Sam has six years of horticulture experience and has been freelance writing for two years as well. Her interests are in sustainable, small-scale food growing, urban garden design, and science communication.

Her position at Local Matters allows her to do all three of these as she plans, installs, and cares for community gardens around Columbus. At Static Media’s House Digest, she writes about plant care and DIY projects and has recently joined their staff as a Freelance Editor. In the meantime, she is working on learning grant writing to help small farms and environmental organizations get the funding they need.

Her other accomplishments include completing a paid internship at the COSI Science Museum, presenting research for the OSGC and NASA scholarship she received, and presenting a lecture on utilizing perennials in pollinator gardens at Oakland Nursery. Her horticulture experience includes working at Sunny Meadows Flower Farm, Jorgensen Farms, Acorn Farms, and Oakland Nursery, all in Columbus, Ohio. She is always seeking new opportunities to learn, grow, and connect.

Sam’s journey into horticulture and writing is more cyclical than linear. Growing up in rural Circleville, Ohio, she spent her time reading novels and daydreaming about escaping the cornfields surrounding her. Her typewriter churned out short stories about talking animals going on adventures around the world, and while the small patch of woods on the property and her grandma’s garden planted seeds of love for nature and growing things, she needed to answer the call to adventure first.

Her first degree was a BA in Linguistics from The Ohio State University. Her foolproof plan was to learn as much about language as possible and then spend her life traveling the world, writing adventures and living them too. She did kind of do that too! One year spent living abroad in South Korea was followed by shorter, separate travels to England, Mexico, California, and New Hampshire. Her travels reminded her that life was a bit more than aimless wandering. She personally needed to feel attachment and purpose, so she finished her degree and started to plan. Before leaving OSU, she met with a public information officer and science writer over coffee. He gave her advice on getting involved in the field that had only recently re-caught her interest and imagination. While the urge to explore had been more pressing, the urge to learn had never left her. She came to enjoy the experimentation and data analysis that went along with the field of linguistics, and her general education biology class was lighting up her brain in new ways. She had a burning curiosity again that had somewhat dimmed in her aimless travels. The science writer recommended branching out into other fields of science.

In 2016, she started her first semester of an AAS in Environmental Science, Safety and Health from Columbus State Community College. With her motivation largely fueled by binging both the TV show Bones and the recently released Ridley Scott movie, The Martian, she jumped headfirst into this new learning adventure. She was definitely going to learn how to “science the shit out of this.” Learning about how infrastructure worked was fascinating and alarming. It seemed more fragile and less perfect than she had thought. Water treatment was particularly interesting to her, though she couldn’t imagine herself working alone in a treatment plant, especially at night. She needed a little more green in her life. Then she noticed an ad on Facebook: Oakland Nursery was hiring cashiers for the upcoming Spring.

With no knowledge about plants and while still attending night classes at CSCC, she worked full time at the garden center. She was desperate to get “outside,” and often read books, searched for answers to customer questions, bought her own indoor jungle of houseplants, and listened to the managers when they answered questions. Her hard work paid off when she joined the perennials crew the next year, but she wasn’t done learning. In her enthusiasm, she would answer every service desk call and continue to learn basic horticulture as fast as possible. After 2.5 years of being outside selling container trees and perennials, she took a higher paying position in the office of Oakland Nursery’s sister company, Acorn Farms. She continued her education while helping landscapers search for replacements or place orders, and then she quickly moved into the inventory side of things. But the office life wore on her quickly, and she began a new career on the side: freelance writing.

Her first gig with Gameranx was as intro as it could get, but she relished having her name published officially. Though she knew very little about video games at the time, she grew to love gamers and their enthusiasm. A rekindled interest in being a professional writer and editor prompted her to take her freelancing more seriously, so she left her position at Acorn Farms on good terms to work on food trucks while writing. Her next paid job was with another videogame and media website called Destructoid. In this position she had the opportunity to write editorial pieces and be original. Aligning much more with the ethics of this company compared to the former, she enjoyed focusing on manipulating words and organizing information.

After a year of donuts and BBQ trailers, something fortuitous happened. She was called to jury duty. It should be mentioned first that in that time, Sam had graduated with her second degree but was missing working with plants. The chef friends she made on the BBQ trailer shared a similar dream with her that had begun to gain serious traction. She wanted to grow food on her own land while they wanted to run a bed and breakfast and a seasonal kitchen respectively. So when she was called to jury duty, this dream was active in her mind along with the intention to start gaining real knowledge about farming as soon as possible. While talking to another prospective juror, she admitted that their job at an organic farm and wedding venue sounded like a dream to her. The woman immediately asked, “Are you looking for a job?” She joined the horticulture team as a Land Steward at Jorgensen Farms within two weeks of that conversation!

While only spanning the summer, her time at Jorgensen Farms was transformative. Her true passion for working outside with plants was finally realized in full. Her small crew of coworkers were all just as hungry for knowledge as she was, and the position’s approach to caring for the land and each plant is the foundation of how she views horticulture to this day. Unfortunately, the position was seasonal, and she found her next opportunity that winter.

Sunny Meadows Flower Farm was an interesting opportunity to move into agriculture on a small scale. From planting seedlings in the hoophouses in January and February, dividing dahlia tubers and packing them through March and April, to harvesting flowers and making bouquets the rest of the year, Sam learned the pace and perseverance that agriculture requires. She also began writing again, this time for House Digest as a freelance garden writer.

After a year of these two opportunities, two more came her way. Local Matters, a nonprofit concerned with food education and providing affordable food for all, was looking for a new Gardens Manager. With the prospect of more learning, garden planning, and leadership opportunities in front of her, she chose to take the leap. Not long after accepting this new role, she was offered the chance to take the editor’s assessment for House Digest. Passing with a 95%, she decided to accept this new role as well, marveling at the chances that she would be offered an editing position after no longer pursuing editing as a career.

Sam’s future plans are largely parallel to her present. She would still like to own a small market farm with partners and continue to provide fresh food to all. She also plans to continue writing in many formats, focusing on science communication and grant writing, while circling back to fiction writing for fun.