Speakers

Egan Davis

Egan Davis is an award winning gardener who currently lives, designs and builds gardens in Saskatoon. His gardening advice has been featured on television, radio and newspapers. For fifteen years Egan specialized in public gardens, working at Park & Tilford Gardens and VanDusen Botanical Garden. During this time, he directed a lot of energy towards community and professional outreach by speaking at garden clubs, giving garden tours and working with professional associations, and has been involved in horticultural education teaching classes at VanDusen Botanical Garden, the Master Gardener Program and UBC's Landscape Architecture Program. In 2010, Egan was nominated as educator of the year by the BC Landscape and Nursery Association. In 2009, Egan won the provincial award of Top in Trades in the category of sustainability. Egan believes that gardening is a wonderful activity that should be exercised simply and cleanly by embracing the beautiful processes in nature.

Thomas Hobbs

A lifelong interest in plants led Thomas Hobbs first into floristry, then into the nursery business when he and partner Brent Beattie acquired Southlands Nursery in 1991. Together they transformed Southlands into a beautiful ‘retail fantasy’ of good plants and tasteful garden accessories. ‘Shocking Beauty’, Tom’s first book, was published in 1999, and his second book ‘The Jewel Box Garden’ came out in 2004. Together they have sold over 50,000 copies! Tom’s home garden and much-published Mediterranean-style house was sold in 2008 when he and Brent bought a twenty acre farm in Langley, B.C. and a very modern condo overlooking VanDusen Botanical Garden in Vancouver. The farm is named ‘Bel’Occhio’, which means ‘beautiful eye’ in Italian. It is the perfect name, and Tom and Brent’s farm garden will be open for registrants to view on Friday, June 14th!

John Massey, MBE, VMH

For over 45 years John Massey has built up the reputation of Ashwood Nurseries in the West Midlands, England, and the plants associated with it. He believes passionately that there are still many more plants worthy of attention and has been creating a new garden for that purpose, which he opens to raise money for local charities regularly throughout the year.

In the Queen’s Birthday Honours list in June 2008 John was awarded an MBE for his services to local charities in the West Midlands and, in 2010, he was awarded the Victoria Medal of Honour by the Royal Horticultural Society in recognition of his life-long services to horticulture.

His driving force has been a wide ranging passion for plants, but equally he has explored a growing number of genera in great depth, and amassed some significant collections including dwarf conifers, Lewisia, Helleborus, Cyclamen species, Hepatica and more recently Salvias and Hydrangeas for displays of which Ashwood has received many trophies and gold medals.

Sue Milliken and Kelly Dodson

Kelly Dodson and Sue Milliken have spent their lives learning about and working with plants in nurseries and botanic gardens as well as designing and creating fine private gardens. They have combined their talents creating Far Reaches Nursery in Port Townsend, Washington, which is regarded as having the largest collection of uncommon ornamentals in the state and many of these are grown in their display gardens.

Their emphasis is on perennials but they have an ever increasing selection of bulbs, alpines, trees and shrubs. Their expanding plant palette includes a wide range of plants that can tantalize even the most jaded gardener. Many of these new plants have come from their seed collecting expeditions in Asia as well as from sources the world over.

Andy Sturgeon

Andy Sturgeon is one of the UK's leading garden designers. He describes himself as a modernist rather than a minimalist because of his love for plants - using them in innovative ways, along with natural materials, in his striking designs.

The winner of five gold medals at the prestigious Chelsea Flower Show, including 2012, and Best in Show 2010, Andy regularly appears on TV and writes for numerous national newspapers and magazines. His practice creates bold, architectural and timeless landscapes around the world. Andy is a Registered Member of the Society of Garden Designers, a BALI registered designer and a Member of the Landscape Institute.

Paddy Wales

Paddy Wales is a respected and widely-published garden photographer, lecturer, teacher and author of Journeys Through the Garden. She has visited and photographed many local and international public and private gardens. Paddy gardens on 2 acres in Roberts Creek on the Sunshine Coast (a short ferry ride from Vancouver) where she calls her garden her playground. A passionate volunteer, she is currently President of the Sunshine Coast Botanical Garden, a 40-acre garden-in-the-making in Sechelt, BC.

Paddy’s garden will be open on the Sunshine Coast Garden Tour on Monday, June 17th.