Meet the Team
Last updated: May 2026
Explore Your Garden is run by four people. The editorial team is three working gardeners, each with their own credentials, climate, and specialty. The site is published by its founder, who handles the business and operational side. Every article on the site is signed by one of these names, and every name on this page is accountable for the work that appears under it.
Eleanor B. — Lead Editor & Senior Gardener
Surrey, England. 15+ years gardening. RHS Level 2 Certificate in the Principles of Horticulture.
Eleanor is the lead editor of Explore Your Garden and the author of most of our edible-gardening and ornamental-perennials coverage. She has been gardening seriously since her early twenties, when an inherited allotment in north London turned a vague interest into a sustained obsession. She holds the Royal Horticultural Society’s Level 2 Certificate in the Principles of Horticulture and has spent the last decade developing the 1,500-square-meter mixed garden in Surrey that serves as our primary test plot.
Her areas of editorial focus are edible gardening (vegetables, soft fruit, herbs), herbaceous perennials, and the practical horticulture of cool maritime temperate climates. She writes most of our seasonal calendars for UK and zone 7–9 gardens, our long-form how-to guides on sowing and propagation, and our reviews of seed varieties tested across multiple seasons.
The Surrey garden is a heavy clay site, improved over years with consistent organic-matter additions, on a south-facing slope with reasonable wind exposure. It includes raised vegetable beds, a polytunnel, a small orchard, an herbaceous border developed for year-round structure, and a wild-garden section managed for biodiversity. Eleanor’s writing on this site is grounded in what works there, with regular notes on how that translates to other conditions.
Contact: eleanor [at] exploreyourgarden [punto] site or info [at] exploreyourgarden [punto] site.
Theo H. — Plant ID, Foraging & Native Species
Pacific Northwest, USA. Botanist trained at Oregon State University.
Theo joined the editorial team in 2021 to lead our coverage of plant identification, foraging, and native-species gardening. He completed his undergraduate degree in botany at Oregon State University and has spent the years since combining freelance ecological consulting with a long-running personal interest in ethnobotany — the study of how human cultures use plants.
His areas of editorial focus are plant identification, edible and medicinal foraging, native-species gardening, and the cultural history of common garden plants. He writes our identification guides, our foraging features (always with prominent safety framing — see Plant Safety & Hazards), and our long-form pieces on the deep history behind species we now treat as ordinary.
Theo gardens on a half-acre Pacific Northwest plot with mild wet winters, dry summers, and the loam-over-clay soil typical of the region. His test garden is heavily weighted toward native and naturalized species, with a focus on supporting pollinators and edible understory.
Maya R. — Sustainable Practices & Permaculture
Galicia, Spain. Organic smallholding. Permaculture Design Certificate.
Maya joined the team in early 2022 after several years of writing about permaculture and sustainable smallholding for personal blogs and small-press publications. She holds a Permaculture Design Certificate and runs an organic smallholding in Galicia, northwestern Spain — a cool oceanic climate with mild wet winters and warm wet summers, on acidic clay-loam soil with a small but productive footprint that has been progressively redesigned over six years.
Her areas of editorial focus are permaculture design principles, sustainable garden management, soil ecology, organic pest and disease management, and small-scale food self-sufficiency. She writes our long-form pieces on garden ecology, our coverage of organic certifications and their meaning, and our reviews of products and practices through a sustainability lens.
Maya is also the team’s first source on the Mediterranean-influenced edge cases that English-language gardening writing often gets wrong: how summer-dormant bulbs behave, how to design for irregular rainfall, what changes in zones where the limiting season is summer rather than winter.
Giovanni Picaro — Founder & Publisher
Sofia, Bulgaria. Originally from Palagiano, Italy.
Giovanni founded Explore Your Garden in summer 2019 and remains its publisher and the responsible legal entity for the site. His role is operational rather than editorial: he handles hosting and infrastructure, advertising relationships, business correspondence, DMCA agency, privacy compliance, and the general work of keeping an independent publication running.
He is not a gardening writer himself and does not author editorial content for this site. The voice and the verdicts on Explore Your Garden belong to Eleanor, Theo, and Maya. Giovanni’s job is to give them a publication where they can do that work without compromise — financially, technically, and editorially. Contact: info [at] exploreyourgarden [punto] site.
Why we keep the team small
We have considered expanding several times. We have decided against it. Our editorial standards depend on every article being written by someone who has actually grown the plant, used the tool, or worked through the practice in question. That standard is sustainable at four people. At eight or twelve, with a rotating cast of freelancers we have not met, the standard would drift downward almost imperceptibly until the publication no longer recognized itself.
We would rather publish less frequently with a small accountable team than publish more frequently and dilute the thing that makes the work worth reading.
Want to write for us?
We accept guest contributions on a case-by-case basis, with strong preference for writers who can cover areas we currently underrepresent: cold-climate gardening (zone 4 and below), tropical and subtropical home gardening, urban container and balcony cultivation, and the gardening practices of regions outside the English-speaking world.
If you fit one of these descriptions, send a brief introduction and a writing sample (a published or unpublished piece on a plant or practice you genuinely know) to info [at] exploreyourgarden [punto] site with the subject line Guest contributor inquiry. We do not need a formal CV. We need to see what you know, and how clearly you can write about it.
Note: we do not currently pay for guest contributions. We credit clearly, link generously, and treat your work as we treat our own. We may pay for selected long-form features when budget allows; this is discussed case by case.
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