Learn exactly what to do in your Southern California garden, week by week.
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Three parts. All free. All designed specifically for Southern California.
One timely, actionable thing to do in your garden, written for our Mediterranean climate, every single week.
A personal note from Nan each month: what she's observing, thinking about, and growing in her own garden.
Events, new classes, and programs you'll love, so you always know what's coming next.
Advice written for here. Not everywhere else.
Search the web and you get conflicting advice that doesn't work here. What works in the Midwest or the Pacific Northwest is often the wrong move in Southern California.
Our Mediterranean climate has dry summers, mild winters, and a rhythm that runs counter to nearly every gardening guide you'll find online.
GardenWise Free is written specifically for it, by someone who has spent her career working and gardening in this exact climate.
Hi, I'm Nan Sterman.
I've spent my career helping Southern Californians become confident, curious gardeners. As a botanist, horticulturist, garden designer, author, and educator, I've seen what happens when gardeners have the right information for their climate โ and what happens when they're working from advice that was never meant for here.
I created GardenWise Free because I wanted to give every Southern California gardener exactly what I'd tell a friend: the one thing to do this week, the seasonal context that makes sense of it, and the encouragement to trust what's right in front of them.
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Explore paid GardenWise options →A few things people often ask.
- GardenWise Free: This free gardening advice for SoCal gardeners comes out several times a month. It includes a useful gardening tip that's tailored to the season. You'll find information about how to grow vegetables and fruit, how to care for native Californian plants, and more.
- GardenWise Basics: These monthly gardening guides are made for beginning gardeners in San Diego, Los Angeles, Riverside, and other parts of Southern California. Choose from Edibles, about how to grow and care for an edible garden, and Ornamentals, about how to grow native plants, Mediterranean-climate plants, and other ornamentals in your garden.
- GardenWise Standard: These monthly garden guides are for intermediate and experienced gardeners. They tell you what to do in your garden each month, season by season. Get advice about growing vegetables in SoCal, caring for fruit trees, how to prune, how to deal with pests in your garden, and more.
When she isn't teaching at Nan Sterman's Garden School, Nan works as a garden designer in San Diego, where she creates drought-tolerant gardens for people around San Diego County.
