Ed Lyon is the Director of Reiman Gardens, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa. He was formally Director, Allen Centennial Gardens, Madison, Wisconsin.  His public garden career includes serving as Symposia & Special Programs Coordinator for Chicago Botanic Garden, Director of Education for Olbrich Botanical Gardens and Executive Director for the Rotary Botanical Gardens.

Through Spellbound Garden Writing & Consultation, he writes and speaks for both public and professional audiences. He has written a book called "Growing the Midwest Garden for Timber Press, released May, 2015. He has written the “Ask the Expert” column for Wisconsin Gardening magazine as well as feature articles plus a regular regional report on southern Wisconsin for Chicagoland Gardening plus feature articles and continues to write for State-by-State Gardening. Unfortunately those magazines are no longer in publication. He continues to write for Fine Gardening and occasionally other national magazines . He teaches, lectures and has served as featured/keynote speaker for a number of conferences. He developed an on-line class on Garden design for Garden Gate Magazine (AIM Publications) - the link and sample video is included in this site - and is currently working with Fine Gardening magazine to create another on-line class on Shade Gardening.

He is emphatic about focusing on gardening with regionalism as a primary focus.  Most importantly, he is an avid gardener with dirt under his fingernails.