| Rosalind Creasy | |
| Birth Place: | Needham, Massachusetts, U.S. |
Rosalind Creasy (born 1939) is an American horticulturalist, landscape designer, and author. She is known for her work on edible landscaping, particularly her 1982 book The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping, considered a landmark book in the subject.
Creasy grew up in Needham, Massachusetts. In 1967, she moved to the San Francisco Bay Area where she began studying landscape design at Foothill College.[1] She earned her degree in horticulture, and initially worked in landscape design using plants she describes as 'non-edible'. She moved to Los Altos, California, in 1973 to do landscape design.[2] She first came to think about edible landscaping when she and her husband visited an Israeli kibbutz in the late 1970s where she saw the energy that went into building crop land in Israel. Creasy felt that if Americans were growing edible plants it would be a better use of land.[3] Back in Los Altos, Creasy removed her front lawn and replaced it with a vegetable garden in the early 1980s;[4] [5] the plants in her garden include wheat that local children help her thresh and she uses to bake bread.[6]
In 1982, Creasy published her book The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping. After she published her first book, she traveled to different parts of the United States to introduce people to edible landscaping.[7] The second edition of her book, Edible Landscaping, was published in 2010 and was a complete re-write given the changes since the first publication of the book in 1982.[8]
Her books Edible Landscaping and Cooking from the Garden have both won the Quill & Trowel award from the Garden Writers Association.[9] In 1999, Creasy was named a fellow of Garden Communications International, and in 2009, she was elected to their Hall of Fame.[10]