Leslie Harris
After years of independent school teaching and coaching, in 2014 Leslie Harris decided to make her avocation into her vocation. She started a gardening business that concentrated on the maintenance and installation of containers and garden beds with a wonderful crew of horticulturists.
Seven years later, she spun off her crew and began to concentrate on consulting, speaking, and her gardening podcast, Into the Garden with Leslie. In 2024 Leslie asked Marianne Willburn to join her and they created The Garden Mixer together.
She’s recently downsized her garden to a very small subdivision lot on a hillside in central Virginia, but fortunately hasn’t downsized her personality to match it.
Marianne Willburn
Marianne is a contributing editor at GardenRant, and has been a garden writer, speaker, & columnist since 2009 — writing for publications such as Better Homes and Gardens, The Wall Street Journal, American Gardener, and Horticulture magazine.
She is the author of Tropical Plants and How To Love Them and Big Dreams, Small Garden, and met her future podcast partner when Leslie interviewed her about her column for The American Gardener. They hit it off, and serendipitously cemented that friendship at a Great Dixter Symposium in the UK over numerous gin and tonics and a roaring fire.
She gardens on 10 acres in rural Northern Virginia and is permanently exhausted.