Valerie Easton started gardening to bring nature into the house, and she hasn’t stopped planting, picking, and arranging flowers and foliage for the last 40 years. Her latest book, Petal and Twig: Fresh Handmade Bouquets From Your Garden, will be published by Sasquatch in early 2012. Her own simplified little garden on Whidbey Island has been published in The New York Times, Horticulture and This Old House. For 18 years, Valerie worked as a horticultural librarian at the University of Washington. She hasn’t missed a week of writing her “Plant Life” column for Pacific Northwest Magazine of The Seattle Times in the last 15 years. She also writes feature articles for the Times on the region’s most creative gardens and homes. She writes about gardens and the people who make them for numerous publications, including Garden Design and Organic Gardening magazines. Val is the author of four gardening books, including The New Low Maintenance Garden (Timber Press, 2009) which was chosen by amazon.com as one of the Ten Best Home and Garden Books for 2009. Valerie teaches yoga in Langley, on Whidbey Island. She lives in Seattle and on Whidbey with her husband Greg and wheaten terrier Bridget.
Follow Val online at:
Website & blog: www.valeaston.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/valeaston

Petal & Twig
Reap the Rewards of Simple, Fresh Bouquets Year Round
Thurs, Feb 9 at 10 am / Rainier Room
Come learn about the joys of turning your entire plot into a cutting garden, then reaping the rewards with simple, fresh, handmade bouquets for the house. With photos from her Langley garden, Val will show how to plant to bring flowers and foliage indoors in every week of the year. This approach has nothing to do with decorating or accessorizing, with floristy, wires or foam. It’s simply about taking a delight in flowers, leaves, and whatever nature offers up. If you’re intimidated by the grandiosity or complications of flower arranging, all that fragrance and soul-stirring beauty will stay outdoors, rather than grace your indoor lives as well as your gardens.

Meet the author!
Book signing immediately
follows this seminar.