Eric Grissell Bio

Eric Grissell, keynote speaker for the GardenFest, is a professional entomologist and amateur gardener with a humorous twist on garden writing. Grissell has gardened since the age of 8 and has been an avid entomologist since the age of 11. He has published three popular books on gardening, the last of which, Insects and Gardens: In search of a Garden Ecology (Timber Press, 2001) encourages gardeners to take a broader and more benign look at their gardens and the insects in them. This book won an award for “Best Talent in Writing” from the Garden Writers Association (2002), as well as an American Horticultural Society Book Award (2002), and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice for Gardening Books of 2001.
Eric Grissell was born in Washington D.C. (1944) and moved to California at the age of three. He received his University training at the University of California, Davis (PhD, 1973). He worked for five years (1973-1978) as a Taxonomic Entomologist for the Florida Department of Agriculture and for 27 years (1978-2005) as a Research Entomologist in the Systematic Entomology Laboratory, U. S. Department of Agriculture, stationed at the National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C. He also served as a research associate for the Smithsonian Institution and an adjunct associate professor at the University of Maryland. He retired in 2005, but continues to speak to gardeners across the nation.