Win Tickets to The Northwest Flower and Garden Festival!
The Northwest Flower & Garden Festival is a world-renowned experience of garden design and innovation. This year, on February 14-18th, you can connect with fourteen Timber Press authors giving expert seminars on all things horticultural at the Seattle Convention Center.
Plan your visit with a full list of seminars here →
Meet the Authors
Jessi Bloom
Jessi Bloom is a best-selling author, award-winning ecological landscape designer, and speaker. She owns N.W. Bloom EcoLogical Services, based in the Pacific Northwest, which is known as an innovator and leader in the field of permaculture, sustainable landscape design, construction, and land management. Her work has been recognized by government agencies and industry organizations and makes headlines in national media. She lives near Seattle with her two sons on their permaculture homestead, which is full of functional gardens and rescue animals.
Jessi Bloom’s NW Flower and Garden Festival Seminars
Blooming Gifts: Unleashing the Magic of Plant Medicine Creations
Wednesday @ 11:45 am
Our gardens hold simple, yet powerful medicine that can be easily made into gifts to use and share. Join Jessi Bloom, author of “Creating Sanctuary: Sacred Garden Spaces, Plant Based Medicine and Daily Practices to Achieve Happiness and Well-Being” for this hands-on seminar teaching what plants to harvest, what tools to use and recipes to create healing salves, teas and more!
Harvesting Eden: How to Design Your Abundant Food Forest Garden
Saturday @ 4:30 pm
In this seminar learn how to make your landscape both beautiful and functional, full of food producing perennials, homegrown medicine and a pollinator paradise! With this ancient design strategy that permaculture has adopted, you can have your own backyard food forest that will be beautiful for as long as you steward that land.
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Amy Campion
Amy Campion is a freelance writer, editor, and photographer. She writes for an online tree retailer. She worked at a large wholesale/retail nursery for sixteen years before moving to Oregon, where she is active in the Hardy Plant Society. Campion blogs about gardening at amycampion.com.
Amy Campion’s NW Flower and Garden Festival Seminar
Northwest Native Garden Plants and the Amazing Insects They Attract
Saturday @ 1:00 pm
Gardens – even in urban areas – can be hotspots of biodiversity, and native plants play a key role in fostering that diversity. Join Portland garden writer and photographer Amy Campion for an exploration of some of the best natives to plant in your wildlife-friendly Northwest garden and learn about the fascinating insects they support.
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Linda Chalker-Scott
Dr. Linda Chalker-Scott has a PhD in horticulture from Oregon State University and is an ISA certified arborist, an ASCA consulting arborist, and an award-winning author. She is Washington State University’s extension urban horticulturist and an also teaches at the University of Washington. Chalker-Scott has published extensively in the scientific literature and in popular magazines including American Nurseryman, Organic Gardening, and Fine Gardening. She also is one of the Garden Professors.
Linda Chalker-Scott‘s NW Flower and Garden Festival Seminar
Creating a Resilient Lawn that Is Beautiful and Wildlife Friendly
Sunday @ 12:00 pm
Lawns have a bad rep among many people with environmental concerns. But lawns aren’t limited to high maintenance, weed-free expanses of monocultural turfgrass. We can create, maintain, and enjoy low-input lawns rich in diverse plant, microbial, and animal life and they can be beautiful. This seminar will present the science-based methods for creating sustainable lawns that provide space for people, pets, and nature to coexist. Handouts containing the text of the talk will be provided.
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Adrienne Edwards
Adrienne Edwards, PhD, is a botanist, plant ecologist, garden designer, environmental consultant, and teacher. She began her botanical odyssey in the Southeast, spent time botanizing in the Midwest, and since 2006 has lived and worked in northern California. With over 30 years of experience teaching, doing environmental research, and consulting, plants continue to drive her passions. She is currently a faculty lecturer at California State University, Chico.
Rachel Schleiger
Rachel Schleiger, MS, is a plant ecologist who specializes in restoration ecology. She has lived in the WUI most of her life. Her family and property survived the most deadly and destructive fire on record, the 2018 Camp Fire. Over the last 3 years she has developed curriculum to teach about wildfire, both in-person and online through Butte College. She is currently a faculty lecturer at both Butte College and California State University, Chico.
Adrienne Edwards and Rachel Schleiger‘s NW Flower and Garden Festival Seminar
Firescape Your Home
Sunday @ 2:45 pm
Learn about Firescaping… the practice of creating fire-resilient landscapes by reducing fire hazards and supporting wild ecosystems.
That includes using plants native to your ecoregion. Outside of managing fuel densities, the other main goal of firescaping is to maintain plant health and biodiversity. The healthier the plant, the more resistant/resilient it will be to fire.
By managing the distribution of fuels and vegetation health you can reduce fire hazards while supporting wildlife habitats—so that we all can live more harmoniously with fire and wildlife.
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Dan Hinkley
Daniel J. Hinkley is the creator of the fabled garden at Heronswood and has won a reputation as one of the foremost plant collectors of our time. Among his awards for lifetime achievement are the Arthur Hoyt Scott Medal from the Scott Arboretum, the Liberty Hyde Bailey award from the American Horticultural Society, and the Veitch Memorial Medal from the Royal Horticultural Society. In 2019, the Daniel J. Hinkley Asian Maple Collection was named in his honor by the University of Washington Botanic Gardens. His lectures are legendary, and his current garden at Windcliff, on Washington State’s Kitsap Peninsula, is renowned for its audacious design as well as for its deft use of rare, fascinating plants.
Dan Hinkle‘s NW Flower and Garden Festival Seminar
Proven Garden Stalwarts: Survivors & Thrivers
Friday @ 10:00 am
Hostas and hydrangeas. Every gardener knows them and most of us have at least a couple varieties in our beds and borders. That’s why they (and a handful of other common perennials and shrubs) are known as stalwarts: plants you can count on to perform day in day out, without asking for much in return. But aren’t you bored with these same plants? If the answer is yes, then this lecture featuring lesser-known garden stalwarts—tested by renowned plantsman Dan Hinkley– is for you.
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Jennifer Jewell
Jennifer Jewell is a gardener, garden writer, and gardening educator and advocate. Since 2016, she has written and hosted the national award-winning, weekly public radio program and podcast, Cultivating Place, a coproduction of North State Public Radio in Chico, California. Particularly interested in the intersections between gardens, the native plant environments around them, and human culture, she is the daughter of a garden- and floral- designing mother and a wildlife biologist father. Jennifer has been writing about gardening professionally since 1998, and her work has appeared in Gardens Illustrated, House & Garden, Natural Home, Old House Journal, Colorado Homes & Lifestyles, and Pacific Horticulture.
Jennifer Jewell‘s NW Flower and Garden Festival Seminars
Cultivating Place: A Garden Culture of Care
Friday @ 11:30 am
In this interactive talk, Jewell explores the philosophy of Cultivating Place, her national, award winning-public radio program and international podcast, based on the belief that gardens/gardeners are powerful agents and spaces for change in our world, helping to address challenges as wide ranging as climate change, habitat loss, cultural polarization, and individual and communal health and being. Exploring how this power is exemplified in her weekly podcast as well as all three of her books, Jewell sends listeners home inspired, empowered, and hopeful as to their garden’s potential.
What We Sow
Saturday @ 10:00 am
In this beautiful and interactive presentation, Jewell leads audiences through some basics about the biology of seeds, the evolution of the seed industry and its escalation, consolidation, and regulation over the last 150 years, and poses thought provoking examples of how what we sow as gardeners might be the difference between a future to grow on, and a future we fear. She shares examples of gardeners, gardens, seeds, and seedkeepers (focused on native plants, edible plants, and plants of cultural relevance) who show us ways to garden & grow forward for the betterment of us all.
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Gary Lewis
Gary Lewis has had a life-long interest in plants and gardening. His retail and mail order nursery, Phoenix Perennials, located in Richmond, BC, offers more than 5000 different plants. Gary has written for various garden magazines including Fine Gardening and has been a frequent guest on local and regional radio and television stations in British Columbia. He speaks regularly to garden clubs around BC and the Pacific Northwest and has presented at conferences across North America. In 2013 he was selected as Communicator of the Year by the BC Landscape and Nursery Association and in 2014 as one of Canada’s Top 10 Horticultural Professionals under 40 by Greenhouse Canada magazine. He has served on the Board of Directors for the Perennial Plant Association and is a committee member of Great Plant Picks.
Gary Lewis‘s NW Flower and Garden Festival Seminar
Rare, Unusual and Underused Ground Covers and How to Use Them
Wednesday @ 9:30 am
In his encyclopedia The Complete Book of Ground Covers, Gary profiled 4000 different species and cultivars of this most useful group of small but mighty plants. Amongst the usual characters are many lesser known, rare and underused ground covers that could be used to great effect to add botanical intrigue, surprise, and creativity to the garden. In this talk youíll discover some of Garyís favourite rare, unusual and underused ground covers and how to use them in the garden to take your personal outdoor space to the next level.
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Nick McCullough
Nick McCullough is a certified designer by the Association of Professional Landscape Designers and served on its board. He holds degrees in horticulture and art history from The Ohio State University and studied landscape design in Northwest England. A self- described “plant nerd,” Nick is passionate about perennials and has a masterful understanding of how plants thrive in regional climates.
Allison McCullough
Allison McCullough is the head of marketing for McCullough’s Landscape & Nursery, Allison ensures the brand delivers thoughtful communications and special touches that only come from a family-owned business. Teresa Woodward brings a background in magazine writing and gardening experience. During her 14-year writing career, she has written and produced garden content for regional and national publications, including Better Homes & Gardens, Tribune Publishing, and Country Gardens and currently serves as Contributing Garden Editor at Midwest Living magazine. She has won Gold and Silver Awards by the Association of Garden Communicators.
Allison and Nick McCullough‘s NW Flower and Garden Festival Seminars
American Roots
Wednesday @ 1:00 pm
Follow the journey across the US and take a closer look at gardens that designer Nick McCullough captured on his quest to celebrate the American garden in his new book AMERICAN ROOTS (Timber Press). You will explore a selection of gardens created by 20 creative gardeners across our vast land from Big Sur, California to the shores of Rhode Island. Gain inspiration, planting tips, and an expanded notion of what an American garden is.
Inside the Design
Thursday @ 10:00 am
As a grower, designer and installer, McCullough’s Landscape & Nursery has the benefit of seeing projects through from inception to maintenance. Owner and lead designer Nick McCullough will share how this process leads to exceptional end results. From growing the plants, to design and ongoing maintenance, he’ll share how collaboration with the homeowners is key at each and every step.
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Thomas Rainer
Thomas Rainer is a registered landscape architect, teacher, and writer. He has designed landscapes for the U.S. Capitol grounds, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, and The New York Botanical Garden. His work has been featured in the the New York Times, Landscape Architecture Magazine, and Home + Design. He is a principal for the landscape architectural firm Rhodeside and Harwell, teaches planting design for the George Washington University, and writer at the award-winning site Grounded Design.
Thomas Rainer‘s NW Flower and Garden Festival Seminars
Translating the Wild into Landscapes
Wednesday @ 10:00 am
In an era of climate change and species extinction, designed plantings offer a unique potential to address today’s environmental challenges. Yet traditional horticultural approaches are often carbon intensive, resource-dependent, and high maintenance. This talk presents a powerful alternative to traditional horticulture—designed plantings that function like naturally-occurring plant communities. Join landscape architect Thomas Rainer, a leading voice in ecological landscape design, to learn how to translate wild inspirations into designed systems, and how to layer plants in biodiverse assemblages. Thomas will share recent examples of Phyto Studio’s design projects for public sites and botanical gardens.
Functional Planting: Creating Adaptive Plant Systems
Wednesday @ 10:00 am
In an era of climate change and species extinction, designed plantings offer a unique potential to address today’s environmental challenges. Yet traditional horticultural approaches are often carbon intensive, resource-dependent, and high maintenance. This talk presents a powerful alternative to traditional horticulture—designed plantings that function like naturally-occurring plant communities. Join landscape architect Thomas Rainer, a leading voice in ecological landscape design, to learn how to translate wild inspirations into designed systems, and how to layer plants in biodiverse assemblages. Thomas will share recent examples of Phyto Studio’s design projects for public sites and botanical gardens.
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Richie Steffen
Richie Steffen is curator of the Elisabeth C. Miller Botanical Garden in Seattle, Washington where he oversees development, manages the special collections, and oversees greatplantpicks.org. He travels extensively to collect plants and visit gardens, and regularly lectures and writes. Steffen also serves as president of the Northwest Horticultural Society and the Hardy Fern Foundation.
Richie Steffen‘s NW Flower and Garden Festival Seminar
Great Plant Picks: Flora Romantica, Plants for a Beautiful Garden
Wednesday @ 1:00 pm
Abundance and soft textures are the hallmark of a romantic garden. Add fragrance, flowers and voluptuous foliage and you can have a garden that is a delight from spring to fall. The Great Plant Picks experts have selected an array of plants that provide a romantic feel for the garden and will add a touch of beauty and charm to your landscape. Discover the best and most reliable plants for our climate and how you can use them in your own outdoor space.
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Jo Thomson
Jo Thompson has been the recipient of four Gold and six Silver Gilt medals, as well as Best in Show at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. In 2017 she won the People’s Choice award at the first RHS Chatsworth Flower Show. She is the Garden Advisor for RHS Rosemoor, an RHS Shows Judge, and a member of the RHS Gardens Committee, the Nominations & Governance Committee, and the RHS Show Gardens Selection Panel. Jo lectures both nationally and internationally and tutors at The London College of Garden Design. She is a Registered Member of the Society of Garden Designers.
Jo Thomson‘s NW Flower and Garden Festival Seminars
Gardens with Atmosphere
Wednesday @ 11:30 am
One of the very best compliments you can have is when someone says your garden is romantic, full of that magical atmosphere which is the sum of many parts. In this talk, I’ll be going through what these parts are and how you can bring in different elements to create a magical atmosphere in your garden.
Colour in the Garden
Thursday @ 1:00 pm
People have been wrestling with colour for a long time: how to define it in words, how to capture it in form, how to harness it in thought, how to apply it in our world. My book The Gardener’s Palette concerns itself not just with colours in the garden but the meanings and effects created by them and their interaction. What is a specific colour? How to define the colour of a plant that forms a key part of a planting combination: do we ignore it and work despite it, or do we embrace it and use it to inspire the colours around it? And then, how to combine them to create a picture which changes minute by minute depending on the weather, the season, the temperature, the light?
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Mark Turner
Mark Turner is a professional photographer who has been photographing gardens and native plant environments in the Pacific Northwest for over 25 years. He brings a strong sense of photographic design, attention to detail, and curiosity about both native and garden plants to his work.
Mark Turner‘s NW Flower and Garden Festival Seminars
The Beauty of Weeds
Wednesday @ 12:00 pm
Maybe they just showed up in your garden, or you notice them as you walk your neighborhood or drive down the road. Theyíre the plants we call weeds, the ones we didnít ask to join our gardens. But just because theyíre weeds doesnít mean theyíre ugly. In fact, some of our weeds are quite beautiful. Come on a journey showcasing some of our most unwelcome plants and get a few tips on controlling them, too.