Jo Ellen Meyers Sharp/Photo by Rob Banayote
Jo Ellen Meyers Sharp grew up in Indianapolis and lives about 15 minutes from downtown in a 1951 mid-century modern ranch. As a confessed hortiholic, she admits that her eyes are too big for her yard. You just can’t have enough plants. She feeds the birds, provides them with sources of water, and if she’d complete the inventory and application form, her landscape could be a certified Backyard Wildlife Habitat. One of these days it will be official. She considers herself a seat-of-the-pants, trial-and-error gardener.
A former, award-winning newspaper reporter, she now owns Write For You LLC, and works as a freelance writer, editor and photographer. Her stories have appeared in several national and local publications, including the American Gardener, Indiana Gardening, Angie’s List magazine, Edible Indy and more. Her weekly Hoosier Gardener column ran in the Indianapolis Star from 1989 to 2019.
She was the founding editor of Iowa Gardener, Michigan Gardening and Minnesota Gardener, and edited those and Wisconsin Gardening magazines for several years before they went out of print. She works with corporations and not-for-profits on annual reports, newsletters, white papers and other types of written communication. Besides freelancing, she worked seasonally at a large independent garden center for nearly 20 years, where she bought perennials, trees and shrubs. She was the founding editor and a part owner of Indiana Living Green magazine. Jo Ellen blogs at hoosiergardener.com
She’s a popular speaker about garden-related topics and sustainable living.
As a garden coach, Jo Ellen helps clients learn about their landscapes and what to do when, problem solving and other advice. She has Going To Pot, a container planting service for residential and commercial clients. She does about 50 containers four times a year for clients.
She describes her life as a mosaic, making a living from various types of work: writing, speaking, garden coaching and landscaping.
Jo Ellen, a past president of GardenComm, she is a member of Garden Communicators International Hall of Fame. She’s is a member of the Indiana Landmarks Cultural Landscape Committee. She’s past president of the Friends of Garfield Park Inc., and the Business Ownership Initiative of Indiana, and a former director of the Marion County Extension Board. She is an Advanced Master Gardener in Marion County.
She and Tom Tyler are co-authors of The Indiana Gardener’s Guide. In 2011, Jo Ellen wrote the Visitor’s Guide to American Gardens, which has more than 400 gardens in the United States and Canada, the first national garden guide in more than 10 years. Jo Ellen was a contributing writer to:
- The Garden Tourist 1998, 2000 and 2001 by Lois Rosenfeld, Garden Tourist Press
- 1,001 Ingenious Gardening Ideas by Rodale Press, 1999
- Wings of Their Dreams: Purdue In Flight by John Norberg, Purdue Press, 2003 (Amelia Earhart chapter).
- Oxford Companion to the Garden edited by Patrick Taylor, Oxford University Press, 2006
- The Gardener’s Garden, Phaidon Press, 2014.
