My work has grown out of personal love of gardening and eating vegetables that sprouted from the delicious homegrown tastes of my childhood, my love of the arts, my teaching experience, and a desire to meet children's need for nature connection. Children have an inherent sense of wonder and crave connections to nature, place, and the food they eat. My work aims to nurture these childhood treasures so often overlooked in modern culture and to provide adults with the excuse to slow down and reconnect.

After 10 years in a beautiful beachside Montessori classroom with a vegetable garden outside my door, I decided to sprout out and create a resource for teachers, parents, and gardeners of all levels based on the unique questions so often asked to me about gardening with children. My book Wings, Worms, and Wonder incorporates my graduate research on the historic Nature-Study movement, my practical experience as a teacher, the resources I accrued, and the lessons and activities I created while teaching to incorporate our garden across my curricula and students' lives.

My "Living Now 2013 Award" winning book aims to inspire the adult and spark sense of wonder through beautiful illustrations, ecological printing methods, and in-depth research and experience that provides the adult wishing to garden with children ample information, tips, activities, and resources with which to create holistic garden experiences for children in both formal and non-formal educational environments. Teacher and child tested and approved, these activities utilize gardening, the arts, Nature-Study philosophy, and progressive education methodology to help children connect to place, ignite sense of wonder, and develop ecological literacy.

The more I nature journal and garden with children in schools, community gardens, after school centers, museums, and in my own backyard with my nieces, nephews, and neighbors, the more passionate I become to help children and their families (& teachers) learn to grow their own food, connect to the nearby nature outside their doors through journaling, and to discover how a sense of wonder inspires all aspects of learning and life.

Through Wings, Worms, and Wonder's offerings and resources, I hope to spread the seeds that my grandparents planted in me to children who may not have grandpas to teach them how to grow their own and to re-spark wonder in the grown-ups through organic gardening and nature journaling!