Sarah Brandes Madry attended the Cours Charles de Foucauld in Neuilly-sur-Seine and obtained an undergraduate degree in French and a masters in education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA. She was an editor for internal publications and radio producer, graphic artist, and web designer for the General Electric Company and the University of North Carolina. She travels frequently in Europe with her husband, especially in Burgundy where her husband has done archaeological and ethnographic fieldwork since 1978. She is the author of Well Worth a Shindy (2004), a survey of round landscape architecture and garden design in Renaissance and English eighteenth-century gardens.