BENJAMIN BENSCHNEIDER / THE SEATTLE TIMES Nancy Heckler's organic garden near Poulsbo features exuberant dahlias growing among fennel, beans and 30-foot rows of chard.		BARRY WONG / THE SEATTLE TIMES Rosie Atkins was deeply moved by Terry Welch's Woodinville sanctuary which includes Japanese elements such as this Zen garden of rocks and raked sand representing the mountains and Puget Sound.

So it was a pleasure to catch up with Atkins near the end of her first trip to the Northwest, just before she flew back to her home in London. We shared lunch at a Pike Place Market café where outside our window the dazzling combination of ruffled water, black clouds and shafts of sunlight conspired to make her want to linger. I was eager for the chance to hear her impressions after nearly two weeks visiting Seattle, Bellingham and Vancouver gardens.

Now In Bloom I still think of Gaultheria mucronata by its earlier name of pernettya, a shrub laden this time of year with plump and showy pink, white or purple-red berries. Bushy and compact (to 4 feet), it has glossy, spiny evergreen leaves, prefers cool, moist soil and partial shade, and makes a nice little informal hedge or front-of-the-border grouping. Remember to plant both a male and female to ensure fruiting.

With her architect husband Eric Brown, Atkins traveled as far north as Powell River to visit a man who exports cedar stumps to Japan and England. Atkins explains that these "museum pieces of the stump world" are highly prized in other countries, used as garden sculpture or patio tables. Now that she has seen similar stumps as part of our forest ecosystem, serving as nurse logs for huckleberries and raw material for woodpeckers, Atkins hopes to influence gardeners elsewhere to use the stumps in, perhaps, a more tasteful, naturalistic manner.

"I learned so much about coniferous forests," Atkins said of their trip north. "I can now tell the difference between hemlocks, cedars and firs. That is what we don't have in London, the wildness, that you have so close by here. London itself is 40 miles square." She thinks our gardens are more attuned to nature than British gardens, emphasizing that she likes to believe gardens everywhere will become more ecological.

She was impressed by the intelligent, thoughtful and skillful people she met in the Northwest gardening community. And no wonder, since Atkins had guided tours of such impressive places as Heronswood, Bloedel Reserve and the Miller Botanical Garden. "It was amazing to wake up in the morning at Heronswood," she says of her stay at the Kingston home, nursery and gardens of Dan Hinkley and Robert Jones.

"What I love is the individuality, that is what I get excited about," says Atkins, "you have such distinctive gardens." Gardens Illustrated puts its emphasis on people and places as well as plants, shown by Atkins' fascination with gardeners and their sense of place, as well as by what they grow. "There are always fashions in plants and gardens, and that changes," says Atkins. "We (in Britain) are to plants what you are to coffee — there are so many choices."

Terry Welch's Woodinville garden is one she particularly admired, as is Nancy Heckler's extravagant vegetable garden near Poulsbo. She loved Heckler's exuberantly healthy dahlias growing among the rows of chard and berries, and the entire aesthetic of the site, buildings, ornamentals and edibles. She thought Welch's garden was deeply moving and symbolic, with its incorporation of Japanese and Native-American elements as well as its homage to the English landscape tradition. "It has an unspoken feng shui atmosphere of healing. Gardens are so therapeutic, a touchstone for hope in times of uncertainty," says Atkins.

Now that she's visited the Northwest, says Gardens Illustrated editor Rosie Atkins, she can tell the difference between hemlocks, cedars and firs.

Despite the drama of Northwest water and weather going on outside the window, it was time for Atkins to head for the airport. And what was she taking back from her first trip to the Northwest? Trust a gardener to pass up the clothes and jewelry. Atkins was thrilled with a bison-shaped burl she'd found in Powell River, a woven cedar leash crafted by Sue Skelly of Reflective Gardens Nursery (Atkins doesn't own a dog, but marveled at the craftsmanship), and a feather bed. We walked out of the café discussing details of a first-ever Gardens Illustrated Northwest tour. Atkins hopes to bring readers here in the summer of 2003 to take a look at our distinctive gardens and see for themselves where those cedar stumps look right at home.

Valerie Easton is a horticultural librarian who writes about plants and gardens for Pacific Northwest magazine. She is the co-author of "Artists in Their Gardens" (Sasquatch Books). Her e-mail address is vjeaston@aol.com.