Becoming a Gardener

Catie Marron is the creator and editor of two anthologies published by HarperCollins which explore the value and significance of urban public spaces: City Squares, Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World (2016), and City Parks: Public Places, Private Thoughts (2013). She is currently working on a third book for HarperCollins, which centers on how gardens and the process of their creation enrich lives.

Marron's career has encompassed investment banking, magazine journalism, public service, and book publishing. She is currently a trustee and Chair Emeritus of The New York Public Library, where she was Chairman of the Board from 2004 to 2011. Marron is also a trustee of Friends of the High Line, where she was also Board Chair, and a trustee of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

Marron began her first career in investment banking at Morgan Stanley and then at Lehman Brothers. She then became Senior Features Editor at Vogue, where she has been a contributing editor for twenty years. While writing her books, Marron launched Good Companies, a curated, online guide to companies that strive to do good while also making a profit. This venture was shaped in part by the success of Treasure & Bond, a pop-up store that she co-founded with Nordstrom and Anna Wintour in 2011. All of the store's profits went to charities benefiting NYC children.

"Like so many others, especially during the awful times of the pandemic, [Marron] came to understand the peace and solace of working one's own plot of soil: "As Alfred Austin, the poet laureate of Britain from 1896 to 1913, once wrote, 'We come from the earth, we return to the earth, and in between we garden.' " - Wall Street Journal