Linda A. Chisholm has long been interested in the way that landscape design reflects and sometimes even shapes a culture. She studies social and intellectual history and holds a PhD from Columbia University. She teaches the history of landscape design at the New York Botanical Garden and is a popular lecturer at garden clubs and other organizations as varied as the Association of Professional Landscape Designers and the Jane Austen Society of New York. She is a Master Gardener who gardens with her husband, sometimes successfully, at their home in Nyack, New York.