About Me

Getting Dirty is a blog which provides information to help anyone wanting to make a successful career transition into gardening for a living.

Hi, I’m Adrienne. I put together the information on this blog because I want to help other people enjoy what I’ve had the pleasure of getting to do for the past six years and that is get paid to garden for a living. Entrenched in a stable career, few people muster up the courage to walk away from a decent salary, title or position especially when you're in your thirties, forties or fifties. Taking a leap into the unknown is a scary step. I totally understand because I’ve been there.

Fed up with office politics, I walked away from a generous pay check, retirement plan and benefits, with only a vague plan of action to follow my passion for gardening. Without a formal college degree in horticulture, in less than a couple of years, I was managing a lawn and garden department in a funky old-fashioned hardware store in Washington, D.C. And yes, I have met the President of the United States when he dropped by the store one day.

A lifelong gardener, my love of plants comes from my father and grandmother. My accumulated knowledge comes from master gardener's classes, seminars and on-the-job training, in addition to reading and learning anything and everything about gardening. I accelerated my learning by writing a monthly gardening column in a local community newspaper for the past three years.

In my former corporate life, I used to work as a product market manager for Bell Atlantic, GTE and washingtonpost.com. Beyond a corporate career, my resume includes a diverse work history filled with life changing career switches from working as a radio announcer in my twenties, a dot.com communications specialist on my thirties, making the switch to a gardening career when I was practically forty.

When I’m not updating this Getting Dirty blog, you’ll find me at the Home Depot in Brookland in Washington, DC where I’m a seasonal merchandiser working for Bell Nursery, a wholesale plant nursery headquartered in Maryland which supplies all the flowers, trees and shrubs to Home Depots in Maryland, Virginia. DC, Delaware, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Basically, I get paid to wake up everyday and arrange pretty flowers and plants to help people beautify their gardens.

I reside in the Southwest Waterfront area of DC with two cats and my husband, who is a Professor of Architecture with The Catholic University of America. Movies, television, music, books, entertainment gossip, eating good food and desserts all hold my interest. I love to travel whenever possible. When Washington, D.C. gets either too humid and hot or unbearably cold, you’ll find me in Vancouver, Canada where my parents Miki and Chuck spoil me shamelessly.

Currently I’m in the process of writing a book called Getting Dirty: Quit Your Job and Get Paid to Garden for a Living. In the meantime, as quickly as I can finish the pages, I’ll include excerpts on the web to help you bridge the gap between your dreams and reality. I enthusiastically encourage you to overcome any hesitations you may have about establishing a career in gardening as you will ultimately be rewarded with the satisfaction of getting to wake up every day to smell the roses.

Click here for more information about the book and how you can be first to find out about when it's coming out.

P.S. My other love is hand drawn art. If you like any of the pretty pictures you see throughout the website, you'll find each artist's name listed at the bottom of each article with a link for more information.

Image Source: Katherine Quinn

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