A recent birthday card from Billy’s brother, David.
Billy Goodnick’s Back Story
While enjoying a successful career as a musician, Billy Goodnick discovered the world of plants via bonsai and Japanese gardens. His studies in ornamental horticulture led to work in nursery sales, landscape installation, maintenance, and design.
Frustrated with his limited arsenal, Billy earned a degree in landscape architecture Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, landing a sweet gig as City Landscape Architect for Santa Barbara, designing and managing the construction of parks, playgrounds, and developing policies that continue to enhance the public spaces of one of the world’s most beautiful cities.
Not one to sit on his haunches, in 1990, he developed an entertaining and informative adult education class to demystify garden design for homeowners. In recent years, his responsibilities expanded to teaching design to environmental horticulture students at the local community college.
Garden Writer
Winner of 2012 Garden Writers Association Gold Award for Electronic Media
Late one night, he inadvertently jump started his newest career as a writer, starting my Garden Wise Guy blog to share his views of design, life, the universe and everything. One thing led to another and now Billy is a contributing editor and award-winning blogger for Fine Gardening Magazine, author an on-line column at Edhat.com, and write my In the Garden column at 805 Living Magazine.
He currently writing “Yards: Turn Any Outdoor Space into the Garden of Your Dreams”, a garden design book for St. Lynn’s Press, available in March 2013.
Garden Speaker
His love for teaching has grown to include gigs at national flower and garden shows, world class botanic gardens and arboreta, and top-level nurseries. Learn more at GreatGardenSpeakers.com.
Still keeping his hands (and feet) busy behind the drums.
Teaming up with Owen Dell, he wrote and hosted Garden Wise Guys, a popular, hilarious public service sustainable landscaping television show in Santa Barbara.
His outspoken, snarky sense of humor includes an off-beat Facebook page, Crimes Against Horticulture: When Bad Taste Meet Power Tools. You have to see it to believe it.
But what’s totally cool is that he still get to play drums, laying down a funky groove with King Bee (only the most fun you can have without disrobing).