Karen Platt is a British gardening author and publisher, best known for the reference book Black Magic and Purple Passion. She started her writing career in 1996 by self-publishing her first book, The Seed Search. She has been on BBC television, KATU, HGTV and BBC Radio several times. Her publications have been recommended by Alan Titchmarsh and others. Since 2001, much of her work has involved popularizing black plants; she founded the International Black Plant Society in 2002. Platt also runs a nursery called Black Plant Nursery.
The Color Purple is a 1982 epistolary novel by American author Alice Walker which won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction. It was later adapted into a film and musical of the same name.
Forest gardening is a low-maintenance, sustainable, plant-based food production and agroforestry system based on woodland ecosystems, incorporating fruit and nut trees, shrubs, herbs, vines and perennial vegetables which have yields directly useful to humans. Making use of companion planting, these can be intermixed to grow in a succession of layers to build a woodland habitat. Forest gardening is a prehistoric method of securing food in tropical areas. In the 1980s, Robert Hart coined the term "forest gardening" after adapting the principles and applying them to temperate climates.
Morus, a genus of flowering plants in the family Moraceae, consists of diverse species of deciduous trees commonly known as mulberries, growing wild and under cultivation in many temperate world regions. Generally, the genus has 64 identified species, three of which are well-known and are ostensibly named for the fruit color of the best-known cultivar: white, red, and black mulberry, with numerous cultivars. M. alba is native to South Asia, but is widely distributed across Europe, Southern Africa, South America, and North America. M. alba is also the species most preferred by the silkworm, and is regarded as an invasive species in Brazil and the United States.
Alan Fred Titchmarsh HonFSE is an English gardener, broadcaster, TV presenter, poet, and novelist. After working as a professional gardener and a gardening journalist, he established himself as a media personality through appearances on television gardening programmes. He has developed a diverse writing and broadcasting career.
Commonly known as hellebores, the Eurasian genus Helleborus consists of approximately 20 species of herbaceous or evergreen perennial flowering plants in the family Ranunculaceae, within which it gave its name to the tribe of Helleboreae. Despite names such as "winter rose", "Christmas rose" and "Lenten rose", hellebores are not closely related to the rose family (Rosaceae). Many hellebore species are poisonous.
Malorie Blackman is a British writer who held the position of Children's Laureate from 2013 to 2015. She primarily writes literature and television drama for children and young adults. She has used science fiction to explore social and ethical issues. Her critically and popularly acclaimed Noughts and Crosses series uses the setting of a fictional dystopia to explore racism. Blackman has been the recipient of many honours for her work including, most recently, the 2022 PEN Pinter Prize.
Charlotte Elouise Dimmock is an English gardening expert and television presenter. She was a member of the team on Ground Force, a BBC gardening makeover programme, airing from 1997 to 2005.
Eileen Caddy MBE was a spiritual teacher and new age author, best known as one of the founders of the Findhorn Foundation community at the Findhorn Ecovillage, near the village of Findhorn, Moray Firth, in northeast Scotland. The commune she started in 1962 with husband Peter Caddy and friend Dorothy Maclean was an early New Age intentional community where thousands of people from dozens of countries have resided in years since. One of the UK's largest alternative spiritual communities, The Sunday Times referred to it, on Caddy's death, as "the Vatican of the New Age".
Debi Gliori is a Scottish writer and illustrator of children's books.
William Baylor Hartland (1836–1912) was a plantsman from Ireland.
Echinacea purpurea, the eastern purple coneflower, purple coneflower, hedgehog coneflower, or echinacea, is a North American species of flowering plant in the family Asteraceae. It is native to parts of eastern North America and present to some extent in the wild in much of the eastern, southeastern and midwestern United States as well as in the Canadian Province of Ontario. It is most common in the Ozarks and in the Mississippi/Ohio Valley. Its habitats include dry open woods, prairies and barrens.
Carol Ann Klein is an English gardening expert, who also works as a television presenter and newspaper columnist.
Patricia "Trish" Telesco is an American author, herbalist, poet, lecturer, Wiccan priestess, and folk magician who has written more than 60 books on a variety of subjects ranging from self-help and cookbooks to magic, folklore and global religion. Articles by Telesco have appeared in several mainstream publications such as Cosmo, Woman's World, and Cats' Magazine, and in such Neopagan publications such as Circle Network News and popular websites such as The Witches' Voice.
Alan Herbert Vauser Bloom was a British horticulturist and steam engine enthusiast. During his life he created over 170 new varieties of hardy perennial plants. These and Alpine plants and conifers were his specialities. He invented the garden feature of freestanding island beds, set in open lawn. He wrote some 30 books and appeared on radio and television.
Ruth Imogen Stout was an American author best known for her "No-Work" gardening books and techniques.
Tony Avent is an American horticulturist and plantsman. He and wife and business partner, Anita Avent, own Plant Delights Nursery and Juniper Level Botanic Garden in Raleigh, North Carolina. In addition, he is a plant explorer, author and public speaker.
Susanna Mary Clarke is an English author known for her debut novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004), a Hugo Award-winning alternative history. Clarke began Jonathan Strange in 1993 and worked on it during her spare time. For the next decade, she published short stories from the Strange universe, but it was not until 2003 that Bloomsbury bought her manuscript and began work on its publication. The novel became a best-seller.
Margery Fish was an English gardener and gardening writer, who exercised a strong influence on the informal English cottage garden style of her period. The garden she created, at East Lambrook Manor in Somerset, has Grade I listed status and remains open to the public.
Renee Shepherd is a gardening entrepreneur and writer known for heirloom seed advocacy and garden-based cooking using home-grown herbs. Better Homes and Gardens called her "a groundbreaking gardener", and Businessweek a "pioneering innovator" who helped popularize specialty vegetables and cottage garden flowers for home gardening and gourmet restaurants.