From the Board President

On the eve of its thirty-fifth year of publication, Pacific Horticulture has good cause to celebrate, even though we share the challenges of all magazines and newspapers these days in our struggle to meet the demands of the digital age and, at the same time, weather a deep recession.

In particular, we celebrate our strength as a non-profit organization—The Pacific Horticultural Foundation—with a vital mission to educate gardeners in the West about what it means to garden in this region. We also enjoy the benefits of strong leadership—a passionate group of twenty talented volunteer board members who represent gardening interests throughout the region and are deeply committed to the foundation’s mission.

From our earliest days, we have drawn fiscal strength from our many loyal contributors. Subscription fees alone have never covered the cost of publishing Pacific Horticulture; regular donations from our readers and other friends have been essential to our ability to thrive and grow for more than three decades.

While our board has invested significant time and energy toward trimming expenses over the past year, we believe the cost savings achieved have not diminished the enduring quality of Pacific Horticulture magazine or the foundation’s other activities. In fact, belt-tightening has yielded many unexpected improvements, and has been the catalyst for some bold thinking about steps we might take to ensure that we continue to serve as an invaluable resource for our West Coast gardening community.

Please join us as we celebrate our successes. We are here for you. Check out our updated new look in the next issue of the magazine. Watch for registration announcements for our eighth Gardening Under Mediterranean Skies Symposium—always a sellout. Look for further expansion of our website, thanks to a generous grant received last summer from the Pendleton and Elisabeth Carey Miller Charitable Foundation. And much more to come….
JB