Rebecca Sams and Buell Steelman met while both worked at Gardens in Austin, Texas. Now in Eugene, Oregon, they design and build cutting-edge gardens as Mosaic Gardens (www.mosaic-gardens.com).

David Ehrlinger has a background in botany from the University of Michigan. After several years as head of horticulture for the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens, he moved to Southern California, where he has been director of horticulture at the San Diego Botanic Garden in Encinitas since 2002. He resides in nearby Carlsbad with his wife Claire.

Shirley Watts is principal of sawattsdesign, an award winning design/build firm that works in gardens all over the Bay Area.

David Fross is one of Southern California’s most highly respected native plant specialists and co-author with Bart O’Brien and Carol Bornstein of California Native Plants for the Garden (Cachuma Press, 2006).  David is the owner of Native Sons Wholesale Nursery in Arroyo Grande.

Iain M Robertson has taught at the University of Washington for over twenty years. His interests include plants as a design medium, human experiences of landscape designs, and urban ecological design. He has practiced as a landscape architect in his native Scotland and on the East and West coasts, and has consulted with several Western arboreta and botanic gardens.

Judith M Taylor, a retired Oxford-trained neurologist, now practices history without a license in San Francisco. She has published several books, most recently The Global Migrations of Ornamental Plants: How the World Got into Your Garden (2009). The begonia story is part of a future book on plant breeders and their obsessions.

Carol Bornstein is one of Southern California’s most highly respected native plant specialists and co-author with David Fross and Bart O’Brien of California Native Plants for the Garden (Cachuma Press, 2006). Carol was horticulturist for the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden for nearly thirty years.

Richard G Turner Jr is the editor emeritus of Pacific Horticulture. After receiving degrees in architecture and landscape architecture from the University of Michigan more than thirty years ago, he escaped to California, where he has worked in the fields of garden design, public garden education and administration, and garden publishing. His small, chemical-free San Francisco garden provides habitat for wildlife while serving as a test ground for mediterranean-climate plants.