Passionate Gardening

For over a decade, Lauren Springer and Rob Proctor have been good friends and garden writing colleagues. In Passionate Gardening, readers will be entertained, informed, and inspired by the pair's practical wisdom, wit, and tales of perseverance. Gardeners who live in challenging climates where extremes of temperatures, wind, and more are the norm. Garden success depends on on the most appropriate plant selections, the best gardening techniques, and maximizing the seasons. Every subject the authors tackle?from early snows to slugs, from bulbs to botanical Latin?urges readers to make the most of the gardens they tend.

Passionate Gardener takes the gardener through the season in a most comprehensive, yet pleasurable and accessible way, as the authors celebrate a diversity of plants for every site and every season. The champion sound, ecologically friendly gardening techniques, from soil and water issues to pest management. They also offer up stories of their horticultural adventures as their personal gardens have evolved, making this lively, information-packed reading with a personal, real touch.

Hailed by critics and fellow garden writers as among the top American garden writers of today, Lauren and Rob have translated their shared passion for gardening into gardens that thrive beautifully and into a new book that will raise the spirits, expectations, and results of all those who read it. With its mixture of sparkling essays and lush photographs, Passionate Gardening is an indispensable guide for both budding and seasoned gardeners.

Lauren Springer Ogden and Rob Proctor are authors, photographers, lecturers, garden designers, and above all, passionate gardeners. Their writings have appeared in many national publications. For eight years, they collaborated on an award-winning gardening column for The Denver Post.

Rob is the author of ten books, including Naturalizing Bulbs and Herbs in the Garden: The Art of Intermingling. He and his garden frequently appear on the Discovery Channel. An accomplished artist, he taught for eight years at Denver Botanic Gardens' School of Botanical Illustration, and his works hang in the Smithsonian. He is director of horticulture at Denver Botanic Gardens. He tends his own one-acre garden without benefit of staff.

Lauren gardened professionally on both sides of the Atlantic before receiving her master's degree in horticulture. She designs gardens for the public; her private gardens have been featured on television and in numerous publications. The American Horticultural Society named her book The Undaunted Garden (Fulcrum Publishing) one of the 75 best American gardening books of the recent century. In the foothills of Colorado, she divides her time between an untold number of plants, four dogs, two horses, ten cats, three children, and one husband.