Frances Tenenbaum, the editor of the Taylor's Guides and other Houghton Mifflin garden books, inherited the gene for gardening from her mother, whose bible was Norman Taylor's original Encyclopedia of Gardening. Those genes remained dormant during her years as a newspaper reporter and didn't surface until she owned her own home and the land around it. In that respect, she is like many of our readers and so can well understand their interests and their questions. But now she has other mentors: the experts who write the garden books she edits. Frances and her books have received numerous awards — from the American Horticultural Society, the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, and the Garden Writers Association of America, of which she is a fellow. Two of her books have won that organization's highest acclaim, the Award of the Year: Tasha Tudor's Garden and Washington's Gardens at Mount Vernon. Because the balcony of her Cambridge, Massachusetts, apartment belongs to her miniature dachshund, Pumpkin, these days Frances's gardening is restricted to the summer months she spends on Martha's Vineyard. And always to the interests of her authors and their readers.