LISA Greene is no stranger to the Mid-Ocean News. The author of Bermuda's Flora, a 27-page engagement diary for 2008, wrote a regular gardening column for the newspaper for several years.

Bermuda's Flora contains 67 high-quality colour photographs, accompanied by written descriptions at the back of the book and offers just a snippet of Bermuda's vast botanical diversity. Some of the plants include Hottentot fig, Foxglove, the common Iceplant, Match-me-if-you-can, Olivewood, Shepherd's Needle, Water Hyacinth, Barometer Bush and Cat's-Claw, to name but a few.

Mrs. Greene admits that even over a seven year period of writing a weekly column for the newspaper, she barley made a dent in the vast range of plants in Bermuda and when it came to choosing which plants to include in the diary, it all came down to being selective - very selective.

"I want to cover a range of plants, so there are some common, some not so common, some native, invasive, endemic - a little of everything," she explains. "When I went into it I wanted each year to be a sampling of all sorts of things, I don't want themed books and that combined with what images came together and were good enough to go into the book, dictated what plants went into this book."

It is her aim, she elaborates, to publish a photographic guide to Bermuda's flora every year in the hope of getting a copy into every household in Bermuda; a guide of sorts that would be useful to the layman. What makes the diary unique is that once the actual diary pages are removed at the end of the year, the book becomes a field guide that can be kept for years.

"I wanted more people to become interested in Bermuda's flora and have more appreciation for the plants in their gardens and island wide," Mrs. Greene said.

"Because unless you know something about the plants there is no reason to take ownership of them. I also hoped that they will want to protect the botanical treasures that this island is so lucky to have and, at the same time have a better understanding of some of the threats of our botanical diversity."

Mrs. Greene says she first became hooked on plants and their stories when she worked at the Bermuda Botanical Gardens.

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