EXPERIENCE
Ed Lyon is Director of the Allen Centennial Gardens in Madison, Wisconsin, a position he has held since 2008.

Allen Centennial Gardens


His first degree is from Cornell University in Agricultural Economics and Animal Science. In 1997 he returned to school and worked toward a MS in Horticulture at UW-Madison under the direction of Dr. Dennis Stimart, who was in charge of the Allen Centennial Gardens. He worked in the Gardens while pursuing the graduate degree and decided to focus his studies on public garden administration.

Since then, Ed has served as Symposia & Special Programs Coordinator for Chicago Botanic Garden, Director of Education for Olbrich Botanical Gardens and most recently, Executive Director for the Rotary Botanical Gardens.

He also writes and speaks for both public and professional audiences across the  Midwest and writes for magazines including Chicagoland Gardening, Nursery Management Pro, and American Nurseryman. He writes the Ask The Expert column for Wisconsin Gardening magazine as well as feature articles plusa regular regional report on southern Wisconsin for Chicagoland Gardening plus feature articles. He teaches, lectures and has served as featured/keynote speaker for a number of conferences.   He is emphatic about fousing on gardening with regionality as a primary focus.

He loves photography and takes all of the images used in his presentations.

For almost 10 years Ed assisted in a specialty nursery and has past experience as a greenhouse manager. Most importantly, he is an avid gardener with dirt under his fingernails. (see home garden below!)

Associations include Garden Writers Association, WI Hardy Plant Society (board, trip committee, speaker coordinator) Wisconsin Hardy Plant Society, American Conifer Society, North American Rock Garden Society, WI-IL Rock Garden Society, and American Horticulture Society.

A member of Great Garden Speakers:
Great Garden Speakers - Ed Lyon


Garden Writer
Article in Chicagoland Gardening.
I have been contributing regional reports for southern WI since Jan. 2008.
Some examples:
Written for Milwaukee Home & Fine Living (Not my title!) My photography
Written for now defunct Midwest Gardening - my photographs
Written for 2011 WI Garden Journal
I have a fair number of additional articles written for magazines such as American Nurseryman and Nursery Management Professional.  Contact me for more information.  I have also served as consultant for several magazines including Midwest Living, Chicagoland Gardening and Northwest Quarterly.
Some of my images have appeared in print in books such as the Wisconsin Gardens & Landscape, in magazines such as Northwest Quarterly and American Nurseryman including these two covers.
The second image of Acer shirasawanum 'Aureum' that I took appeared in the article (below left); I wrote the entire feature article that Minding the Middle Layer refers to on the second cover (upper right) as well as the cover image; lower right is one of several of my images that appear in Wisconsin Gardens & Landscapes.
This is an article written in Northwest Quarterly about Rotary Botanical Gardens and myself while I was Executive Director there.  They used my images.
To the right and below are several articles in University publications featuring my vision for Allen Centennial Gardens
In early Nov., 2010, the cover story for the University 0f Wisconsin-Madison website featured how campus dining facilities were incorporating locally grown foods inot their menus.  The cover image is the Kitchen Garden at Allen Centennial Gardens.  The Gardens were also mentioned in the article, click on the image for a PDF of the entire story.
To read any article below, click on the image for a larger PDF version.