Chris Woods, a servant of the Goddess Flora and a horticultural gadabout, is Advancement Advisor for Flora of North America Association (FNAA).

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Denise Kelly has worked as a horticulturist in Northern California since 1978, with experience in wholesale and retail nurseries, landscape construction and restoration, environmental consulting, landscape architecture, and estate gardening. Her affinity for native plant communities and gardens with the right plant in the right place also relate to her work as a botanical copy editor—putting the right word in the right place. www.variegatastudio.com

MEREDITH HILDERBRAND lives and gardens on a 50-acre farm near Portland, Oregon. She traces her horticultural roots back to her paternal grandmother who graduated in 1913 from the University of Southern California with a degree in botany. Meredith is a Master Gardener through Oregon State University and a perennial member of the Hardy Plant Society of Oregon. Transplanted from the Southwest, Meredith plans to remain in the Pacific Northwest—gardener’s nirvana—until she’s pushing up Bellis perennis.

TAMARA PAULAT passionately gardens Chickadee Gardens, a small oasis in Portland, Oregon, where she focuses on sustainable practices and native plants of the Pacific Northwest. She is a Master Gardener and her garden is certified through the Backyard Habitat Certification Program. Tamara completed a Fine Arts degree in 2002 and appreciates good design and color in gardens. She blogs weekly at www.chickadeegardens.blogspot.com.

RICHARD SCHULHOF has served as CEO of the Los Angeles County Arboretum since October, 2009.  He previously served as deputy director of Harvard University’s Arnold Arboretum in Boston, and as executive director of Descanso Gardens in La Canada Flintridge. A Southern California native, Schulhof worked in Los Angeles area nurseries and completed internships at the Huntington Botanical Gardens and the Mildred Mathias Botanical Gardens at U.C.L.A.

With a special interest in science education, Schulhof collaborated with public schools in Boston and Los Angeles to develop teacher training programs and life science curricula. Working with the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Park Service, he has launched programs preserving and interpreting public historic sites. He holds degrees in landscape architecture from U.C. Berkeley, in botanic garden administration from the University of Delaware, and in Forestry from Harvard University.

At the Los Angeles County Arboretum, Schulhof focuses on new programs that promote sustainability and water conservation, preserve the Arboretum’s rich history, and make known the essential role of plants in sustaining life on Earth.

LEIGH ADAMS is Artist in Residence at Los Angeles County Arboretum where she serves as a design consultant to the Arboretum Foundation. A former children’s librarian and outdoor education teacher, Leigh is passionate about providing learners of all ages the opportunity to explore and acquire new skills. Leigh’s connection to public art, watershed management, and adaptive education inform her approach to each new garden project.

ELIA VARGAS is an Oakland-based artist and curator whose work investigates human identity. Elia is interested in culture, code, cities, and cells emerging as new landscapes and organisms that challenge us to reimagine ourselves. He has shown nationally and internationally and received numerous awards, including the SF Foundation Murphy Cadogan MFA Fellowship. www.eliavargas.com 

DANIELLE ERNEST is a Seattle-based freelance writer. After 14 years of working in wholesale horticulture Danielle recently formed Flora & Fauna Media to assist wholesale and retail horticulture companies with marketing, public relations, and social media. Danielle’s writing has been featured in both trade and consumer publications. She is passionate about plants and hopes to one day be the author of her own publication.

SASHA DUERR is a Bay Area textile artist and designer working with biodiversity and reviving seasonal and local plant-based color. She is the founder of Permacouture Institute, an educational non-profit supporting regenerative design for fashion and textiles based in San Francisco, California. Sasha is the author of The Handbook of Natural Plant Dyes (Timber Press), and is a professor at the California College of the Arts where she develops curriculum in the intersection between slow textiles and social practice. Her work has been featured in American Craft Magazine, The Huffington Post, and The New York Times.

JEFFREY BALE is a garden artist known for his pebble mosaic work. He graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in Landscape Architecture. At home in Portland, Oregon, Jeffrey builds gardens for most of the year and spends every winter traveling. His travels throughout Mexico, South America, Southeast Asia, India, and the Mediterranean, influence his art. “What inspires me the most is when art works in harmony with nature.” www.jeffreygardens.blogspot.com.

Ann Northrup spent her undergraduate years at the University of Michigan, where she earned a Bachelor of Science in microbiology. Her interest in plant pathology started there, but she took a five-year diversion to work in the field of medical diagnostics at Bio Rad Labs in Richmond, California, and another two years as a molecular biology research assistant at UC Irvine. Returning to plant pathology, Ann earned a master’s degree UC Berkeley. She has worked primarily in disease diagnostics of ornamental plants, first with Soil and Plant Lab in Orange, California, and then with Nurserymen’s Exchange in Half Moon Bay.

Ann currently consults privately in plant pathology and arboriculture and teaches horticulture classes at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills and Merritt College in Oakland. One of her professional pleasures is volunteering at the Sick Plant Clinic. She is also an active volunteer in the UCCE Master Gardener program for Santa Clara County. In her spare time, she enjoys playing her flute in a woodwind quintet in Saratoga and with the Saratoga Community Band conducted by her husband. And of course … she gardens.

Lorene Edwards Forkner lives and gardens in Seattle where she pursues a good and delicious life filled with family and friends together with all things horticultural, believing that the really good part is in the blending of one’s passions.

Lorene is the author of five garden books including Hortus Miscellaneous (Sasquatch Books), Handmade Garden Projects, and The Timber Press Guide Vegetable Gardening: Pacific Northwest. Lorene is also the author of the newly released “Color In and Out of the Garden,” Abrams Books, 2022. Follow along at ahandmadegarden.com. She was the editor of Pacific Horticulture from 2012-2019.

Daniel Mount hails from a long line of wandering gardeners, nurserymen and farmers.  He received his first shovel for his second birthday and began his gardening career in the sand box later that afternoon. Spending most of his youthful summers in a vegetable patch, on a farm, in parks, or in the woods, the curiosity of a scientist and the soul of a poet were awakened in him. Daniel went on to study fine arts and botany at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, from which he received a BS in Botany.

Drawn to the legendary gardening climate of the Pacific Northwest, Daniel moved to Seattle, Washington in 1988. Since that time he has created, maintained and consulted on gardens primarily in the Puget Sound Basin. The skills he acquired working in the passionate gardening environment of  Pacific Northwest have opened many doors. Daniel was invited to Cologne, Germany, where he worked on urban rooftop and courtyard gardens as well as rural estates. He was next called to Orto dei Semplici Elbano on the Island of Elba, Italy where he collected and designed with the unique flora of this island.  He maintains an ancillary connection to this garden to this day. Closer to home he has consulted on projects and designed gardens in and around Durham, North Carolina; Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Phoenix, Arizona.

Daniel has settled on a small farm nestled in a 150-acre bird sanctuary, which he shares with his partner, innumerable slugs and a bear, in the Snoqualmie River Valley east of Seattle. He enjoys growing organic vegetables and fruits, raising ducks and experimenting with flood tolerant plants. He creates gardens and also teaches and writes about plants and gardening.

www.mountgardens.com

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.