Extreme Gardening In The Hudson Valley: Spring Workshop March 11

From the Native Plant Center

VALHALLA, NY — The Native Plant Center’s 2019 Spring Landscape Conference, Extreme Gardening: Native Plant Designs for Resiliency, will examine best practices for adapting to difficult landscape situations. The event will be held at Westchester Community College in Valhalla on Monday, March 11, from 8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., with a snow date of Friday, March 15.

“Gardeners and landscape professionals are continually faced with radical conditions—both climate- and site-related—in their quest to create beautiful, sustainable environments,” says Carol Capobianco, Director of The Native Plant Center. “Severe storms, wet areas, steep slopes, and urbanization are challenges that exasperate even skilled experts.”

The conference will include four presentations that will explore native plant design solutions for extreme circumstances, and techniques for restoring balance to natural systems. Dr. Alexander Felson of Yale University will open the conference with a look at the importance of merging science and design in creating resilient urban landscapes. Deanna Curtis will describe how The New York Botanical Garden manages its thousands of trees in the face of a changing climate. Krissy Boys will discuss the ways Cornell Botanic Gardens has confronted extreme site challenges. The final speaker, Jeffrey Longhenry of Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects, will offer insight into strategies for evaluating a landscape for restoration.

The conference is approved for four Professional Development Hours (PDHs) accredited by the Landscape Architecture Continuing Education System (LA-CES), two Continuing Education Units (CEUs) accredited by the International Society of Arboriculture (ISA), and for the first time, four professional credits (CNLP-NY) accredited by the New York State Nursery & Landscape Association. Registration for the conference is required; the fee depends on whether professional credits are requested.

For further details and to register, visit www.nativeplantcenter.org or call 914-606-7870.

Lecture details:

Creating Resilient Urban Landscapes:

Designing and maintaining resilient urban landscapes requires testing and adaptive management as well as public engagement and education. Through cooperative work among ecologists and designers, specific research sites can be identified and studied to generate robust scientific data that help inform and adaptively manage resilient landscapes. Find out how these collaboratively devised experiments meld scientific investigation with purposeful landscape design. Alexander J. Felson, PhD, is an associate professor at Yale University, a senior certified ecologist, and a registered landscape architect. He founded the Urban Ecology and Design Lab and runs Ecopolitan Design; the firm and lab integrate applied ecology with landscape architecture and urban design focusing on climate adaptation, green infrastructure, and resilient ecosystems.

Storm Readiness: Managing Trees

Frequent severe weather events have become a common occurrence. Trees are especially at risk during intense storms. Learn how The New York Botanical Garden monitors and cares for its mature and valued specimens, which species are able to confront extreme weather, and how to guard beloved woody plants from nature’s ferocity. Deanna F. Curtis is Curator of Woody Plants and Landscape Project Manager at The New York Botanical Garden, where she develops, documents, and helps manage the historic hardy tree and shrub collections. She also manages the horticultural aspects of the Garden’s landscape design and construction projects. She holds a degree in horticulture from Michigan State University and graduate degrees in both horticulture and landscape architecture from Cornell University.

Designing for Streambanks and Slopes

What can be done when manmade flood control measures fail or a steep grade of varying conditions is colonized by invasive plants? Explore how the Cornell Botanic Gardens dealt with both issues and turned daunting situations into successful restoration and usable native habitat. Krissy Boys is the Natural Areas Wildflower Gardener at Cornell Botanic Gardens, where she manages the Mundy Wildflower Garden. She began her 25-year gardening career with native plants under Millersville Plant Conference founder F.M. Mooberry at the Brandywine Conservancy and Brandywine River Museum. She has been a member of the Steering Committee of the Finger Lakes Native Plant Society since 1998.

Narratives of Ecology and Culture:

A design framework based on exploration of a site’s ecological and cultural history provides focused strategies for resilience, and reveals native plant communities with the capacity to restore degraded land and site narratives with the capacity to inspire stewardship. Gain insight into strategies for coaxing a design idea from the history of a site and adapting principles of restoration ecology to large and small landscapes for enduring environments. Jeffrey Longhenry, Senior Associate at Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects, leads projects that emphasize contemporary expression of ecological systems within the landscape. Current work includes Hudson Yards Public Square and Gardens, Naval Cemetery Landscape, and master planning efforts at Mt. Cuba Center and the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. He earned his Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley.

The Native Plant Center, a program of the Westchester Community College Foundation, was established in 1998 as the first national affiliate of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas. The Native Plant Center maintains demonstration gardens and educates the public about the environmental necessity, economic value, and natural beauty of native plants through conferences, classes, and its Go Native U certificate program.