Gordon Hayward is a garden designer, writer and lecturer living in Vermont. He has published nine books and authored numerous articles for national magazines, including over 50 articles for Fine Gardening and Horticulture. He will present two talks based on his latest books. In the first, The Welcoming Garden, he will discuss the process of developing a garden at the front of your house that will welcome, enliven, enrich and engage family and visitors. Using numerous illustrations he will explore the range of options, from a front yard that's mostly lawn to a dense front garden that conceals the house. "Creating harmony between your front garden and the front of your house is simply a matter of looking both outward and inward. To create that harmony, reacquaint yourself with the nature of your house, and then take a look inside both your house and yourself to see what you are made of." Time to rethink those old foundation plantings! In the second, Small Buildings, Small Gardens, he examines how small buildings and structures such as gazeboes, arbors, pergolas, bridges, fences and decks can be hugely helpful in planning new gardens, by providing anchors, centers and starting places for good garden design. These structures are also magnets for family and visitors, and once drawn to the structures - lingering in an arbor, walking under a pergola, or relaxing in a gazebo - people are in just the right place to appreciate those new gardens up close. Visit Gordon's web site at haywardgardens.com.

Karen Bussolini trained as a painter, which in her words has "turned out to be very good preparation for being a garden photographer and writer." Her work has appeared in numerous national garden magazines, including Garden Design, Horticulture, House Beautiful, Better Homes and Gardens, House and Garden, Organic Gardening, and The American Gardener, as well as several books, including Elegant Silvers: Striking Plants for Every Garden, and her newest, The Homeowner's Complete Tree & Shrub Handbook: The Essential Guide to Choosing, Planting, and Maintaining Perfect Landscape Plants, about which one reviewer states "the photography by Karen Bussolini is superb. If I could only have a small number of gardening books, this book would definitely be one." Although Karen travels far and wide, her roots are sunk deeply into the soil of a deer-infested mountainside in South Kent, Connecticut. Karen says: "Discovering sizzling plant combinations in other people's gardens lead me to look more closely at why some combinations really work while others are just neutral." In Jazzing up the Garden with Color and Contrast, she conveys a way of thinking about combining plants that anyone can easily use without angst or a color wheel.

Master of Ceremonies Michael Warren Thomas is the host of Naturally Green, heard on WYSL 1040 AM on Saturdays at 9 am, as well as other radio programs on restaurants, travel, and wine on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Michael organizes trips to the Philadelphia Flower Show, Longwood Gardens and more. Visit his website at SavorLife.com.