You may already know her as the woman who designed the vegetable gardens in front of City Hall. But she is also the author of The Wedding Gnome, a newsletter that weekly takes on gardening issues that irritate its author.

October's rants, for example, included the castigation of garden center owners for their lack of imagination in presenting fall design ideas for gardeners; greedy and impatient plant collectors who won't wait for new varieties to be properly trialed, and the truth about the winter hardiness of coneflowers.

Angela's determination that plants be thoroughly tested before they are marketed is hard won. She is the head of Plant Nouveau, which markets new varieties. If she's wrong, her company suffers the consequences to its reputation.

And she sees breeders rushing plants to market before their hardiness -- or even  their eventual size -- is known.

"I am a gardener, too," she said. "I want to have everything new. It is like fashion. People are always going to want new things. It would be nice if people did it the right way."

Angela lives in the Guilford neighborhood of Baltimore with her husband and her two children - and about 50 garden gnomes. Hence, the name of her newsletter.

If you'd like to read Angela on a regular basis, you can subscribe at her Web site, Plants Nouveau.

Her newsletter is also full of tips and plant suggestions -- and terrific pictures of new plants and ones that will be available soon.  

Photo credit: Angela Treadwell-Palmer