Meet Helen Yoest: Garden Coach and Author

  Helen is a highly creative and energetic woman with an infectious enthusiasm for plants that you can't possibly be immune to...if you can keep up with her that is.  She is the author of two fantastic books on gardening (so far); Gardening With Confidence: 50 Ways to add style for personal creativity (2012 GWC Press)  and the newly released Plants With Benefits: An Uninhibited Guide to the Aphrodisiac Herbs, Fruits, Flowers, & Veggies in Your Garden (2014, St. Lynn's Press).  She also maintains a blog where she gives gardening and lifestyle advice as well profiles some of the up and coming young professionals in the horticulture industry.

   She has an advanced degree in environmental engineering and spent 20 years as an environmental air pollution field engineer, a profession she loved until she and her husband adopted their first child.  After a brief  3 year stint as an office engineer, that hat was hung up and she went back to her gardening roots.  "I didn't wait that long for children only to be separated from them while I was on the road," said Helen.  She spent the first four years of her horticultural career in garden maintenance and then garden coaching for people who wanted to learn more about plants and gardening.  Gradually, Helen began to get a few writing assignments and got to realize her dream of being a full time writer.  She recently celebrated her 12th year in business and divides her time between gardening, writing about gardening and spending time with her husband and three teenage children.  Even though she has no formal horticultural training, Helen is an honorary member of the national horticulture society, Pi Alpha Xi.  http://gardeningwithconfidence.com/blog/2012/03/14/pi-alpha-xi/

   Helen chose garden writing because she's a gardener and likes to write (simple enough explanation).  "If I were a lawyer, I'd write about the law."  Her writing style is inspirational and unexpected, saying "I don't like being typical."  She writes about whatever happens to inspire her,s ometimes it's wildlife or design or a garden/er. With the new book Plants with Benefits, she began to write about sex.  Specifically, plants with aphrodisiac effects.  She writes for the new gardener and hopes that when they're looking for a little guidance or inspiration, they'll turn to her writings.

   Helen would rather be outside digging in the dirt than sitting in an office and credits her father with being her biggest gardening influence. She loves garden maintenance in general, whether it be pulling weeds, planting or pruning.  She says propagation is her least favorite aspect of the gardening experience, other than starting a few seeds, stating she just doesn't have the patience for it.  With the mild winters they experience in her home state of North Carolina, she can spend more time in the garden, even if it's just building a fire and settling in to read a new book.  Her personal garden style is highly eclectic including; organic and sustainable practices, xeriscaping (gardening with little water use), a wildlife haven and food production...all done in the confines of formal, straight lined borders.  Her favorite plants to work with are the ones that attract bees, birds and butterflies or plants with an interesting architecture such as Taxodium distichum “Cascade Falls”(Weeping Bald Cypress).  Any plant in a Helen's garden has to be one tough cookie and able to survive fairly harsh conditions like wet winters, dry summers and acidic soils.

   She believes that the future of horticulture is gardening with purpose, whether it be for wildlife, food or as private art installments.  "I see [the future of] garden writing diluted to how-to's with whole books trying to paraphrase how to plant tree, shrub, or perennial by saying, dig a hole the same depth as the nursery container and twice as wide."  She offers this advice to new authors "Stay true to yourself. Write about what you know, and write every chance you get."