Plant Parenting – Easy Ways to Make More Houseplants, Vegetables, and Flowers

Leslie F. Halleck is a certified professional horticulturist (ASHS), and admitted plant addict, who has spent her 25-year career hybridizing horticulture science with industry and home gardening consumer needs. Halleck earned a B.S. in Biology/Botany from The University of North Texas and an M.S. in Horticulture from Michigan State University. The focus of her graduate research was greenhouse plant production using environmental controls such as lighting, temperature, photoperiod, and vernalization. www.lesliehalleck.com

Halleck’s professional experience is well-rounded, with time spent in field research, public gardens, residential landscaping, garden center retail, writing, and horticulture consulting. At the end of 2012 Halleck shifted full-time to running her company, Halleck Horticultural, LLC, a green industry consulting and marketing agency – she also provides horticultural consulting services for industry and residential clients. Halleck’s previous positions include Director of Horticulture Research at The Dallas Arboretum and General Manager for North Haven Gardens in Dallas, TX. While she is a regular feature on the professional speaking and industry publication circuit, Halleck continues to offer up common sense gardening advice and hands-on learning to home gardeners via her website, public events, and consumer publications. During her career, Halleck has written hundreds of articles and columns for local, regional, national, and scientific publications; as well as taught countless gardening programs for the home flower gardener, edible enthusiast, and backyard farmer.

The daughter of a gardening mother, Halleck was conscripted into garden labor at an early age, which planted the seed for her subsequent love of all things horticultural. An Army Brat, Halleck grew up overseas in Germany where she was further exposed to the edible gardening culture by the small farming communities and her adopted Oma next door. While Halleck’s first two years at University were spent in art school as an art major, the plant bug eventually caught up with her and she secured a job at a local garden center and a change of major.

Leslie enjoys cultivating her small “urban farm” in central Dallas, TX, complete with edible landscaping, dedicated vegetable garden, backyard chickens, and beehives; not to mention, a house full of indoor growing stations and grow tents for year-round plant and food production. When she’s not busy doing the bidding of her pack of tiny Chihuahuas, Halleck also enjoys drawing, painting, silver smithing, and pretty much any other creative project she can get her hands on.