For 15 years, Valerie Easton wrote a beloved gardening column for Pacific Northwest Magazine of The Seattle Times. She is the author of five gardening books including, Artists in Their Gardens, The New Low-Maintenance Garden: How to have a Beautiful, Productive Garden and the Time to Enjoy it, A Pattern Garden: The Essential Elements of Garden Making, and for Pacific Northwest gardeners, Plant Life: Growing a Garden in the Pacific Northwest, a collection of her best columns from The Seattle Times.

Valeri Easton has contributed articles on gardens, homes, and the people who make them to a wide variety of publications, including Metropolitan Home, Fine Gardening, and Gardens Illustrated. She trained as a Master Gardener and was for eighteen years the horticultural librarian at the University of Washington in Seattle. Currently, Valerie Easton gardens and teaches yoga in the village of Langley, on Whidbey Island, Washington.