Forty varieties of Sempervivum live on a stone wall in Ken Druse's garden. Click photo for larger image.

Ken Druse is passionate about gardening and horticulture, which is the likely reason the nationally renowned writer and photographer called his newest book, "The Passion for Gardening: Inspiration for a Lifetime."

The book isn't a how-to, but rather a meditation on why we garden. In it, Druse takes us on a tour of a number of extraordinary and inspiring landscapes, both large and small, public and private, including his own.

Those same gardens -- and the passion behind them -- will be featured April 20 when Druse speaks at the Fox Chapel Golf Club. The lecture and slide presentation, which benefits the Botanic Garden of Western Pennsylvania, is sponsored by the Garden Club of Allegheny County and the Village Garden Club of Sewickley.

Growing up in north central New Jersery, Druse had no notion of making a living in the garden.

"I was playing in the dirt. I came to the garden via fort building, toy trucks and mud pies," he says, laughing.

He majored in illustration and filmmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he received master's degrees in both subjects. While in college, he became enamored of houseplants. Then he visited Logees, a famous mail-order nursery in Connecticut, and discovered a burning passion.

"I was a match and I discovered gasoline at Logees," he says.

After college, he began doing plant illustrations.

"I loved to draw plants," he says. "I would take a week to make a drawing of a little plant and they'd give me $75."

Then he realized that photographing plants would be much less time-consuming and much more lucrative. Though not schooled in still photography, he turned to the camera, and, in a natural progression, began writing words to go with his pictures.

Out of expediency, a career was born. But Druse remains, first and foremost, a gardener. Over the years he has husbanded many plots. He started gardening outdoors in containers, progressed to a rooftop garden and finally, to his own plot. Currently he's working 2.6 rural acres in the northwest corner of New Jersey.

The area is being rapidly developed, which Druse finds "disheartening." It's one of the reasons he decided to write the book, hoping to remind people that when a tree is felled or a meadow bulldozed, a living thing is destroyed.

In his books and lectures, Druse tries to teach good horticultural and ecological practices. Gardeners can change the earth, he says, and not always for the better. People can aid the proliferation of invasive plant species at plant swaps. Bamboo and grasses that aggressively self-sow are examples of some of the "thugs" that turn up regularly, he says, because they are easy to grow and easy to divide.

"I call the pass-along-plant thing pass-along-pests," says Druse.

His own personal pest is Ranunculus 'Buttered Popcorn,' which he says spread all over his garden and even grew through the winter.

In his book, Druse spotlights the gardens of people who share his horticultural point of view. Each garden has what he describes as "soul" and bears the sign of a "guiding hand."

"I can go to a gigantic garden or a tiny garden. It can be high-style or modern and funky. I respond if that hand is there. I almost don't respond to gardens if there isn't a garden maker."

He says many public gardens have no soul because they are created by committee, with no single person in charge.

The gardens in the book illustrate various themes, from the ethic of giving back to the importance of preserving native species. The book also shows how diverse gardens can be -- ranging from a funky artists' playground in Oakland, Calif., to a woodland near Chicago -- and still be inspirational.

Though Druse is frequently on the road giving lectures, he looks forward to the time he can spend in his own garden, a woodsy, informal plot on the high part of a small island in a river. A stone bridge spans a canal that traverses the property. Judiciously planted with perennials, conifers and native plants, the garden takes advantage of trees already on the site, including a Japanese maple, a giant saucer magnolia and a pair of mature Japanese white cedars (Chamaecyparis pisifera).

"The garden is so diverting and restorative for me. It's Zen meditative therapy," he says.

"It's a wonderful repetitive task that helps me work through things and come out the other side. I miss my garden horribly when I'm not in it."

Druse doesn't like to be asked what his favorite plant is.

"The next one I see" is always his answer.

What Druse really worries about is the next generation of gardeners, and marketers' attempts to "sell" gardening.

"Gardening is art and fun, exciting and exhilarating and instructional. The one thing it isn't is trivial. They lump gardening into lawn chores and decorating. They treat gardening as if it were putting up Christmas lights."

A bit of a garden evangelist, Druse hope his converts will help him make the next generation green.

"If you meet a young person who is interested, get in there and do something about it. If you show a 5-year-old a bug, you've got him.

"Instead of pass-along plants, we need to pass along a passion."

Ken Druse's lecture/slide presentation "The Passion for Gardening" begins at 11 a.m. April 20 at the Fox Chapel Golf Club, 426 Fox Chapel Road. Lecture-only tickets are $25. Tickets including the 1 p.m. luncheon are $50 and for a 10:30 a.m. patron reception, $75. Information: 412-782-3518.