Joelle Steele in the Landscape Industry
Joelle Steele has a long history of helping small business owners and technicians in the various landscape trades. She published her articles and advice columns on her old website, greenindustrypublications.com, to help others in the horticultural industry.
Joelle entered the landscape industry in 1979, and worked for and was self-employed as an interior/exterior landscape and floral designer until 2010. In 1983, she simultaneously founded several other highly diversified businesses for the landscape industry, including Plantscaper’s Referral Service (1983-1984) and Independent QC Services (1983-1984), both of which serviced eight counties in California and were sold within two years. She also consulted to interior and exterior landscape companies (1983-1997) and photographed portfolios for landscapers (1985-1997).
Joelle spoke and lectured extensively (1984-1994) at conferences and in private venues on horticultural topics as well as the business aspects of the trade at Career Days at UCLA (1981-1984), and guest-lectured (1983-1997) at horticulture classes at universities and community colleges in California, Ohio, Oregon, Washington, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Arizona.
Joelle was an instructor and coordinator (1985-1988) of the Interior Landscape extension program at UC Riverside. She also taught landscape and gardening classes (2006-2016) through extended education programs at nine colleges in five counties in Washington state; and substitute-taught the interior landscape and floral design course (2008) at South Puget Sound Community College.
Joelle Steele presenting a workshop hosted by Planter Technology (now Tournesol Siteworks) at their former location in Mountain View, CA.
Joelle founded Hortica Publications (1983-2014), Manzanita Books (1983-2009), New Leaf Press IPG (1983-1994), and Many Hats Publications (1983-2016), and began writing, editing, and publishing books (1985-pres.) and audiocassette tapes (1985-1991), as well as two internationally-circulated monthly periodicals: The New Leaf Press Newsletter for Interiorscapers (1984-1994) and Landscape Pro Magazine for landscape contractors (1983-1994).
Joelle was one of the first in the industry to publish the findings of Bill Wolverton’s plants for clean air studies (1984), and she also interviewed and wrote about Wolverton and many of the early and renowned pioneers in the horticultural industry — including Alfred Byrd Graf, Julius Roehrs, and Robert Herrick Carter — which she published in The New Leaf Press (1985) in an article about the history of the interior landscape industry.
In 1983, Joelle wrote 34 different contracts for the landscape trades and sold them as 3-part NCR forms, first through ads in her periodicals (1983-1994), then through her website (1992-2002), and finally as customizable Word docs via her website (2002-pres.). She edited and SEO’d web content and created website startup templates for interior/exterior landscapers (1997-2009), and she wrote several books and booklets for the industry, all of which are now out of print except for the English & Spanish Guide to Interior Landscape Maintenance (2019) and the customizable HR Manual for the Landscape Industry.
In addition to her own publishing ventures, Joelle wrote advice columns and feature articles (1983-1997) for horticulture and gardening magazines such as Interior Landscape Magazine, Pro Magazine, Interiorscape Newsletter,California Landscape, GrowerTalks, Growing EDGE, HousePlant Magazine, Landscape Ontario, Herb Quarterly, Landscape Contractor Review, Horticulture Review, and Canadian Gardening. She also had articles published on landscape- and contracting-related topics in such publications as Shopping Center World, The Docket, Michigan Lawyer’s Weekly, Service Business, Property Management, Small Business News, and Cleaning Business. In addition, she authored a chapter in A New Look At Houseplants (1993) and wrote articles and did illustrations for the Interior Plantscaper newsletter (1988-1995). She republished many of her older articles and her Q&A advice columns on her websites (1992-pres.). She also created and sells her botanical clip art collection (1992-pres.).
Joelle Steele speaking about the business of interior landscaping at the University of California, Riverside, CA.
Joelle has a Bachelor’s Degree in Language Arts (a double major in English and Linguistics), and Vocational Certificates in Ornamental Horticulture and Interior Design (with emphases in Space Planning and Color). She is also a court-certified expert in the usual and customary practices of the landscape trades. She left the horticultural industry in 2021 to pursue her other career interests.
