©1973-2008
Joelle
Steele Enterprises
Updated:
10/07/08
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ABOUT JOELLE STEELE
(formerly Nancy N. Martelli)
As the owner of Green Industry Publications and Joelle Steele Enterprises, Joelle Steele is a self-publisher of her own books, contracts, forms, and botanical clip art for the horticultural industry. Her goal is to consistently create new products and informational resources that will be helpful to interior and exterior landscapers and other related tradespeople worldwide.
The Early Years
Joelle has a very long history of creative pursuits, starting with a part-time job as an illustrator at an advertising agency in Berkeley, California when she was only 19 years old and attending college in nearby Hayward. By 1974, she had officially entered the publishing field with the publication of her first article. Then, in the summer of 1975, after reading her
poetry at a poetry reading in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, she
was approached by a publisher and, later that same year, her first illustrated chapbook of poetry was
released. Also that same year, she became the
creative director for a book publisher in San Mateo and simultaneously opened a recording studio in Portola Valley with a sound engineer partner. In 1976, Joelle had her first solo art exhibit in Burlingame, and a year later, when the book publisher she worked for moved to Chicago and her recording studio partner moved overseas, Joelle struck out on her own and became a successful freelance writer, editor, and illustrator with several
publisher clients, including ARTLife, Sketch Artist, Recording Engineer/Producer, and Bay Area Musician (BAM).
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Joelle giving her "Get The Job & Make A Profit" workshop, hosted by Planter Technology (now Tournesol Siteworks) at their former location in Mountain View, CA.
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The Landscape Industry
In
1979, after relocating to southern California, Joelle went to work for a landscape contractor in Santa Monica. In 1982, while working there, she landed her first major freelance illustration job, and in 1983, she started her own business serving the needs of the horticultural industry.
Joelle's business included consulting to landscape contractors, providing a horticultural employment referral service for interior and exterior landscapers in California, |
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an interior/exterior landscape design service, photographing project portfolios for contractors, and running an independent quality control route for interior landscapers in Los Angeles, Riverside, and San Diego counties. She also spoke and lectured extensively at landscape conferences and in private venues throughout the English-speaking world on gardening and horticulture, as well as the business aspects of that trade.
She became an instructor and co-coordinator of the Interior Landscape extension program at the University of California, Riverside, taught horticulture through adult education departments, and guest lectured in horticulture classes at many community colleges and universities throughout the United States. |
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The New Leaf Press
Since she had a background in publishing, Joelle decided to put it to work and founded and produced a monthly newsletter, later in magazine format, for interior landscapers. It was called The New Leaf Press, and she published and circulated it internationally from 1983 to 1994. As editor and publisher of The New Leaf Press, she was one of the first to publish (in 1984) the findings of Bill Wolverton's plants for clean air studies, and she also interviewed and wrote stories about Wolverton and many of the early and renowned pioneers in the horticultural industry
-- including Alfred Graf, Julius Roehrs,
and Robert Herrick Carter -- which she published in The New Leaf Press.
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Joelle (front far right) at a Board of Governors Meeting in Miami, FL, for the former National Council for Interior Horticultural Certification (NCIHC).
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Writing and Publishing
During this time period, Joelle was also writing regular advice columns
and feature articles for horticulture and gardening magazines, such as Interior
Landscape Magazine, Pro Magazine, Interiorscaper
Newsletter, California Landscape, GrowingEDGE, HousePlant
Magazine,
Landscape Ontario, Herb Quarterly, Horticulture Review,
and Canadian Gardening,
and she also had articles published on a variety of other topics in such publications as Cats Magazine, I Love Cats,
Shopping Center World, Body Mind & Spirit, The Docket, Michigan
Lawyer's Weekly, Service Business, Art World, Whole Life, Pet Gazette, Animal World, Property Management, Small Business News, Cleaning Business, and The Artist's Magazine. Even her short stories and poetry found homes on the pages of a wide variety of small press periodicals.
As her business continued to grow, Joelle founded and published other monthly periodicals, including The California Astrologer and Songsmith, and she expanded her speaking engagement topics to include writing, publishing, art, design, and astrology. By the mid-1990s, Joelle
had sold Songsmith and The New Leaf Press, disbanded The California Astrologer, and moved to Monterey, where she went to work part-time for a law firm as she turned all of her creative attentions to self-publishing her many books, expanding her contract offerings, assembling her clip art and stock photo collections, and began selling everything via her Web sites.
Among the books she self-publishes today are her two best-sellers for the interior landscape trade, The Interior Landscape Dictionary, 2nd ed. 2007 (originally published by Van Nostrand Reinhold), and Plantscaper's Guide to Interior Landscape Maintenance, 3rd ed. 2008 (now also available in Spanish).
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Joelle speaking about the business of interior landscaping at the University of California, Riverside, CA. |
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Education & Achievements
Joelle has a
Bachelor's Degree in Language Arts (a double major in English and Linguistics) and Vocational Certificates in Interior Design/Space Planning and Ornamental Horticulture. In addition, she has completed eight years of private art instruction and ten years of private music instruction. Her achievements include two honorable mentions for lyrics and two awards for industrial forms design, along with many other acknowledgments and certificates, including: Who's Who Historical Society,
American Biographical
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Institute's 2000 Notable Women, Chromatology Exam II, Digital Photo Editing Proficiency, Professional Web Site Administrator Course, FrontPage Internet Administration Course, Professional Publishing Expert, Color Professional Short Course, Advanced Desktop Publishing, Adobe Advanced Photoshop Course, Desktop Publishing, Basic & Advanced Landscape Short Courses, Professional Horticulture Short Courses, Interior Landscape Maintenance Short Course, and Professional Landscape Design.
To date, Joelle's published credits include
more than 30 books, almost 700 articles, several contributing
chapters, 48 contracts and legal documents, and numerous short stories, poems,
song lyrics, advertising jingles, spot illustrations, book and CD cover illustrations,
clip art collections, and fine art paintings and photos. Her photos and illustrations have accompanied many of her written works, and her fine art has been exhibited off and on since 1976.
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Joelle speaking about
Web site design at the Monterey Bay Users
Group, Monterey, CA.
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The Recent Years
In November 2005, Joelle relocated to Washington state where she continues to provide books, contracts, and other products and services to the horticultural industry. In addition, she digitally restores antique photographs and creates fine art
paintings on canvas, and she teaches writing, publishing, genealogy, Web site design, landscape design, and other subjects through the extension departments of several colleges in the South Puget Sound area, including The Evergreen State College (Olympia), Pierce College (Lakewood and Puyallup campuses), Tacoma Community College (Tacoma), and South Puget Sound Community College (Olympia) -- where she also taught the interior landscaping and floral design course in the Winter 2008 quarter
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