James A. Baggett
For the past few years I’ve been working as the editor of Country Gardens, what I like to think of as America’s favorite garden magazine. But I’ve been a garden editor and writer for almost 20 years now. Formerly I was editor of Perennials and Nature’s Garden magazines for Better Homes and Gardens Special Interest Publications, and before that the executive editor of Country Living Gardener and Rebecca’s Garden (Hearst). I am also the author of Flower Arranging, a Best of Martha Stewart Living Book (Oxmoor House) and the former garden editor of American Homestyle & Gardening (Gruner + Jahr). A graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, my early years in New York City were spent as a science editor, writing about dinosaurs and carnivorous plants for Scholastic Inc.’s classroom science magazine. I also spent a good part of the 1980s working as a celebrity journalist, interviewing more than 500 celebrities—everyone from Anne Bancroft to Ziggy Marley. In 2004 I relocated with my good dog Scout from New York City—where I tended a 10-by-20-foot garden behind an 1850 brownstone—to Des Moines, Iowa, where the shrinking lawn in front of my Arts & Crafts bungalow is slowly being replaced with flowerbeds.

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