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A passion for plants

Nan Sterman’s the hipster of gardners, planting water-wise gardens before it was cool

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Thirty years ago, when Nan Sterman first became interested in gardening, she’d tell her friends to pull out their lawns and plant edible gardens.

Back then, that advice was considered a bit radical. Now it’s the new normal. And these days, Sterman is known around the country as a water-wise garden journalist and educator.

The Encinitas resident is the author of various gardening books and articles (including for The San Diego Union-Tribune). She is also the co-producer, writer and host of “A Growing Passion,” a KPBS show that covers gardening, agriculture, food justice and other human interest topics.

Sterman, who moved to North County from Santa Barbara in 1986, explains her love of gardens.

Q: How did you become interested in gardening?

A: Planting and gardening are some of my earliest memories. When I was tiny, my grandfather always planted a patch of tomatoes behind the garage of the little house my parents owned in Los Angeles. I remember the musky tomato smell and watching the expression of pure delight on his face as he bit into a plump, ripe tomato and let the juices roll down his stubbly chin. In college, I studied botany, which is plant science, and I’ve planted gardens in nearly every place I’ve ever lived, from a 4-by-8 patch of dirt behind a row house in Washington, D.C., to apartment balconies, to homes I rented in graduate school, and here in San Diego.

Q: Can you describe the first garden you ever planted?

A: At age 7 or 8, I begged my mother for radish seeds that I planted in a neglected side yard next to our home in the San Fernando Valley. I watered them once or twice, then forgot about them. I suspect that my mother watered them because some grew to harvest size!

Q: When were you first interested in sustainability and how have attitudes evolved since then?

A: I attended one of the first Earth Day celebrations at the Hollywood Bowl when I was a young teenager. Around that time, I read the book “Diet for a Small Planet” by Frances Moore Lappé. It was about factory farming, about eating low on the food chain, about modern agriculture’s threats to human health and the environment. It is the single most influential book I’ve ever read, and set the stage for so much of today’s sustainability and foodie movements — it surprises me that no one talks about it anymore.

Q: How can people who love gardening continue to do so amid the drought?

A: This is a time to relearn gardening practices and expectations. Choose drought-adapted plants and caring for them appropriately. The Mediterranean climate plant palette (which includes California natives) includes plants that require little if any irrigation once plants are established. Since nearly all edibles require irrigation, use gray water for thirstier fruit trees, in-line drip to irrigate vegetables, and mulch, mulch, mulch.

Q: Please tell us about your show, “A Growing Passion.”

A: It comes from my passion for all things plants. Plants are part of nearly every aspect of our lives — they are the food we eat, the clothes we wear (cotton, linen, etc.), they make the oxygen we breathe. They surround us as gardens, landscapes and natural habitats. We write on plants (paper), we build and heat our houses with them (wood). Plants heal us (medicines), perfume our world, and so on. Some people compare “A Growing Passion” to “California Gold,” the show by the late Huell Howser. That wasn’t our intent but there are definitely similarities in that both shows are a process of discovery in different locations around California. Season three has just finished airing and we are working on season four. All of our shows are posted online.

Q: What is the best advice you ever received?

A: From my dear friend Sandy Shapiro, I learned that: 1. Everything is negotiable and 2. “No” is never “no.”

Q: What is one thing people would be surprised to find out about you?

A: I met my husband dissecting frogs. I was teaching assistant in graduate school at UC Santa Barbara. One lab required me to prepare live frogs to be dissected. I was comfortable dissecting flowers but not frogs! A graduate student colleague was doing research on frogs and had lots of experience with frog dissection so I asked for his help. We’ve been married for 31 years.

Q: Please describe your ideal San Diego weekend.

A: Early Pilates followed by the Vista Farmers Market for breakfast crepes and vegetable seedlings from (nursery owners) Whitney and Sui-Lin Robinson. Garden the rest of the day, then join my husband and friends for dinner in downtown San Diego, before a concert or play. Have a leisurely Sunday breakfast over the newspaper with my husband and daughter. Hike a nearby trail or stroll Balboa Park with my camera and my husband. Sunday barbecue on the patio with all our children and their significant others.

What I love about Encinitas …

This area was settled as an agricultural colony in the late 1800s. For generations, farmers dry-farmed lima beans here. I like to think that my garden is a continuation of my community’s rich agricultural heritage. We have many dear, longtime neighbors who are our “village.”

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