Beyond the Garden Gate

Dr. Marietta Loehrlein is professor of Horticulture and Landscaping at Western Illinois University. She is passionate about flowers, landscaping, the environment and music. She loves food, especially those that come from plants, and is always willing to try new cuisines. She has published two textbooks, Home Horticulture, and Sustainable Landscaping. She was born and raised in Evansville, Indiana where she developed an early appreciation for the rewards of horticulture: from the now-gone wild blackberries from the wooded lots behind her childhood home, to the large sycamore tree in the front yard that she climbed and played in as a child with her eight siblings. Horticulture saved her life when she fell off a roof working as a laborer in Tucson, Arizona. The shrubbery below broke her fall and as a result she did not break any bones. She went on to earn Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the University of Arizona, in spite of the constant diversion of the beautiful Santa Catalina mountains and their well-kept hiking trails. A five year stint breeding peaches in central California was followed by a PhD in horticultural genetics from Penn State, who still benefits from royalties earned from a cultivar of regal geranium she developed while there, by the name of ’Camelot’. She maintains a website about sustainable landscaping practices at http: //thesustainablelandscape.com.