Richie Steffen

Richie Steffen is curator of horticulture for the Elisabeth C. Miller Botanical Garden in Seattle, where he manages the rare plant collections and leads the acquisition of new plants. Richie is co-author of The Plant Lover’s Guide to Ferns from Timber Press. He is an active member of numerous horticultural societies in the area and lectures widely about garden-worthy plants.


Debra Baldwin

Debra Lee Baldwin is an award-winning garden writer for Sunset magazine and other publications. Her new book, Designing with Succulents (Timber Press, 2007) has become one of the top ten best selling garden books in America. She lives and gardens in Escondido, in northern San Diego County. Visit her at www.debraleebaldwin.com.


Kirsten DeLara

Kirsten DeLara is a freelance writer who specializes in Mediterranean gardening, European travel, architecture, and the environment. Her work has appeared in local, regional, and international publications. An avid gardener and member of the Garden Writers Association of America, she resides in Seattle when not traveling in France.


Robert D Raabe

Robert D Raabe is Professor Emeritus of Plant Pathology at University of California, Berkeley. He introduced a faster method of composting was commonly known as the “Berkeley method” or “fast composting”, this method produces finished compost in as little as 14 to 21 days. He is also the author of The Ortho Home Gardener’s Problem Solver.


Iain Robertson

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.


Frederique Lavoipierre

Frederique Lavoipierre is the creator and author of “Garden Allies,” a series that ran for 10 years in Pacific Horticulture magazine. She also teaches classes and workshops on sustainable landscaping, including ecological principles, habitat gardens, beneficial insects, soil ecology, freshwater ecology, and aquatic invertebrates. Follow her on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/Garden.Allies.


Judith Taylor

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.


Diane Cary

Diane Cary is communications director at the UC Davis Arboretum, a researcher in the Landscape Architecture program at UC Davis, and an independent curator and arts programmer.


Bart O’Brien

Bart O’Brien is one of Southern California’s most highly respected native plant specialists and co-author with David Fross and Carol Bornstein of California Native Plants for the Garden (Cachuma Press, 2006). Bart is director of special projects at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden in Claremont.


Richard G Turner Jr

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.


Ellen Zagory

Ellen Zagory is director of horticulture at the UC Davis Arboretum, where she frequently lectures on bringing wildlife into the garden.