Native Plant Horticulture and Design
Expert Guest Speaker Series at Tree of Life Nursery
We’re gearing up for a tremendous fall season and we have lined up a great speaker series for you! After a couple of years of preaching the good news about “Replacing Your Lawn” with native plants, many of you are ready to learn more about plant combinations, design ideas and getting inspiration for working with native plants in your newly inspired habitat friendly landscapes. Tree of Life Nursery is pleased to announce our “Expert Guest Speaker Series” on Saturdays at 10 AM this October and November.
In keeping with our dedication to the best, we are very excited to have the privilege of hosting long time experts and authorities on native plant horticulture and garden design. Our speakers for this series are authors Bob Perry, Alrie Middlebrook, and Bob Allen, experts and practitioners include Greg Rubin, Barbara Eisenstein and garden designer Pat Overby.
If you could find this speaker lineup on any one or two day seminar, it would be an amazing experience that would cost you around 300 bucks! We are pleased to offer these valuable workshops for FREE.
Don’t miss this enriching information targeting both casual gardeners and landscape professionals. Dates, times and descriptions below.
Saturday October 2, 2010 – Opening Day!
10 AM -Tour of Gardens, 10% Discount on Plants All Day
Join owner Mike Evans as he introduces you to the nursery, to California native plants in landscaping and horticulture, and to our beautiful demonstration gardens.
Saturday October 9, 2010 – 10 AM
Alrie Middlebrook – Lecture and Book Signing
Author of Designing California Native Gardens, Founder of California Native Garden Foundation (CNGF). A northern California native, Alrie Middlebrook’s book addresses the ‘Plant Community’ approach to designing a native plant garden. Native plants that occur together naturally will look great combined together and will have the same cultural (water/soil/exposure) requirements. Alrie’s book will be available for sale and she will be available to sign them after her talk. She will focus on design principles as outlined in her book as well as highlighting groups of plants that look good in the fall.
Saturday October 16, 2010 – 10 AM
Bob Perry – Lecture and Book Signing
Author of Landscape Plants for California, renowned landscape architect. Bob Perry will be making his second appearance at Tree of Life Nursery with the timely release of his new book Landscape Plants for California Gardens. This 600 page volume filled with beautiful images and more useful information than you can shake a stick at promises to be one of the most valuable resources available to both landscape professionals and private individuals who work in their gardens. Bob is a delightful speaker and educator, with insights from years of public and private work. Come learn some practical plant and design information, purchase the book, and get your copy signed.
Saturday October 23, 2010 – CNPS-OC Chapter Benefit Day – ALL DAY
10 AM – Barbara Eisenstein – Picking Native Plants for a Carefree Garden
Former RSABG Garden Hotline Mavis, blogger, photographer. Until recently, Barbara Eisenstein was the friendly voice you would hear on the other end of the line had you called the “Garden Hotline” at the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden (RSABG). She is now an avid gardener , teacher, and a superb blogger: http://wildsuburbia.blogspot.com/. Truly a valuable asset to the native gardening world, Barbara knows how to garden with these plants, the ‘do’s the don’ts’ and best of all, the rewards. A talented photographer, Barbara’s talk will be sure to promise stunning images and high quality information about picking the right plants for your garden!
Saturday October 30, 2010 – 10 AM
Bob Allen – Creating a Native Butterfly Garden
Curator RSABG’s Butterfly Pavilion, Professor, photographer, author. We are pleased to have Bob Allen back with us to talk about insects and gardens. This summer he was the Curator at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden’s Butterfly Pavilion, a large outdoor enclosure planted entirely with native plants that are either caterpillar host plants or nectar sources for native California butterflies. The enclosure hosted hundreds of butterflies that successfully reproduced, which provided visitors the rare treat of seeing butterflies in their egg, caterpillar, chrysalis and adult stages. Learn how to create your own butterfly garden as Bob gives us valuable tools and resources (and maybe some tips on attracting other cool insects as well!). He will also show us how to recognize the life stages of some local species, including those of our State Butterfly.
Saturday November 6, 2010 – 10 AM
Greg Rubin – Firescaping with Native Plants
Landscape Designer and Contractor, Owner of California’s Own Native Landscape Design, Inc. Greg Rubin has installed hundreds of California native plant gardens in San Diego County, and many in fire-prone areas. Not only that, but to date, none of the homes where he has installed native landscapes have been lost to fire! Come learn about how to plan, install and maintain beaurtiful, fire-resistant native landscapes.
Saturday November 13, 2010 – 10 AM
Pat Overby – Design Principles for California Native Landscapes
Garden designer, Pat Overby will share her years of design experience to teach the basic principles of garden design, especially with native plants. She has taught the Sea and Sage Audubon (Orange County’s Audubon Chapter) Native Plant Garden curriculum since 2005 and has worked with a variety of design constraints. Her talk is VERY informative, very easy to follow and extremely practical. We have enjoyed her talk so much she has become a regular speaker for us.
We hope to see you out here for one or any of these workshops and we hope you will enjoy this fall planting season!