I was the newly appointed garden writer for the Sacramento Bee. I'd had one class in botany at the University of Nevada, Reno, and was completely out of my element when I was assigned to cover the arboretum. Warren Roberts (who became a great friend and source of knowledge during my 30-year career) took me on a tour of the facility and my notes must have looked like those of a student in Latin 101. I hurried back to the office and plunged into the Sunset Western Garden Book and Taylor's encyclopedia to see if I could identify plants he described like they were old friends. AND submitted what I'd written to him in hopes of catching errors. There were a lot of them. But it instilled in me the value of the arboretum and its corps of dedicated volunteers.