Valerie Easton hasn't missed a week writing her weekly gardening column for the Seattle Times in 15 years. Her newest book is about how to make simple, naturalistic and organic bouquets from your garden that are the antithesis of overworked, overdone flower arrangements that are more about decorating than nature. She's written four earlier books; the most recent, The New Low-Maintenance Garden, was named one of the Ten Best Home and Garden Books of 2009 by Amazon.Val's own low-maintenance garden, the muse for the book, has been published in The New York Times, This Old House, and Horticulture. She has contributed articles on gardens, homes, and the people who make them to a variety of magazines, including Metropolitan Home, Fine Gardening, and Gardens Illustrated. Valerie trained as a Master Gardener and was for eighteen years the horticultural librarian at the University of Washington in Seattle. She gardens, teaches yoga, and blogs (www.valeaston.com) in the village of Langley, on Whidbey Island, Washington.