Rick Darke heads RICK DARKE LLC (www.rickdarke.co.uk) a Pennsylvania USA-based consulting firm specializing in landscape ethics, photography, and contextual design. Darke's work blends art, ecology, horticulture, and cultural geography in the creation, conservation, and management of broadly functional living landscapes.

A knowledgeable field ecologist and horticulturist, Darke's professional experience includes 16 years as Longwood Gardens' Curator of Plants, during which he studied and photographed a great array of world ecologies including those of South Africa, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the Canary Islands, and northern Europe. He continues to travel both hemispheres in search of ideas to sustain and enrich the global garden. His work has been featured on National Public Radio, in The New York Times, the Huffington Post, in Garden Design Magazine, BBC Gardens Illustrated and elsewhere.

Darke's approach to landscape design and management is grounded in first-hand observation of regional ecologies and cultural landscapes. He has studied and photographed North American plants in their habitats for more than 40 years, and this work is reflected in his books including The American Woodland Garden: Capturing the Spirit of the Deciduous Forest (Timber Press, 2002), which was profiled on National Public Radio and also received the American Horticultural Society's Book Award, the Garden Writers Association Golden Globe Award for book photography, the National Arbor Day Foundation's Certificate of Merit.

Darke is recognized as one of the world's experts on grasses and their use in public and private landscapes. His book, The Encyclopedia of Grasses for Livable Landscapes (Timber Press, 2007) includes over 1000 photos of grasses in global landscapes, and is the most complete reference on this subject. It has been published in French (Editions du Rouergue, 2007) and German (Verlag Eugen Ulmer, 2010)

Rick wrote the foreword for Doug Tallamy's shape-changing book, Bringing Nature Home: How you Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants (Timber Press, 2009).

Darke worked with Timber Press to produce The Wild Garden: Expanded Edition (2009). In addition to reproducing the complete unabridged text and all the original illustrations from William Robinson's revolutionary classic, this expanded edition includes new chapters and over 100 photos by Darke, placing Robinson's concept of wild gardening in modern ecological context.

Darke contributed illustrated chapters to two multi-author books published in 2011: The New American Sustainable Garden (Timber Press) includes Rick's chapter on Balancing Natives and Exotics in the Garden. Fallingwater (Rizzoli, 2011) includes his chapter Wright in the Woods: The Nature of Fallingwater's Landscape.

Rick contributed the preface, multiple essays and photography to Annik LaFarge's book On the High Line: Exploring America's Most Original Urban Park (Thames & Hudson 2012). A revised and expanded edition was published in June 2014.

Rick Darke and Doug Tallamy continued their collaboration with a jointly-authored new book, The Living Landscape: Designing for Beauty and Biodiversity in the Home Garden, published by Timber Press in June 2014. Chapters include "Layers in Wild Landscapes", "The Community of Living Organisms: Why Interrelationships Matter More Than Numbers", "The Ecological Functions of Gardens: What Landscapes Do", "The Art of Observation", and "Applying Layers to the Home Garden". With over 500 photos and 70,000 words The Living Landscape describes and illustrates a broadly inclusive approach to garden design that supports both humans and wildlife.

In 2014 Darke contributed to The Good Gardener?: Nature, Humanity and the Garden, a multi-author work edited by Annette Giesecke and Naomi Jacobs. Published by Artifice Books on Architecture (London, an imprint of Black Dog Press). This heavily illustrated book includes Darke's chapter titled "The Accidental Landscape".

Darke is currently working with Piet Oudolf and graphic designer Lorraine Ferguson on Gardens of The High Line: Elevating the Nature of Modern Landscapes, which includes an introductory chapter by High Line co-founder Robert Hammond. This large format book includes nearly 400 photos by Darke and Oudolf and is now available for preorder on Amazon. It will be available in June 2017.

Darke is a frequent lecturer on a diverse array of topics relating to gardens and global landscapes. His programs utilize state of the art digital presentation technologies and typically integrate video. For further information visit www.rickdarke.co.uk

Author, naturalist, and teacher Kathryn Wadsworth explores the outdoors, whether in the garden or the wild, and shares it with others through writing and photography. All of her work, fiction and non-fiction, illuminates our deep connection with the natural world. In addition to writing garden books and murder mysteries, she currently teaches writing and publishing at Peninsula College in Port Townsend, WA. She has specialized in nature and science communications, and has written articles and technical papers on plant life around the world. She has also produced and directed documentary films on topics ranging from the California gray whale to the impact of mining on the Navajo Nation. She has led and coordinated eco-tours around the world, and managed gardens in the arid southwest, tropical Hawaii and the Pacific Northwest.

Eric Toensmeier is the award-winning author of Paradise Lot and Perennial Vegetables, and the co-author of Edible Forest Gardens. He is an appointed lecturer at Yale University, a Senior Biosequestration Fellow with Project Drawdown, and an international trainer. Eric presents in English, Spanish, and botanical Latin throughout the Americas and beyond. He has studied useful perennial plants and their roles in agroforestry systems for over two decades. Eric has owned a seed company, managed an urban farm that leased parcels to Hispanic and refugee growers, and provided planning and business trainings to farmers. He is the author of The Carbon Farming Solution: A Global Toolkit of Perennial Crops and Regenerative Agricultural Practices for Climate Change Mitigation and Food Security was released in 2016. His writings can be viewed at www.carbonfarmingsolution.com and www.perennialsolutions.org.

Author, artist, photographer and lecturer, Dr. David Deardorff holds a PhD in Botany from the University of Washington. He has been on the faculty of the University of Hawaii in Plant Pathology, and Washington State University in Water Resources, where he taught the Master Gardener program. He also co-founded Plants of the Southwest in Santa Fe, NM, one of the first native plant nurseries in the U.S. He has directed major plant research projects, plant tissue culture programs, grown all kinds of plants in his own backyard, and worked at retail garden centers. He has over thirty years of experience as a plantsman.

Edmund Snodgrass started the first green roof nursery in North America and has collaborated on green roof research with colleges and universities. He is co-owner and president of Emory Knoll Farms Inc. Ed speaks and lectures widely on green roofs and has presented in England, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Canada and the US. Ed in 2009 was the recipient of the Spencer P. Ellis award from the Maryland Chapter of ASLA and is the 2011 recipient of the G.B. Gunlogson Award from the American Horticultural Society.