[1][2] Aalto grew up in Escalon, California, where she developed a lifelong interest in landscape history, design and literature of place.
Aalto wrote the non-fiction book The Natural World of Winnie-the-Pooh: A Walk Through the Forest that Inspired the Hundred Acre Wood,[5] published in 2015 by Timber Press, which became a New York Times Bestseller in February 2016.
[2] It was featured on NPR's "All Things Considered" on October 26, 2015, and selected as a People magazine Best Pick in Nonfiction in November 2015.
[13] In 2020, Aalto authored Writing Wild: Women Poets, Ramblers, and Mavericks Who Shape How We See the Natural World.
[14] Aalto has lectured at Harvard University's Arnold Arboretum,[15] The New York Public Library,[16] the Northwest Flower and Garden Show[17] and the Virginia Festival of the Book.