Meet the Ast-holes!

Amanda Thomsen, Owner of Aster Gardens

Practical, fun, imperfect gardens for everyone!

Amanda Thomsen is a horticulturist, garden designer, keynote speaker, freelance writer, backyard consultant, and author living in suburban Chicago.  Amanda wants to help the world live more sustainably (but without a load of effort and twice the fun!).

Amanda has been working as a professional horticulturist, landscape designer and project manager for last 20+ years. Her focus is bringing rule-breaking fun, a little kitsch and a lot of humor into an industry that is often thought of as stodgy and full of rules. Amanda speaks and gives classes at all-sized events throughout the United States.

Amanda Thomsen is the author of two books: Kiss My Aster: A Graphic Guide to Creating a Terrific Yard Totally Tailored to You (Storey 2012) and Backyard Adventure: Get Messy, Get Wet, Build Cool Things, and Have Tons of Fun (Storey 2019).

She is half of the now defunct The Garden Girls podcast and produced a one-woman gardening show, Mud Life Crisis. She has a monthly column in the garden center industry magazine, Green Profit. Amanda was chosen to attend the Better Homes and Gardens Stylemaker event in NYC in 2017 & 2018.

In the summer of ‘22 Amanda will be opening a brick and mortar garden shop in downtown Lemont, Illinois.

Check out what HGTV has to say about Kiss My Aster here.

Learn more about Backyard Adventure by watching this.

See Amanda’s pink retro kitchen on The Rachel Ray Show here.

More information about speaking events here.

Contact amanda@kissmyaster for booking or more info.

Tyler E., Junior Executive of Plant MGMT

Tyler is practically the Prince of Lemont but what’s important is his freakish love of plants. He has been really, really into orchids (and a member of the Illinois Orchid Society) since he was a little kid and now that he’s a big kid he is passionate about tropicals and rare plants.

He’s sort of studying horticulture at JJC