Before moving into prevention science and community work, I spent years writing about plants, gardening, and green spaces for a wide audience. That period of journalism was more than just telling stories about what grows in the soil. It was about exploring the ways people find meaning in nature, how gardens can become gathering places, and how small acts of cultivation connect to larger ideas of community and well-being. Looking back, those experiences shaped the way I now approach research and practice, because they taught me to see the links between environment and everyday life, and to value the human stories that are always rooted in the landscape around us.