Paula Panich is a writer and teacher; she lives in Los Angeles. She has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and other print and online publications. She has taught writing in leafy places from the New York Botanical Garden to the Getty Center, and at Boston University, and in the UCLA Extension Landscape Architecture Program.

Photojournalist Ilana Panich-Linsman (www.ilanapl.com) lives in Northampton, Mass. She is a graduate of Scripps College and of the journalism program at the International Center of Photography. Her work regularly appears in the New York Times. 

Rick Peterson manages the Great Plant Picks educational program at the Elisabeth Miller Botanical Garden in Seattle, Washington. His home garden in Federal Way, which he shares with frequent Pacific Horticulture contributor Richie Steffen, is landscaped with “restrained exuberance” and includes overly abundant collections of species rhododendrons, iris, epimedium, ferns, and a plethora of other rare and unusual flora. Both plead guilty to the current menagerie of potted plants waiting patiently in the driveway…

Jackie Herald is an experienced writer, designer, lecturer and broadcaster dividing her time between France and London. In her design practice, The Extra Room, Jackie enjoys collaborating with architects, interior designers, engineers, and specialist fabricators and contractors, to help clients make the best use of their living space with creative and practical links between indoors and out.

Jackie has widely published on topics such as living roofs, sustainability in the city, conceptual gardens, edible planting design, experimental uses of material, and pattern design. And uniting her diverse background, she is currently presenting a series of talks on Gardens, Fashion and Fabric.  www.jackieherald.com

Barbara Blossom Ashmun has written six garden books, most recently Married to My Garden, about her love affair with plants. She wrote a column for the Portland Tribune from 2004 through 2011, and was a contributing editor for Fine Gardening for many years. Her essays have appeared in the Chicken Soup series and Women Reinvented.

Propelled by a passion for plants, Barbara began a garden on a sunny acre in 1986. Although she should have turned the clay-based wetland into a lake, her love for flowers drove her to create a four-season tapestry of color, fragrance and fruit.

Sharon Cohoon retired from Sunset Magazine in 2011 after being their primary Southern California garden writer for nearly seventeen years. The idea was to do more actual gardening herself before her back and knees gave out completely. But Lucy the Cavalier, Sharon’s constant companion, still likes her office best and expects her to be in it. So she hasn’t escaped writing completely.

Zann Cannon Goff works at Flora Grubb Gardens in San Francisco as buyer/coordinator for the design team, and is a freelance gardener certified in landscape design and maintenance, nursery center operation, and cut flower production. “That’s school study; the real education comes in exploring what’s around me and sharing my vision. Thoreau said, ‘It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.’” Follow Zann’s blog at www.bozannical.wordpress.com.

Andrea Watts is a graduate student at the University of Washington studying silviculture and science communication, combining her enjoyment of writing and forests. When she’s not doing fieldwork for her Master’s thesis, she purses freelance writing. Andrea has been published in The Daily World and is pending publication in The Pet Connection Magazine.

Greg Graves is the former head gardener at the Miller Botanic Garden in Seattle, Washington. He has a BS in Environmental Science and an AA in Landscape Design and Ornamental Horticulture. Prior to his passion for horticulture, he worked for Burlington Northern for many years. Greg is currently serving as president of the Pacific Horticulture board of directors. Today Greg and his partner Gary Waller, own Old Goat Farm in Orting, Washington, where they tend choice plants, chickens, turkeys, ducks, goats, and other living things. www.oldgoatfarm.com.

Bill Marken was editor-in-chief of Sunset and Garden Design magazines. He now is writing for several print and online publications, including Garden Design and Landscape Architecture magazine, for which he writes a column called “Palette,” which describes how landscape architects design with plants.