Authors

Eric Grissell

Eric Grissell grew up in the San Francisco Bay area where he acquired the basics of gardening at an early age. By eight he was planting flowers from seed, learning the basics of three-bin composting and playing with bugs and spiders.

After receiving his doctorate in entomology from the University of California, Davis, Grissell served as a taxonomic entomologist for the Florida Department of Agriculture, and from 1978 to 2005 as a research entomologist for the Systematic Entomology Laboratory with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where his research focused on parasitic wasps. He published nearly a hundred scientific papers as well as serving on editorial boards and journals both as a reviewer and subject editor.

Grissell – a member of the Garden Writers Association as well as a half dozen entomological and horticultural societies – has written three books on gardening, the latest of which (Insects and Gardens) encourages gardeners to take a broader and more benign look at their gardens and the insects in them.

After having gardened in mediterranean, subtropical and temperate climates, Eric now challenges the high desert grasslands of southeastern Arizona (Sonoita to be exact), which appear to be winning.