Grace Fusani has been getting their hands dirty since the age of 8, growing marigolds and helping their mom wrangle bindweed. In their teens, they were employed at Grosse Ile Pet & Garden Center and during college they worked as the Rooftop Garden Coordinator for the Green Garage, growing and selling herbs & edible flowers to local businesses while also managing the co-op’s composting systems and maintaining the native Green Alley next door. They graduated with BA in Anthropology & a BA in Italian from Wayne State University. While in Detroit, Grace participated in the Detroit Biodiversity Network and kept in touch with local urban farm efforts, occasionally assisting with Keep Growing Detroit activities. After moving to Seattle, Grace kept pursuing their love of plant knowledge and landed a job at Walt’s Organic Fertilizer where they learned how to manufacture and apply organic fertilizers & amendments while caring for the shops’ plant inventory, both indoors and outdoors. Wanting to move onto a more hands-on sector of horticulture, Grace acquired a landscaping job with Homegrown Organics which allowed them to see the end results of their customers’ plant purchases. During this time, Grace realized that agriculture would combine all their major loves in life; gardening, cooking, and feeding people, and so they graduated from Viva Farms’ Practicum in Sustainable Agriculture in 2023. Now they work to facilitate food access & garden education in their local communities, while keeping in touch with the farmers of tomorrow. Away from all the fun of the Garden Hotline desks and outreach, in their free time Grace enjoys experimenting with different cuisines, becoming one with the forest, gaming, and more gardening.