Photo: Mark Weaner
Expanding the practice of landscape design
Our accomplished group of presenters will include Julianne Schrader Ortega and Keith Green of Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (PHS), landscape designer Laura Kuhn, pollinator expert Douglas Sponsler, Bill Thomas of Chanticleer, and NDAL Founder and landscape designer Larry Weaner.
Or scroll down for session details
Registration will be open and recordings will be viewable for 3 months after each live session date.
CEUs available (APLD, LA CES, NOFA)
Student Scholarships available! Scroll down below the session descriptions list for details.
“What a tremendously valuable resource this is.”
-2022 Winter Virtual Series Attendee
Photo by Mark Weaner
Mini Meadow Making
(Non-professional)
Graham Laird Gardner
With as little as a few square feet of space, you can grow a beautiful, low-maintenance, naturalistic meadow that supports a diversity of plants, pollinators, and a plethora of other living things - not to mention its visual appeal in your home garden. Find inspiration in natural spaces so you can successfully site, design, plant, and care for your own mini meadow. From site preparation and plant selection, to designing and planting, you’ll learn how to go from a bare canvas to a bright, flower-filled mini meadow, even with minimal gardening experience - including advice on how to care for your wildflower planting for many colorful seasons to come.
Tuesday, March 7, 2023 | 2:00 - 3:15 PM EST
-
Graham Laird Gardner, author of Tiny + Wild: Build A Small-Scale Meadow Anywhere (Cool Springs Press, expected March 2023), has 25 years of experience in landscape design and project management in public, private, and non-profit sectors. Beyond his residential design projects, he has worked with the Denver Parks Department, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Rhode Island Natural History Service, Cooperative Extension offices, and native plant societies. Graham's diverse experiences working in New England, Colorado, California, and Puerto Rico have reinforced his passion for creating high-functioning, water-smart, and low maintenance landscapes inspired by nearby native plant communities.
Every Garden is an Intervention:
Rejecting the Eco-Purity Pledge and Embracing Compromise to Foster Resilience
(Professional & Non-Professional)
Laura Kuhn
Every garden, no matter how small, is a human intervention in an ecological system. The more we understand that system, the more effectively we can balance ecological resilience with human functional needs and garden design principles. We will review case studies of landscape projects in suburban Boston and Cambridge, MA, alongside systems theory, to explore how to create beautiful, ecologically vibrant gardens on small-scale residential properties.
Thursday, March 9, 2023 | 2:00 - 3:15 PM EST
-
Laura Kuhn, MCH, MCLP, AOLCP, is a self-taught ecological landscape designer who has been designing landscapes in New England and beyond since 1997. Based in Somerville, MA, Laura merges her interests in human wellbeing, sustainability, horticulture, and choreography to create artistic and wild outdoor spaces for private clients in New England. Laura holds a bachelor’s degree in Human Development from Tufts University, and in 2021 she completed a graduate certificate in Sustainable Cities & Communities from Harvard Extension School.
The Art of Gardening at Chanticleer
(Professional & Non-Professional)
Bill Thomas
Join Chanticleer's Executive Director and Head Gardener Bill Thomas for a visual tour and behind-the-scenes look at what the Washington Post calls “one of the most interesting and edgy public gardens in America.” Chanticleer is known for its residential-scale plant combinations featuring foliage textures and colors, its wide variety of containers, and its imaginative homemade furniture. The garden aims to be environmentally responsible, visually exciting, educational, and fun. Bill will offer insights on what inspires this special place.
Tuesday, March 21, 2023 | 2:00 - 3:15 PM EDT
-
Bill Thomas, a horticulturist, arrived at the 50-acre pleasure garden Chanticleer on April Fools’ Day, 2003. Previously, he was at Longwood Gardens for 26 years, the last five in Research and Production and the prior 21 in Education. Bill leads the talented and creative Chanticleer staff in its continued development of the young garden, now in its 30th year. He emphasizes an environmentally sensitive and multi-century approach to the property and is unifying the former estate into one cohesive garden. The staff and he co-authored The Art of Gardening (Timber Press 2015).
At Home in a Wild Landscape
(Non-Professional)
Larry Weaner, FAPLD
Thoughtfully arranged native plantings can reduce maintenance, improve the environment, and enhance the beauty of any residential property. Achieving these goals however, requires a basic understanding of the patterns and processes that govern plants in the wild, and an effort to apply that understanding to a designed environment. Through a series of detailed case studies, including his own small suburban property, Larry will show how artistically composed native plant compositions can result in both ecologically healthy and experientially rich home landscapes.
Friday, April 21, 2023 | 2:00 - 3:15 PM EDT
-
Larry Weaner, FAPLD, founded Larry Weaner Landscape Associates in 1982 and established NDAL in 1990. He is nationally recognized for combining expertise in horticulture, landscape design, and ecological restoration. His book Garden Revolution: How Our Landscapes Can Be a Source of Environmental Change (Timber Press 2016) received an American Horticultural Society (AHS) Book Award in 2017. In 2021 he received the AHS Landscape Design Award and the APLD Award of Distinction.
Gardens as Pollinator Habitat:
Limitations, Potential, and Context
(Non-professional)
Douglas Sponsler
Together, flowering plants and flower-visiting insects make up a third of the Earth’s species. In this talk, we will trace the relationship between flowers and insects from the primordial forests of the Cretaceous to your backyard garden. Along the way, we will discuss the limitations and potential of gardens as pollinator habitat, and we will explore how gardening might be reimagined as a cooperative, landscape-scale practice that could change the ecological meaning of cities and suburbs.
Tuesday, March 14, 2023 | 2:00 - 3:15 PM EDT
-
Douglas Sponsler, PhD, was born and raised in Philadelphia, where his love for nature grew out of time spent in urban parks and gardens. He completed his PhD in entomology at Ohio State University, did a postdoc at Penn State University, and is currently a postdoc at the University of Würzburg in Germany. From the fields of Ohio, to the rooftops of Philly, to the Alps of Germany, the theme of his work has been the relationship between flowers, insects, and people.
Native Edible and Medicinal Plants in the “Wild-Designed” Landscape
(Non-Professional)
Jared Rosenbaum
Native edible and medicinal plants can be integrated into landscape gardens and ecological restorations to create habitats that support both people and their local ecosystems. We'll consider a habitat-based approach to stewarding edible and medicinal plants that translates to home landscapes, parks, and farms. Field botanist, native plant grower, and restoration practitioner Jared Rosenbaum asks whether we can honor native ecosystems and cultural lifeways as we restore habitats that support people, other animals, and native plants alike.
Thursday, March 16, 2023 | 2:00 - 3:15 PM EDT
-
Jared Rosenbaum is a botanist, native plant grower, and Certified Ecological Restoration Practitioner. He is a founding partner at Wild Ridge Plants, LLC, a business that grows local ecotype native plants and performs botanical surveys. Jared is the author of Wild Plant Culture: A Guide to Restoring Native Edible and Medicinal Plant Communities (New Society Publishers 2022), as well as the children’s book The Puddle Garden (Wild Ridge Press 2015), about native plants and wildlife.
The Bower:
Native Plant Landscape and Sculpture Park
(Professional & Non-Professional)
Bill Allis, Jane Allis, & Ethan Dropkin
Part 1: Case Study Presentation
This case study describes the conception, planning, design, procurement, installation and management of a native plant landscape and sculpture park through the eyes of the founders. A whirlwind three years began the transformation of the 36-acre residential property with large native plant gardens, an enhanced natural meadow and savanna matrix, a series of six small constructed wetland pools, and forest habitat all organically maintained with limited staff. The Bower opened in 2021 and continues to grow, evolve, and demonstrate the rewards of combining ecology and art.
Part 2: Panel
Landscape designer Ethan Dropkin will join the Allis’s in an informal discussion on the processes, challenges, and results of their collaboration at The Bower. Attendee participation and questions will be encouraged.
Thursday, March 23, 2023 | 2:00 - 3:30 PM EDT
-
Bill Allis, PE, retired as an Environmental Engineer, for Gannett Fleming, an international consulting firm, in 2018. As a project manager and business leader, he designed large municipal civil infrastructure. Beyond his current role as The Bower’s Co-Founder/Manager, Bill is engaged in landscape scale conservation and enhancement as board member and Stewardship Committee Chair of the Central Pennsylvania Conservancy.
Jane Allis, M.Ed, completed a 40-year career as an early childhood educator and administrator in 2016. Career highlights included education program development and serving as Project Manager for the land acquisition, consultant selection and design build of The Londonderry School, one of the first LEED accredited school designs in Pennsylvania. Beyond her current role as The Bower’s Co-Founder/Manager Jane is engaged as a property holder in a public/private pilot conservation project, the Catoctin Stewardship Initiative, in Maryland; and serves as Chapter President of the Wild Ones of South-Central Pennsylvania.
Ethan Dropkin, MLA, landscape designer at Larry Weaner Landscape Associates (LWLA), has an extensive and in-depth understanding of native plants, the patterns and processes they express in nature, and their effective use in the designed landscape. He has been involved with numerous private gardens and public projects including Riverwalk Park in Tarrytown, NY, and a planting plan for Kingsland Wildflowers in Brooklyn, NY. Prior to joining LWLA, Ethan worked as a designer at Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, as a horticultural designer and technician for Cornell University, and as a horticulturist for the New York City Parks Department.
Simple by Design:
Landscapes for Deep Social Impact
(Professional & Non-Professional)
Keith Green & Julianne Schrader Ortega
Learn about how simple and scalable green interventions such as trees, community gardens and remediated vacant lots can provide deep impact for communities. The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s (PHS) mission is to advance health and well-being through horticulture, and their “simple by design” landscape tactics have helped to improve quality of life in urban communities throughout the Philadelphia region. Explore research done by University of Pennsylvania researchers and others that shows the impact of PHS’s greening programs on factors such as health, safety, and violence and gain a deeper understanding of how the built environment can impact society.
Wednesday, March 29, 2023 | 2:00 - 3:15 PM EDT
-
Keith Green is the Senior Director of LandCare and Workforce Development for PHS, where he leads a nationally-recognized model that transforms urban neighborhoods by cleaning, greening, and maintaining vacant lots. He directs the development of new initiatives and the expansion of the LandCare program and PHS’s workforce development programming, overseeing the long-term strategy, determining the scale of the work to be performed each season, and cultivating key partnerships to ensure the successful delivery of the program. Keith’s expertise lies in vacant land stabilization and management, capacity building for small business contractors, community engagement, job training, and landscape construction.
Julianne Schrader Ortega, the VP and Chief of Healthy Neighborhoods at PHS, drives horticultural and equity-centered strategies to scale the impact of gardening on health and well-being in communities across greater Philadelphia. Julianne advances partnerships with neighborhood leaders working to garden together and create livable environments, grow economic opportunity, increase access to fresh food, and build social connections in their communities. As Director of the Citywide School Garden Initiative with GrowNYC, Julianne worked to connect 400 New York City public schools with the resources needed to start and sustain learning garden programs. She also spent over a decade with the Rainforest Alliance.
Novel Plant Communities:
A Real World Approach to Managing Spontaneous Vegetation
(Professional)
Jack Ahern, FASLA and Larry Weaner FAPLD
Spontaneously occurring plants and plant communities are typically either eliminated or neglected. Our two presenters will discuss more nuanced and selective approaches for managing the mix of native and exotic species that typically colonize our urban and suburban landscapes.
Part 1: Jack Ahearn will discuss prevailing and alternative attitudes towards invasive exotic plants. He will also discuss ways to influence spontaneous vegetation in a manner that is both desirable and attainable including soil/substrate issues, selective removal methods, adaptive management, and managing public expectations.
Part 2: Larry Weaner will show how an understanding of the life cycles, proliferation strategies, and environmental vulnerabilities of plants, desirable and undesirable, can help practitioners more effectively influence the vegetative trajectory of spontaneous plant assemblages.
Friday, March 31, 2023 | 1:00 - 4:30 PM EDT
-
Jack Ahern, PhD, FASLA, is emeritus professor of landscape architecture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects. He researches and writes about how ecological knowledge and theory can be applied in landscape design and management – at multiple scales and in diverse contexts – from cities to forests. His latest book is Design with Nature on Cape Cod (UMass Press 2022).
Larry Weaner, FAPLD, founded Larry Weaner Landscape Associates in 1982 and established NDAL in 1990. He is nationally recognized for combining expertise in horticulture, landscape design, and ecological restoration. His book Garden Revolution: How Our Landscapes Can Be a Source of Environmental Change (Timber Press 2016) received an American Horticultural Society (AHS) Book Award in 2017. In 2021 he received the AHS Landscape Design Award and the APLD Award of Distinction.
Wild Solutions on an Urban Pre-K-12 School Campus
(Professional & Non-Professional)
Kay McConnell
Environmentally friendly "demonstration gardens" are commonly placed in isolated locations on school campuses. In contrast, the Nature Trail plantings that wind through Friends School of Baltimore exemplify the added benefits of a campus-wide approach. The project was initiated in 2005, and planted incrementally as a collaboration between the school and Guilford Garden Club. While habitat conservation and education were at the heart of the project from the beginning, the partners soon realized these gardens could also be used to slow and absorb surface water on the school’s sloping campus. Project founder Kay McConnell will describe the landscape's continuing development, and how each new garden heals a disturbance, solves a problem, or both.
Thursday, April 13, 2023 | 4:00 - 5:30 PM EDT
-
Kay McConnell is a ecological garden design consultant based in Baltimore, MD, with a passion for native plants and education. Her work in both private and public gardens has spanned the Mid-Atlantic, New England, and as far south as Tennessee, and emphasizes the value of intimate understanding of and interaction with the land that supports our work and play. Kay was awarded the Garden Club of America's Elizabeth Abernathy Hull Award and Zone VI Civic Improvement Award for her contributions to the collaboration project between the Friends School of Baltimore and the Guilford Garden Club.
Kill Your Lawn
(Non-Professional)
Dan Jaffe Wilder
Every house in America should be fronted with a non-native monoculture with the maintenance requirements of a golf course and the ecological value of a strip mine; a place where all flowers are called weeds and signs to the extent of ‘keep off’ are the norm. Does the idea seem a bit odd to you? It’s time to take a second look at this idea we call lawn. Join ecologist, horticulturist, and author Dan Jaffe Wilder to explore alternatives; from whole lawn replacement options, to strategies for reducing lawn inputs while increasing their ecological value.
Wednesday, April 19, 2023 | 2:00 - 3:15 PM EDT
-
Dan Jaffe Wilder is an ecologist, horticulturist, and botanist with over fifteen years’ experience working with native plants and their associated ecology. His work has ranged from classrooms to nurseries to botanical gardens to wildlife refuges and specializes in native plant ecology, propagation, wildlife habitat construction, and native edible landscapes. Dan is the Director of Applied Ecology for the Norcross Wildlife Foundation whose mission is to protect, enhance, and expand wildlife through conservation, education, and support. A prolific photographer and author, Dan’s book Native Plants for New England Gardens was released in 2018 (Rowman & Littlefield).
Photo by Mark Weaner
“As always, these presentations are excellent and offer so much important and practical information. Very useful.”
“I loved it all! My brain was definitely on fire with ideas and how to apply them into my practice.”
Registration & NDAL Events Portal
Students please email verification of student status (ie. course schedule, student ID) to info@ndal.org for student discount code.
When registering on the NDAL Events Portal you will be asked to either sign into your existing account or create one. This account will give you exclusive access to the session recordings and course materials. These materials will be available until three (3) months after the live event dates.
To register multiple staff members at once, please email info@ndal.org with their full names, email addresses, and session title(s). We can then register them and send an online invoice for payment.
Registration will be refunded only if notification is received before ten (10) working days prior to the live event date less a $10 processing fee.
Student Scholarships | Free Individual Session Attendance
Students and recent graduates are invited to apply for scholarships granting free registration to one of the virtual sessions. Two scholarships per session will be awarded.
Eligibility: Current undergraduate/graduate student or matriculation in 2022.
To apply: Please submit no more than 1 page description of why you’re interested in the particular session you’re applying to attend, and your resume. You are welcome to list multiple sessions as your next choices.
Due date: Applications taken on a rolling basis until filled. You are also welcome to apply after a live session date to view the recording.
To apply: Please email your letter and resume to Sara Weaner Cooper, NDAL Executive Director, at sweaner@ndal.org.
“I keep coming back. Haven’t been disappointed yet.”
Questions? Please contact:
Sara Weaner Cooper
Executive Director
New Directions in the American Landscape
sweaner@ndal.org
510-518-0430
Photo by Mark Weaner