Stephanie Feeney died on December 5, 2000, at the age of 52, after a two-year struggle with breast cancer. She leaves her husband Larry, canine undergardeners Emma and Byron, feline taskmaster Colette and many dear friends and supporters throughout the gardening world.

After her death her life and contributions to the Northwest gardening world were celebrated in articles in the Seattle Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Northwest Garden News and many of the regional gardening journals. The first edition of her Northwest Gardeners' Resource Directory appeared a decade earlier and its own expansion, through eight editions, tended to mirror and showcase the similarly dramatic expansion of the Pacific Northwest gardening community during those same years. The Pacific Northwest is today recognized as one of the most important and most innovative places in the horticultural world. Stephanie's books came to be accepted as the essential, authoritative guides to all that was happening in that world.

Her books were reviewed and praised by regional, national and even international magazines, including Sunset, Fine Gardening, Pacific Horticulture, Hortus West, and Gardens Illustrated. Gardeners on the Go: Seattle appeared on the regional best-seller lists of both the Seattle Times and the Portland Oregonian.

Born in Billings, Montana, Stephanie Feeney came to the Pacific Northwest by way of Nairobi, Kenya, San Francisco, California, the Aleutian Islands and Juneau, Alaska. She remained a dedicated traveler all her life and, at the time of her death, was at work upon Gardeners on the Go: London. Her enthusiasm for travel and for garden-oriented travel in particular were contagious and a highlight of her writing. She loved the moments of discovery, whether in a distant country or in her own Pacific Northwest "backyard", and relished the sharing of those discoveries with her fellow enthusiasts. It was this love of ferreting out the hitherto-unknown and unexpected which inspired all of her writing.

Stephanie was active in most of the regional horticultural societies, including the Whatcom Horticultural Society, of which she was a founder, the Northwest Horticultural Society, the Northwest Perennial Alliance, the Arboretum Foundation and the Oregon Hardy Plant Society. She was also a member of Garden Writers of America. Through her writings, her travels, and these organizations she developed a wide circle of friends and colleagues who shared and appreciated her enthusiam and energy.

And she was a gardener. The Feeney garden was featured in the book and video "Northwest Garden Style" , in a feature article in Pacific Magazine and was on numerous garden tours, including a one-day benefit for the local Hospice Program in the summer of 2000 that hosted more than 1000 gardeners from throughout the Northwest. Stephanie literally slept in the Feeney garden—in a bed constructed by her husband Larry that resided in their gazebo overlooking Lake Whatcom and the garden.