announcement:
On-Line Shade Class Coming, see below 

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.