Barbara's Bio

Barbara has worked professionally in the field of horticulture since 1977. She writes, consults and lectures on gardening and farming and is co-owner, with her husband Eliot Coleman, of Four Season Farm, an experimental market garden in Harborside, Maine.

Barbara writes a weekly column for for The Washington Post called A Cook's Garden. She is also the author of The Garden Primer and Theme Gardens and her writing has been published extensively in national magazines. She is a horticultural consultant to John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds in Bantam, Connecticut and designed display food gardens for the Stone Barns Center For Food and Agriculture in Pocantico, New York.

From 1979 to 1992 she owned and operated her own firm, Barbara Damrosch Landscape Design, in Washington, Connecticut. Her projects included a garden she designed for Alitex Limited at the 2001 Chelsea Flower Show in London which was awarded a Certificate of Merit. During the 1991 and 1992 seasons she appeared as a regular correspondent on the PBS series The Victory Garden and later co-hosted the series Gardening Naturally for The Learning Channel, airing from 1993 to 2003.

Find Barbara's column
– A Cook's Garden –
Thursdays in the Home section
of The Washington Post

"Barbara Damrosch delivers the goods."

— Chicago Tribune

"Barbara Damrosch's writing has the snap of a good snowpea and the spice of an old rose."

— The Seattle Times/Post Intelligencer

"Takes your soaring visions of garden splendor and plants them firmly in the ground."

— The Toronto Star

"Barbara Damrosch writes like she's talking to you in your garden."

— Paul Frese, founding editor of Popular Garden