Doug Tallamy to Discuss “A Chickadee’s Guide to Gardening”

On October 6th, The Horticultural Alliance of the Hamptons’ annual Karish Program will feature Doug Tallamy discussing “A Chickadee’s Guide to Gardening.” Tallamy’s work encourages us to think of our gardens in the context of the broader environment and to consider the role they can play in conserving and restoring biodiversity. Using chickadees and other wildlife as guides, Doug will explain how plants that evolved in concert with local wildlife provide for their needs better than plants that evolved elsewhere. In the process, he’ll show how creating living landscapes by sharing our spaces with other living things will not impede our pleasurable garden experiences, but enhance them.

Doug Tallamy presents a timely subject, as we increasingly seek to incorporate native plants into gardens to create aesthetic beauty that also supports biodiversity. Tallamy strives to create landscapes in which insects, animals and aesthetic beauty coexist within an ecosystem. He challenges us to develop biodiverse gardens to attract and sustain wildlife with native plants and layers of herbaceous plants, shrubs and trees.

A professor in the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware, Doug Tallamy has authored 95 research publications and taught insect-related courses for 39 years. Chief among his research goals is to better understand the many ways insects interact with plants and how such interactions determine the diversity of animal communities. His book Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens won the 2008 the Garden Writers' Association’s Silver Medal. The Living Landscape, co-authored with Rick Darke, was published in 2014. Doug's new book Nature's Best Hope will be published in 2020. Among his awards are the Garden Club of America Margaret Douglas Medal for Conservation and the Tom Dodd, Jr. Award of Excellence, and the 2018 AHS B.Y. Morrison Communication Award.

The Karish Program begins with tours of local gardens reflecting Tallamy’s approach, followed by Tallamy’s lecture with slide show in Bridgehampton, a reception and plant sale. The cost of the day’s events is $100 for HAH members and $125 for non-members. Please visit HAHgarden.org for more details. The annual Karish Program is held in honor of founding HAH member Paul Karish of Amagansett.

The Horticultural Alliance of the Hamptons hosts lectures, garden tours and other programs year-round, to share knowledge about gardening and the environment on the East End of Long Island.