulting school garden changed the direction of her work. As founder of the Bullock Garden Project, Sonya went from helping children underst...

Kate Santos has built a career that crosses some of horticulture’s most distinct boundaries: from applied research and greenhouse production to breeding and global operations—and now public horticulture at Longwood Gardens. As Associate Vice President of Science at Longwood, Kate brings that commercial and scientific experience to a place where horticulture is about growing beautiful plants—and so...

In this quarterly bonus I Dig Your Story sub-pod we call Fifth Tuesdays, host Ellen Wells does a follow-up with a former guest, Roshan Patel.   When we first talked, Roshan was getting his hands dirty at Mack Park Farm in Salem, Massachusetts, and discovering just how much community can grow around a garden. Now, several months later, he has plenty to report. Roshan talks about a busy growing seas...

Jonathan Bardzik has built a life around curiosity, creativity, and bringing people together. From growing up in his family’s Massachusetts garden center to working in horticulture, cooking for others, writing books, and creating retreats, his path has rarely been linear—and that’s exactly the point. In this conversation, Jonathan shares how his relationship with plants began, why following curios...

What happens when two friends get excited about school gardens and then decide to start taking their viewers inside some of the most interesting gardens around Central California? Christy Calderon and Shelley Joyner are the creators of Between Two Shrubs, a YouTube show that’s a little like MTV’s Cribs, but for gardens. They tour home landscapes, talk with the people who created them, and show vie...

Rayne Gibson grew up in family-owned wholesale nursery in Louisiana, learning the business from the ground up. By the time he graduated from LSU with a horticulture degree, he had a very specific vision: build up the operation into a multi-state container nursery business and become one of the best nurserymen in the industry. Then everything changed. In this episode of I Dig Your Story, Rayne talk...

Laura Kunkle’s career has taken some unexpected turns—from wanting to be a professional piano player at the Olympics, to sports broadcasting, accounting at Highlights for Children, and eventually a decades-long career in the green industry. Today, she’s the executive director of America in Bloom, an organization helping communities across the country become better places to live, work, visit, and...

Ashley Vernon’s relationship with plants began with childhood curiosity—tasting honeysuckle, exploring her grandmother’s grapevines, and growing her first strawberry patch—but the path to her career in community orchards was anything but predictable. Adopted as a baby, Ashley grew up curious about her background and where she came from. That curiosity became a kind of wanderlust, leading her from...

What happens when a lifelong love of plants meets an insatiable curiosity about, well, just about everything? For horticulturist, author, educator and entrepreneur Leslie Halleck, it has made for one fascinating career. Leslie and I go way back, so this conversation was a chance to talk not just about what she does, but how she got there. From growing up as an Army brat and gardening with an adopt...

Angelique Robb didn’t grow up dreaming of a career in horticulture. She studied engineering, worked in the oil industry, and moved to Scotland before gradually finding her way into landscape design and build. Along the way, she discovered that the problem-solving, project management, and visualization skills she developed as an engineer were remarkably useful in the landscape industry. Today, Ange...

After a corporate layoff unexpectedly changed his career path, Roshan Patel traded digital marketing for community gardening—and found a new sense of purpose in the process. In this episode, Roshan shares how volunteering at Mack Park Farm in Salem, Massachusetts, grew into a passion for urban agriculture, food security, and community engagement. He also talks about using social media to make gard...

In this episode of I Dig Your Story, host Ellen Wells talks with Matt Lebon, a.k.a. The Foodscaper, about the idea of foodscaping—creating landscapes that combine beauty, food production, ecological diversity, and water management. Matt shares the winding path that took him from business school and the Peace Corps to organic farming, permaculture, and eventually designing food-producing landscapes...

Jennifer Rust spent years building a successful corporate career in sales and management consulting. But after stepping away from corporate life—and into what she jokingly calls her "post-corporate therapy" of pulling weeds in her own yard—she discovered that the business she was searching for had been growing alongside her passion for plants all along. Today, Jennifer is the founder of Jennifer R...

What if public gardens are much more than beautiful places to visit? Jessica Turner-Skoff firmly believes—and convinces her listeners—that public gardens are where beauty, science, conservation, and human connection come together. As Associate Director of Science Communications at Longwood Gardens, Jessica helps translate groundbreaking plant research into stories that inspire visitors, volunteers...

Landscape designer, plantsman, author, and ecological steward Kelly D. Norris believes gardens aren't static works of art but are living communities. In this episode of I Dig Your Story, Kelly shares the remarkable path that led him from running a mail-order iris nursery as a teenager on his family's Iowa farm to becoming one of the country's leading voices in ecological landscape design. Kelly ex...

Fifth Tuesdays #2:   In this quarterly bonus I Dig Your Story sub-pod we call Fifth Tuesdays, host Ellen Wells is answering your questions!   In this episode, Ellen answers: What’s your earliest plant memory? But Ellen, are you a good gardener? How do I keep our Wisteria from taking over our small urban yard? Do coffee grounds really help plants? Do you have a hack for bugs and other pests? Ellen...

What happens when an eight-year-old sticks a broken branch in the ground and discovers it can grow roots? Mind blown! For Joe Lamp'l, that moment sparked a lifelong fascination with plants that eventually led him from a corporate career in finance to becoming one of the most recognizable voices in gardening media. Known to millions as joe gardener, Joe joins Ellen Wells on I Dig Your Story to shar...

In Part 2 of my conversation with horticulture industry veteran Marvin Miller, we go beyond the fascinating intersections of horticulture, data, and business and discuss some of Marvin’s personal passions of travel and photography. We start with an explanation of how Marvin’s graduate research helped analyze the U.S. cut flower industry and shaped the way all of us understand market trends, indust...

What happens when a kid becomes fascinated by a tiny tomato growing in the garden—and then never stops being fascinated by nature? In Part 1 of this special two-part conversation, Ellen Wells sits down with horticulture industry veteran Marvin Miller of Ball Horticultural Company to explore the roots of a career that would eventually influence everything from supermarket flower departments to cons...

Jennifer Brennan has spent her career helping gardeners succeed—and proving that horticulture can be both educational and fun. In this episode of I Dig Your Story, host Ellen Wells talks with horticultural consultant Jennifer Brennan about her journey from a college greenhouse job and a dorm room overflowing with plants to becoming one of the most trusted gardening educators in the Chicago area. A...

How do we inspire the next generation to choose horticulture careers if they don’t even know the industry exists?   We are celebrating Women in Horticulture Week with Seed Your Future Executive Director Jazmin Albarran. In this episode of I Dig Your Story, Ellen Wells talks with Jazmin about women in horticulture, workforce development, and the challenge of helping students, parents, and educators...

What do sea turtles, corpse flowers, aphids, and philodendrons have in common? For Michelle Opela, they’re all part of a career journey that somehow led to horticulture. In this episode of I Dig Your Story, Michelle shares how she went from marine biology adventures in Alaska and Australia to becoming deeply involved in Integrated Pest Management (IPM), biological controls, and plant health in the...