The Rocky Mountain Native Plant Primer

About the Author

Lauren Springer jumpstarted her career with the book The Undaunted Garden, her waterwise hellstrips, and the WaterSmart Garden she designed at Denver Botanic Gardens. She recently received the 2025 American Horticultural Society Landscape Design award. Other designs of note are at Denver Botanic Gardens’ Chatfield Farms, Santa Fe Botanical Garden, and the Gardens on Spring Creek in Fort Collins. Also a propagator, she holds a master’s degree in horticulture and has introduced numerous plants to the nursery trade. Her work is featured regularly in national and international books, programs, and magazines. Through her plantings, writing, speaking, and plant introductions, Lauren continues to help move the Rocky Mountain region toward a more plant-rich, creature-supportive, beautiful and resilient future.

 

A gardener since he could hold a shovel, Bryan Fischer holds a BS in horticulture and an interdisciplinary minor in organic agriculture from Colorado State University. Now he is Curator of Plant Collections for the Gardens on Spring Creek in Fort Collins, where he designed a half-acre Prairie Garden that has garnered national and international attention. Outside of the public garden realm, Bryan breeds and selects especially garden-worthy forms of native plants that retain their wildlife value, botanizes in wild spaces, and writes, speaks, and teaches regionally and nationally. Bryan is a regular contributor to Fine Gardening. He keeps an intensive personal garden where he trials both design concepts and his new plant introductions.