EARL NICKEL is an Oakland-based horticulturist, writer, and photographer. He writes a weekly column for the San Francisco Chronicle profiling garden-worthy plants and has contributed feature articles to Pacific Horticulture, Fine Gardening, and various Bay Area newspapers. Erle maintains a large and varied garden and blogs for Annie’s Annuals and at www.normsnursery.blogspot.com.
Jim McCausland is a writer and editor for Sunset magazine and a senior editor for the Sunset Western Garden Book. He has had a long interest in the climate studies that have resulted in Sunset’s climate zones map, one of the most important features of the Western Garden Book. He lives and gardens in Port Orchard, Washington.
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.
Stephen Ingram lives on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada, where he focuses on photography and writes frequently about plants and plant ecology. He is a past president of the Bristlecone Chapter of the California Native Plant Society. His images can be seen at www.ingramphoto.com.
Noel Gieleghem works in the legal profession by day, but assists his partner Brandon Tyson with his garden design work out of their home in Napa, California. He is an avid gardener with a particular interest in the Chilean vine, Lapageria.
Julie Lane-Gay, a native of Northern California, has been an avid gardener in the Vancouver area of British Columbia for the past twenty years. Her particular passions are for climbing plants such as clematis. In the 1990s, she ran a mail order nursery, Quail Hollow Climbers and Perennials; she continues to try any new clematis she can find.
Andrea Testa-Vought lives with her husband and two teenage children in Palo Alto, California, where she enjoys gardening in her Bernard Trainor designed garden. She is currently studying botanical illustration at the San Francisco Botanical Garden.
garden historian
San Francisco
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.
