Sharon Lovejoy

For the first seven years of her life, Sharon Lovejoy was introduced to the wonders of nature by her Quaker grandmother Abigal Lovejoy, a botanist and an educator. As an adult, Sharon's passion for the natural world guided her to become an award winning nature, gardening, and children's book author and watercolor illustrator. As a graduate with Distinction in the Field of Art from San Diego State University, Sharon successfully combined her training in art with her love of botany and natural science. She worked as a docent naturalist for the Morro Bay Museum of Natural History and for the Smithsonian Institution in the lagoons of Baja, California. In 1982, she founded Heart's Ease Herb Shop & Gardens in Cambria, California, where she shared her love and knowledge of nature and ethnobotany with visitors for the next 15 years. Sharon's home, business, and display gardens first captured national attention on the cover of the August 1990 issue of Country Living magazine. Since then, her home and garden creations have appeared in numerous books and magazines, and she has been a guest on countless radio and television shows from coast to coast, including NBC's Today, HGTV, and The Victory Garden on PBS. In 1991, Interweave Press published her first book Sunflower Houses: Garden Discoveries for Children of All Ages,a recollection of the influence from her Grandmother Lovejoy and the inspiration that has introduced tens of thousands of children to the wonders of nature through gardening. From 1993 to 2006, Sharon wrote and illustrated the award winning, regular feature column "Heart's Ease" in Country Living GARDENER magazine. She currently is the Southern California regional contributor for the popular Lowe's home improvement store "Garden Grow Along" blog and a frequent contributor to Farming magazine. Sharon has been a consultant for the Reader's Digest Association and a children's garden design consultant at the Bay Area Discovery Museum in San Francisco, the  Water Conservation Garden at Cuyamaca College in El Cajo, California, and for EDAW, one of the world's leading landscape architectural firms (now AECON), at the Red Butte Botanical Gardens in Salt Lake City and the Cleveland Botanical Gardens. In 1996, she was chosen to design the Children's Gardening Pavilion for the highly respected Cincinnati Flower and Garden Show. She currently serves on the National Children and Youth Garden Advisory Panel of the American Horticultural Society. As a recognized gardening expert, Sharon has lectured throughout the United States at conferences, educational symposia, museums, botanic gardens, arboreta, public and private educational institutions, and for professional trade associations and gardening organizations. Her professional affiliations include The Authors Guild, Inc., Garden Writers Association, Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance, Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, and American Horticultural Society. In 1995, Sharon served as President of the International Herb Association. For her contributions to education, Sharon received the Key to the City of Indianapolis, Indiana, and the Gold Leaf Award from the Santa Clara Department of Education at the Kindergarten Forum in Saratoga, California. Her writings have been reprinted in educational and testing publications in English and Spanish.