Welcome to the Garden

Meet Erin: The Impatient Gardener

A gardener, writer and video creator, Erin Schanen is the fairly impatient person behind The Impatient Gardener, a trusted source of information and inspiration for hundreds of thousands of gardeners. Erin’s down-to-earth approach, in which she shares successes and failures along with a healthy dose of inspiration and a bit of humor through videos, blog posts and social media, is a hit with gardeners.

Erin has been gardening for more than two decades in her southeastern Wisconsin (zone 6a) garden and is a master gardener volunteer. She has received multiple awards from GardenComm, an international group for garden communicators, including gold medals for her weekly newspaper column and Instagram. Her garden was featured in the best-selling garden design book “American Roots” in 2022.

Letters from the Garden

Garden musings, what I’m digging (literally and figuratively) and some great garden tips are all part of my letters from the garden, sent biweekly straight to your email inbox. Subscribe here.

Latest video

Check out The Impatient Gardener YouTube channel, where you’ll find tips and inspiration to help gardeners grow better and enjoy growing more. Join me as I share what I’m planting, designing, dreaming or weeding out in the garden all served up with a little bit of humor and a lot of reality.

Subscribe to the channel now (it’s free) and never miss a video.

Why so impatient?

The Impatient Gardener was born in 2009 when my gardening hobby was quickly turning into an obsession. I was looking for a way to keep track of what was happening in the garden, but garden journals weren’t a good fit. The blog was created to serve as a journal of sorts and a means to connect with other gardeners. 

I named the blog after what I’d been accused of more than once: I was, indeed, an impatient gardener, always wishing gardens would be “done” sooner, that plants would grow faster, that my vision would come to fruition in the blink of an eye.

Some things have changed since then: The Impatient Gardener now reaches a much larger audience through videos, social media and that same blog. In more than two decades of gardening, I’ve learned to appreciate the process of gardening and finally figured out that there’s no reason to rush to finish a garden, because, of course, they are never “done.”

But plenty of things have stayed the same. I’m still pretty impatient, but more than anything, I still delight in being part of the wonderful gardening community and having the opportunity to talk with gardeners every day.

Work with The Impatient Gardener

I love working with carefully vetted companies whose products I use and recommend, and I enjoy helping gardeners discover new plants, products and services. If you’d like to talk about partnering with me on a project, send me message. I can’t wait to hear from you.

Work with The Impatient Gardener

I love working with carefully vetted companies whose products I use and recommend, and I enjoy helping gardeners discover new plants, products and services. If you’d like to talk about partnering with me on a project, send me message. I can’t wait to hear from you.