Author

I write about the places where people and nature meet: the backyard food garden, the family hike, the community plot. My book Growing an Edible Landscape helps people turn their yards into gardens. My research asks why some people grow up feeling connected to the natural world and how the rest of us can find our way there. And I’m now writing a memoir about healing, and what the natural world gave me through it. 

Growing an Edible Landscape: How to Transform Your Outdoor Space into a Food Garden
By Gary Pilarchik and Chiara D’Amore · Cool Springs Press, 2023

Gary and I are two Maryland gardeners with very different spaces and styles, and this book draws on both. It’s a practical, richly illustrated guide to turning lawn and ornamental beds into gardens that feed you, with advice on design, plant choices, and planning your harvest into meals. It ends with a chapter on how gardening can cultivate community, which is the part closest to my heart. Buy the book!

My scholarly writing explores how connection with nature supports personal, community, and ecological well-being. 

• “Significant Life Experiences that Connect Children with Nature: A Research Review and Applications to a Family Nature Club” in the International Research Handbook on Childhood Nature: Assemblages of Childhood and Nature Research, 2018.   
• “Women’s Leadership of Family Nature Clubs: Furthering the Movement to Reconnect People with Nature” in the Palgrave International Handbook of Women and Outdoor Learning, 2018. 
• “The Relationship of Women’s Body Image and Experience in Nature” in Women and Nature? Beyond Dualism in Gender, Body, and Environment, Routledge, 2017. 
• “Nurtured Nature: The connection between care for children and care for the environment” in Pedagogies of Kindness and Respect: On the Lives and Education of Children, 2015. 

• "Community Gardens and the Cultivation of Social Capital" in Current Opinion in Psychology, 2025.
• "The Gendered Hidden Curriculum of Adventure Education" in the Journal of Experiential Education, 2018. 
• “Many Children in the Woods: Applying Principles of Community Based Social Marketing to a Family Nature Club” in Ecopsychology, 2017. Vol 9, No. 4.  
• “Family Nature Clubs: An Intergenerational Opportunity to Connection with and Care for Nature” in the journal of Families, Relationships and Societies, Vol 5. No. 3, 2016. 
• “Hiking: A Low-Cost, Accessible Intervention to Promote Health Benefits” in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine, 2016. 
• “Cultivating Connection and Care – The Case for Family Nature Clubs.” Journal of Sustainability Education, Volume 9, March 2015. 
• “Family nature clubs: Creating the conditions for social and environmental connection and care”. Doctoral dissertation, retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, 2015. 

*Co-editor, Journal of Sustainability Education, Theme on Sense of Place and Resilience (2016) 

*Co-editor, Journal of Sustainability Education, Theme on Sustainability and Love (2015)  

• "Sense of Place Matters: Community of Practice Resources for Conservation" , 2016.
• “Thriving Through Nature: Fostering Children’s Executive Function Skills”, leadership series paper with the Children & Nature Network, 2015. 
• “Family Adventures in Nature Club Guidebook” for the Izaak Walton League of America, 2015.