Wayne Armstrong is a retired professor in the Life Sciences Department of Palomar College, San Marcos, California, and author of the natural history website Wayne’s Word (waynesword.palomar.edu). He contributed the section on Lemnaceae (now Araceae) to the revised Jepson Manual, a new flora for California.

Josh Schechtel is an avid gardener and has rarely met a plant that he didn’t like. He has worked as a gardener and mosaic artist in the San Francisco area, and has been the author of the Plant of the Month column for the California Horticultural Society’s bulletin since 2004

Saxon Holt is a professional garden photographer who contributes regularly to Pacific Horticulture and is widely published in books such as Hardy Succulents, The American Meadow Garden, and Plants and Landscapes for the Summer-Dry Climates of the San Francisco Bay Area. Saxon lives and gardens in Novato, California and is a member of the PHS board of directors. www.photobotanic.com

Hans Mandt is currently the president of Northwest Horticultural Society and is responsible for their annual symposia. A former professor of computer science, he recently retired as senior manager of a computing research group at The Boeing Company. He and his wife Tina garden a challenging hillside in Seattle.

Paul Bonine is a garden writer, lecturer, and owner of the wholesale specialty plant nursery Xera Plants, in Portland, Oregon.  A lifelong plant man, Paul has worked in the nursery industry for nearly twenty years and consulted for NPR, the Sunset Western Garden Book, and The Oregonian. He is the author of Black Plants: 75 Striking Choices for the Garden (Timber Press, 2009).

Paul lectures on low-water gardening, unusual vines, and deer-resistant gardening. He lives in Portland, where he tests and selects new and useful plants for Pacific Northwest gardens.

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.

Marie Barnidge-McIntyre is the staff horticulturist for Rancho Los Cerritos in Long Beach, California, and did the majority of the research on trees for the restoration of the historic orchard there. She also operates Gardens by Design, a consulting firm, from her home in Thousand Oaks, California.

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.