Melissa Borel is program manager at the California Center for Urban Horticulture, where she helps Californians develop more sustainable gardens, landscapes, and public parks.

Joe Eck is the co-authors of three books, with Wayne Winterrowd that are derived from their garden, North Hill, in southern Vermont; they also lecture widely on garden design. They admit to being heavily influenced by California, its nurseries, and its horticultural community.

Wayne Winterrowd  is the co-authors of three books, with Joe Eck that are derived from their garden, North Hill, in southern Vermont; they also lecture widely on garden design. They admit to being heavily influenced by California, its nurseries, and its horticultural community.

William Grant is a garden writer and photographer based in Aptos, California, where he maintains an extensive collection of roses and other plants. An avid rosarian, he lectures around the world on his favorite subject, was a consultant for Botanica’s Roses, and edited the paperback edition.

Russell A Beatty is a consulting landscape architect in Santa Cruz, California, retired from the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught for twenty-eight years in the Department of Landscape Architecture. He serves on the Screening Committee for the Garden Conservancy.

Glenn Withey and Charles Price have been resident curators of Seattle’s Dunn Gardens since 1997. Avid plantsmen with a passion for planting design, they are involved in the planning of the new NPA Borders at the Bellevue Botanical Garden, write and lecture widely, and maintain a garden design business for the horticulturally obsessed.

Charles Price and Glenn Withey have been resident curators of Seattle’s Dunn Gardens since 1997. Avid plantsmen with a passion for planting design, they are involved in the planning of the new NPA Borders at the Bellevue Botanical Garden, write and lecture widely, and maintain a garden design business for the horticulturally obsessed.

Matt Ritter is a professor in the Biology Department and director of the Plant Conservatory at California Polytechnic University, San Louis Obispo. “I want to help people know the trees in their city. Not just see them as green blobs,” says this disciple of street tree diversity. Ritter is the author of A Californian’s Guide to the Trees Among Us (Heyday Books, 2011) and The Plants of San Louis Obispo, Their Lives and Stories (Kendall Hunt Publishing, 2008).  He is the chair of the City of San Luis Obispo Tree Committee, and editor-in-chief of Madroño, the journal of the California Botanical Society.

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.

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 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.

Mary Wilbur, a native of Wales, worked in the field of psychiatric care, and has gardened in England and New York. She is now active with the Greater Trinidad Garden Club in Trinidad, California, where she has lived and gardened for more than a decade.

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.

Susan Olsen is the proprietor of Foliage Gardens, a mail order fern nursery specializing in temperate ferns, and author of Encyclopedia of Garden Ferns (Timber Press, 2007).

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