Sustainability in the Garden

Join us as we take a deep dive into the complex and sometimes controversial gardening topic of sustainability. This on-demand lecture series features four separate classes related to the overall theme. Each highly engaging session is modeled after a college course and is taught by a leading expert in the field. With each class you’ll receive not only in-depth instruction but also informative handouts to help you understand and visualize the concepts being discussed. Each class is offered on-demand, so you can view it at your leisure.

Plants for a Better Planet

Can plants truly save the planet? The presenters of this three-part course think so, and they will share exactly why and how they think you can help make that happen.

Flourishing in the
Shade

In this immersive online course, you will learn how to make the dark areas of your yard shine. Instructor Ed Lyon started his journey into ornamental gardening almost 30 years ago. Across that expanse of time, he owned four properties—all with shaded areas—so he was compelled to get serious about addressing shade issues to create display beds. He also became passionate about helping to educate other gardeners about succeeding in the shade.

MEET YOUR INSTRUCTORS

Kelly D. Norris

Kelly D. Norris is a plant expert, designer, and author of multiple books. Considered one of the leading horticulturists of his generation, Kelly designs both private and public gardens with acute ecological awareness. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Martha Stewart Living, Fine Gardening, and in numerous television, radio, and digital media appearances. His most recent book is New Naturalism: Designing and Planting a Resilient, Ecologically Vibrant Home Garden.

Kelly is the former director of horticulture and education at the Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden in Iowa, and he has received awards from institutions such as the Perennial Plant Association and the American Horticultural Society. He was given a fellowship from the Chanticleer Foundation in 2015 for his curatorial and plant exploration work.

Kelly holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in horticulture from Iowa State University.

Panayoti Keleidis

Panayoti Kelaidis is a plant explorer, gardener, and public garden administrator associated with Denver Botanic Gardens for over 40 years, where he is now senior curator and director of outreach. He has introduced hundreds of native ornamentals from throughout the western United States to general horticulture. He has taken six collecting trips to South Africa researching the high mountain and steppe flora there, made visits to the Andes and the Himalaya (Pakistan, Tibet, and China), and traveled throughout Europe, the Caucasus, Turkey, and New Zealand. He is currently president of the North American Rock Garden Society.

William Cullina

William Cullina has been described as an intrepid New England gardener, but native-plant guru might be a better moniker. Before becoming the executive director of the Morris Arboretum of the University of Pennsylvania in 2019, William spent eight years as the president and CEO of the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. Prior to that, he worked for 13 years as the nursery director and head propagator at the New England Wild Flower Society, where he developed the largest native-plant nursery in New England. William holds a bachelor’s degree in plant sciences from the University of Connecticut. An expert plantsman and skilled photographer, he is the author of several acclaimed books on native plants. He is also a popular lecturer, a regular contributor to national publications, and a frequent guest on television and radio.

Robert Schindelbeck

Robert Schindelbeck has been working in the field of soil science for the last 35 years. He is currently the director of the Soil Health Lab at Cornell University, where he works in extension, research, and teaching on issues related to soil health testing and adaptive soil management. His research focuses on soil tillage, soil compaction, cover cropping, and soil health. He has considerable field experience planning and executing experiments studying soil behavior under different conditions. In the Soil Health Laboratory, he continues to develop new procedures for soil health testing. He has delivered over 300 presentations on soil health, focusing on a strategic approach to field management.

Richard Hawke

Richard Hawke’s nickname should be Mr. Plant. As the director of ornamental plant research for the Chicago Botanic Garden, he has trialed, monitored, and written about more plants than most. Since 1986 his area of focus at CBG has been ornamental plant evaluation, invasive-species testing of wild-collected and ornamental plants, and the evaluation of native and cultivated plants for green roofs. In his “spare” time Richard lectures around the country and organizes educational symposiums in his role as incoming president of the Perennial Plant Association. When he’s not doing all that, you’ll likely find him stuck in Chicago commuter traffic—or tending his own incredible garden.

Sue Milliken and Kelly Dodson

Sue Milliken and Kelly Dodson are likely best known as purveyors of some of the coolest plants on the planet through their nursery, Far Reaches Farm in Port Townsend, Washington. The pair met as members of a seed-collecting expedition to Yunnan in 1997, and since then they have participated in too many plant exploration adventures to count. After a lifetime spent growing their plant knowledge and a long history of cultivating and conserving rare plants, they founded the nonprofit Far Reaches Botanical Conservancy in 2018. The conservancy’s mission is to facilitate the acquisition and introduction of threatened and vulnerable plants to North America. These plants are maintained as a living reference collection for public educational and scientific purposes, with the goal of conservation through cultivation via distribution to botanic and public gardens, botanists and researchers, and professional and amateur gardeners and horticulturists.

Ed Lyon

Ed Lyon has spent more than 20 years in the public garden field and is currently director of Reiman Gardens at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa. He holds an M.S. in horticulture and is the proprietor of Spellbound Garden Writing and Consultation, through which he presents gardening topics to public and professional audiences. He writes for Fine Gardening and other national gardening publications and is the author of Growing the Midwest Garden (Timber Press, 2015). He is as passionate about education as he is about horticulture. Most importantly, he is a lifelong gardener with dirt under his nails.