Ruth Bancroft Horticultural Series

Fall 2012

You know what you like – the twinkle of blue-eyed grass, the neat geometry of echeveria, the rustle of blue oat grass. But how do you put great individual plants together so they look fantastic in tandem and also make sense in your garden space? There are so many choices – red, purple, yellow, pink, frilly, spiky, glossy, tiny, tall. And they all have to groove with your soil, light, and moisture conditions. Our experts can point the way and simplify the process, whether you have a large landscape or a collection of containers on a deck.

Ken Druse, author of the new book Natural Companions: The Garden Lover’s Guide to Plant Combinations, will draw on his coast-to-coast experience with discovering and composing beautiful, appropriate, and unified garden groupings. California native-plant expert and author Katherine Greenberg will take important, and sustainable, cues from native plant communities. Owner of Succulent Gardens nursery Robin Stockwell will show you how to synchronize your aloes, sedums, yuccas, and aeoniums. Eileen Kelly, garden designer and owner of Dig Your Garden, is adept at composing perfect plant vignettes – a good place to start for any size garden. And Patrick Lannan, a designer with Flora Grubb Gardens, will demonstrate how to assemble container combos with panache.

Co-sponsors

Presented by the Garden Conservancy and the Ruth Bancroft Garden, and co-sponsored by Pacific Horticulture Society, the publishers of Pacific Horticulture magazine, and the Gardens at Heather Farm

Date and time

Friday, October 26, 2012

8:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.

Location

The Gardens at Heather Farm

1540 Marchbanks Drive

Walnut Creek, CA 94598

Agenda

Registration

$85 Members of the Garden Conservancy, the Ruth Bancroft Garden, and the Gardens at Heather Farm, and for subscribers to Pacific Horticulture

$100 General admission

Update as of Thursday, October 25: online registration has been turned off. There are still a few spots available; to register, please call the Garden Conservancy in San Francisco at 415.441.4300.

Speaker Bios

Ken Druse

Called “a gardening superstar,” in Publisher’s Weekly, and “the guru of natural gardening” in the New York Times, Ken Druse is a celebrated lecturer, and award-winning photographer and author. He has contributed to a long list of gardening and decorating magazines, but he is probably best known for his 18 books. Making More Plants won the 2001 Award of the Year from the Garden Writers Association and the American Horticultural Society listed The Natural Habitat Garden among the best books of all time. In 2004, the Garden Club of America awarded Ken the Sarah Chapman Francis medal for lifetime literary achievement. His newest hit is Natural Companions: The Garden Lover’s Guide to Plant Combinations. Ken can also be heard on his weekly podcast and public radio show “Ken Druse – REAL DIRT” at www.kendruse.com, via iTunes, and on the home page of Organic Gardening magazine’s website.

Katherine Greenberg

Katherine Greenberg is a garden designer and author with a special interest in the native plants of California. She is a past president of the Pacific Horticulture Society, the Mediterranean Garden Society, and the Friends of the Regional Parks Botanic Garden. Katherine’s book, the 2^nd edition of Growing California Native Plants, was published by UC Press in 2012. Her native garden in Lafayette has been featured in a number of books and articles, and it was selected for a Garden Design Green Award in 2010. Katherine gives native plant workshops in her garden, and she will be leading a garden tour of Morocco and Spain in 2013, sponsored by the Pacific Horticulture Society.

Robin Stockwell

Robin Stockwell is owner, grower, and manager of Succulent Gardens nursery in Castroville, CA, which offers over 600 varieties of succulent plants. Raised on the Northern California coast, Robin has worked in nurseries since the age of 12. He turned his plant radar to succulents in 1972, opening Succulent Gardens in 1980, which in addition to being a nursery is also a demonstration venue, teaching people how to best grow these architectural, drought-tolerant plants. Not content with simply using them in landscape plantings Robin has also become adept at incorporating succulents into such artful creations as wreaths and “living murals.” You may recall his “Succulent Cube” of 20,000 plants which wowed visitors to the 2010 San Francisco Flower and Garden Show. To learn more, visit www.sgplants.com.

Eileen Kelly

Eileen’s fascination with plants took root, literally, in the family garden in New Jersey when her mother broke off a piece of a succulent and started a new plant. The romance with gardening continued throughout a career in advertising and blossomed when she returned to school to study landscape design and environmental landscaping. Since then, Eileen, a certified eco-friendly practitioner (Bay-Friendly Landscaping), has grown a thriving business called Dig Your Garden, which specializes in drought-tolerant Mediterranean plants and California natives. She is proud to serve on the board of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers and lives in San Anselmo, CA. Eileen’s landscape designs are featured online at hgtvgardens.com, houzz.com, lawnreform.org, landscapingnetwork.com and on her own website, www.digyourgarden.com.

Patrick Lannan

Patrick Lannan has over 35 years of experience in the gardening Industry. He holds degrees in Horticulture and Botany from UCLA as well as a Bachelor of Fine Arts. His career has run the gamut from working in the Rose Garden of the Huntington Library in Pasadena, to establishing his own landscape company in Los Angeles (his designs have been featured in Los Angeles Magazine). He has also owned his own retail flower shop and his creations were seen on The Tonight Show and The Late Show with Arsenio Hall. He was the horticulturist for the prestigious Manchester Country Club in Manchester, New Hampshire, for many years where he was responsible for preserving the native flora surrounding the golf course. Now a garden designer at Flora Grubb Gardens, he feels he has truly found his home.

Garden Tour

After the talks by our distinguished speakers, we will tour two exciting private gardens. One is Katherine Greenberg's garden; the second, that of Gail Giffen and Chris Pissaro.

Katherine Greenberg's garden was inspired by the oak woodlands, grasslands, and chaparral of the surrounding valley and the redwood forests of the East Bay hills. She started the garden thirty years ago on a Lafayette hillside, and the garden has evolved over the years. It is a tranquil refuge for plants, people, and wildlife, including deer. Paths meander through the garden, connecting a series of terraces and leading to the creek in the lower garden. The colors and textures of flowers, foliage, fruits, and bark add interest in every season of the year.

Gail Giffen and Chris Pissaro's garden in Lafayette was designed and built by landscape architect Michael Thilgen and the team at Four Dimensions Landscape Company. Originally a barren piece of land, today this expansive garden abounds with secret spaces, hosts well-known artists' work, and is home to a flock of heritage chickens that serve as living art. Mediterranean plants dominate in arrangements designed on a formal grid. Around the perimeters of the property, large oaks shade an understory of native plants and provide a transition from the formality of the core garden to a piece of the wild.The garden has been featured in Fine Gardening and Today’s Home magazines and in the Front Yard Idea Book (Taunton Press, 2002).

Putting It All Together: Creating Great Plant Combinations is presented by the Garden Conservancy and the Ruth Bancroft Garden, and co-sponsored by Pacific Horticulture Society, the publishers of Pacific Horticulture magazine, and the Gardens at Heather Farm