About Cindy

I was fascinated with plants and flowers from early childhood. A move to Hawaii gave me a chance to take care of the tropical garden surrounding our home. Growing up in a military family allowed many opportunities to visit exotic foreign countries like Brazil and the Philippines where I experienced new cultural traditions and explored many tropical botanic gardens.

After graduating from the University of California Santa Barbara, I went to work for the Denver Museum of Natural History as a foreground preparator. I learned the art of reproducing botanical specimens for diorama exhibits.

After eight years I created my own company Botanic Reproductions. For the fifteen years that followed I worked as a private exhibit contractor reproducing three-dimensional plants and scale models for various museum and government clients.

I returned to college to study ornamental horticulture in San Francisco. This knowledge led to lobby design opportunities working with live plants in the hotels of San Francisco.

A move to the Pacific Northwest offered me opportunities to grow flowers and plants I had only read about. My intuitive creative urges pulled me into the realm of the mystical. I began to receive information on how to garden in ways that are in harmony with the seasonal rhythms of a year. My notes of these experiences became my books. Garden Notes (’93) is a journal for working with the Nature Devas and Nature Spirits of your garden. Queen D’s Fairy Recipe Book (’94) a collection of teas, bath formulas, perfumes and oils given to me by a Fairy Queen. Sacred Places Sacred Plants of the Columbia River Gorge (’04) is based on my work for the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center.

Painting has always been an integral part of my museum career requiring watercolor sketches and field notes on each plant that I reproduced. I began painting with oils after a friend suggested I take up fine art painting. I love to paint miniatures, which allow me to capture a fleeting moment in a garden or that of a wild natural place.