For the past twenty-eight years Judith Larner Lowry has been the proprietor of Larner Seeds in Marin County, California. She is author of Gardening with a Wild Heart: Restoring California's Native Landscapes at Home (UC Press) and her essays have appeared in Orion, Bay Nature, and other magazines and anthologies, including American Nature Writing 1996, edited by John A. Murray. She lives in northern California.