Helen Yoest and I have the happy job of spreading the news about great gardeners and their gardens. I do it on the local level, and Yoest has dedicated herself to bringing local gardens to national attention.

Yoest is a representative for the Garden Conservancy's Open Days Tour and is a member of the board at the JC Raulston Arboretum and maintenance team leader of its winter garden. She is also a scout and field editor for Meredith Corp. -- known for Better Homes & Gardens and its many special interest mags (Country Gardens, Perennial Magazine, Nature's Garden and so forth).

In her spare time, she raises three children and runs her own garden consulting business, GardensGardens and Tiger Lily's garden designs.

When asked how she finds the time to do it all, Yoest says, "I love all gardens and gardeners. We are a passionate group of people."

In April, I ran into Yoest at a wine tasting at the Little Herb House in Raleigh. I was absorbed in the story of the short history of the Zimmerman Vineyard, in the rolling hills between Asheboro and Thomasville, when the force of nature that is Helen Yoest sat down beside me.

She placed her ever-present camera next to mine on the chair between us, and for a couple of minutes we sipped Chardonnay and reveled in the sights and scents of the herb garden.

But Yoest was there on business. Before my second sip of a full-bodied red, she grabbed her camera and called to our hostess, Lisa Treadaway, to tiptoe through the herb garden with her.

"Come with us, Carol," Treadaway said. And that's how I learned the differences in the way Yoest and I do our work.

The stories begin

I stroll through a garden for a few minutes, interview the gardener and take a few pictures to remind me what I want to tell readers. I write my impressions down as soon after the visit as possible, spend a week or two editing and tweaking, hand it over to my editors and then call the next name on my to-meet list.

It takes about three weeks from the time I visit until you see the garden in print.

For Yoest, the process takes longer. As a scout and field editor, she not only locates potentially publication-worthy gardens, she also shoots about 50 photos of the landscape from every angle, draws a plot plan and writes a proposal to sell the garden to her editors and art directors.

Working as a scout sounds like fun. You talk to people about gardens, go on garden tours, visit garden centers and discuss gardeners, and locate gardens recommended by designers and architects. When one of her recommendations is selected by a magazine art director or editor, they rely on Yoest to "be their eyes when they can't be here."

Art directors want near perfection in their photo spreads, and that's where Yoest shines. For example, when the massive herb garden at the Little Herb House is in its glory, it's spectacular -- and enormous. The day of the wine tasting, Yoest was there to plan the site for a scaled-down version so readers can see how herb gardens can fit into smaller landscapes stylishly.

Treadaway was concerned about the expense of building yet another garden on her already fully functioning herb farm.

Yoest's answer was that it is her job as field editor to prop and style the shots -- she also provides names for all the plants, the sources of materials used and the manuscript -- so she would enlist Charles Luck Stone Center to provide the stone and labor to build the new little herb garden.

"They're very happy to source it for us for mention in a national magazine," Yoest said. "It's a win-win situation."

From start to finish, Yoest is involved with each garden for about three years. "I scout one year. If selected, they shoot the next year, and it's published the third year."

Familiar gardens

In addition to the Little Herb House, she is coordinating stories on several Raleigh gardens that will appear in Nature's Garden magazine. For Better Homes & Gardens, she is styling Jere Stevens' garden in Cary -- the very same storybook garden we visited in last month's Grapevine.

Editors rarely request singular "garden features," Yoest says. It costs money and time to visit gardens, and she isn't paid unless her submissions are chosen. Yoest finds her leads via word of mouth, attending garden tours, talking to designers and architects, other gardeners, nurseries and garden centers. Occasionally, she reads about them in The Grapevine.

Or it's the other way around -- many of the gardens I write about are chosen because Yoest put them on a tour or recommended them as local treasures.

Our chief criterion is that we want to see a fully realized garden design with some maturity. In fact, gardens considered for the Garden Conservancy tours must be of a certain age rather than newly planted ones that haven't weathered several years.

But Yoest says she takes photos of every garden she visits.

"You never know when an art director might need a single photo of, say, interesting fencing, a special nook, seasonal color or a dramatic container garden." When that happens, she combs through her file of thousands of photos and submits her prime examples.

So next time you fantasize about seeing your fantastic garden in a national magazine, go for it. I'll hear about it long before your story is published, and maybe it will make the local paper in the meantime.

I'm proud to say that in 2000 I was the first to recognize the potential in the Little Herb House. It seems that the likelihood of being plucked from The Grapevine for a shot at the big show is getting stronger with our local champion of Southern gardening, Helen Yoest, on the job.

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