Nan Sterman believes people can save the world through gardening.
“We have this climate crisis, and part of the solution to the climate crisis is growing more plants,” she said on the Name Drop San Diego podcast. “And I want people to understand how to have gardens that have the smallest carbon foot print, and the biggest reward.”
It’s this belief that drives Sterman to share what she’s learned over years of science education and reporting and writing and researching and working with plants in San Diego County. Also known as “The Water Wise Gardener,” Sterman offers her expertise through a column in The San Diego Union-Tribune, a show on KPBS called “A Growing ion,” her 13,400-member Facebook group “San Diego Gardener,” several books she’s authored and through classes and public speaking events.
Sterman, who focuses specifically on native and drought tolerant plants, ed the Name Drop San Diego podcast to share more thoughts and advice on gardening. Read excerpts of the conversation below or listen to the interview on the podcast player above or on any of these podcast apps:
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Why she loves gardening so much:
I love the cyclical nature of gardening. I love the circle of life that happens in the garden. I love planting something that’s 6 inches tall and five years later, it’s 20 feet tall. … You look at a seed. It looks like a piece of dead wood. You have no idea the life that’s in that seed. A tomato seed is so small, that if you’re not careful, you could drop it on the floor and never find it. A basil seed looks like, if you ever see the size of a poppy seed, a basil seed is even smaller. And you give them moisture, you give them the right temperature, you give them light and they feed you in a few weeks. They’re feeding you. That is amazing. And I’m not making it happen. I’m facilitating it. … I’m participating in nature. I’m making something beautiful. When I design gardens, I feel like I’m painting with plants. … But it’s like a living painting, because you set it up, but it’s always going to be changing and morphing and creating something slightly different, a different version of itself.
On what makes gardening in San Diego unique:
The reason that gardening is different here is because we have a different kind of climate. We have what’s called a Mediterranean climate, and it’s our climate pattern. [In a temperate climate], it rains in summer, plants and trees have big fleshy leaves. In winter, it gets cold and the leaves drop. So they break down and you have rich soil. It’s acidic soil. And the trees are dormant through the winter, and then in spring, everything pops out and everybody plants their garden then and nobody worries about how much water there is. We have exactly the opposite. We have a Mediterranean climate. Our rain falls between roughly November and March, though it’s been getting a little bit later. And we have no rain in summer. That’s why people like to come here because we’ve got these beautiful, long, hot, dry summers. Because of that, our plants have tiny leaves, because they’re trying to survive the heat and the dry. So they have to make it through that long, hot, dry period without any water and they have to survive that. So when you look at our hillsides, our native plants have little leaves, they have hard leaves, they have gray leaves, they have fuzzy leaves or succulents. We don’t have that big volume of organic matter to fall on the ground and build up those wonderful soils. So our soils are really lean, meaning there’s not much organic matter in them. And our soils are alkaline instead of acidic. So all the gardening information that’s out there, 99.9 percent of it doesn’t apply here. People say to me, well I looked it up on Google. Well, yeah, you looked it up on Google, but it’s not going to work.
How to garden with a conservation mindset:
“We have to conserve” is not equal to “We can’t do too much gardening.” You just have to choose the right plants. And you have to use them the right way and you have to understand how to irrigate them properly. We have native plants on the hillsides that survive with nothing more than what Mother Nature provides. Of course we can grow plants. We just have to pick the right plants and you have to understand how to grow them.
The advice she gives the most:
Don’t get upset if your garden isn’t perfect. Gardens aren’t perfect. Gardening is trial and error. It’s OK to fail.
