C. Colston Burrell is an avid and lifelong gardener, garden designer, award-winning author, photographer, naturalist and teacher. He grows all of the hellebore species and innumerable hybrids alongside natives and other treasures in his garden in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Charlottesville, Virginia.
Cole holds a master’s degree in horticulture and has combined his interests in botany, ecology and design with a Master of Landscape Architecture degree from the University of Minnesota. He is a lecturer in the College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of Virginia and principal of Native Landscape Design and Restoration.
He is the author of many garden books, and has twice won the American Horticulture Society book award, in 2007 for Hellebores: A Comprehensive Guide and in 1998 for A Gardener’s Encyclopedia of Wildflowers. Cole is a contributing editor for Horticulture and frequently writes for Landscape Architecture, American Gardener and the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. His writing reflects a love of plants, and he champions their use in artistically designed, environmentally friendly gardens. Cole lectures internationally on design, plants and ecology.