SPRING STUDY DAY – Saturday, February 17th, 2018

Time: 10:00am – 3:30pm

H.R. MacMillan Space Centre,

1100 Chestnut Street, Vancouver

To register for the Spring Study Day, please forward your cheque, payable to the Vancouver Hardy Plant Group, for $45 (members pre-paid), $50 (non-members and all tickets at the door), to Lindsay Macpherson, 11662 Carr St., Maple Ridge, BC, V2X 5M9. If you are purchasing for others, please indicate their names and whether they are members or non-members. Cheques should be received by February 9, 2018, which will allow time for your name to be copied onto a name tag that you will collect and wear after signing in at the pre-paid table, thus helping the committee in providing orderly access to the event. Cheques received after that date will be kept in the order they have been received and may or may not gain you entry to the event.

SPEAKERS

Bill McNamara, Quarryhill Botanical Garden, Glen Ellen, CA

TOPICS:  

“Magnolias in China and at Quarryhill”
“Plant Hunting: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly”

Bill McNamara
Bill McNamara

After completing a degree in English at UC Berkeley in 1975, Bill McNamara travelled the world before settling in the Sonoma Valley and setting up a landscape contracting company. In 1985 he was hired to do installation of a new garden on the site of quarried land owned by Jane Davenport Jansen, a restaurant heiress who had made her home in Glen Ellen two decades earlier.

During the design process for this garden, and with the serendipitous influence of an English plant hunter, Lord Howick, the seed was sown in Mrs. Jansen’s mind to create a naturalistic-style garden which could house specimens of the various temperate zone, wild, Asian plants which were being discovered by Howick’s expeditions, and also allow for their propagation and preservation.

Bill was included on these expeditions from the early days of his working for Mrs. Jansen, and by 1994 had become the Director of Quarryhill Botanical Garden. He has continued the collaborations, plant-finding expeditions, and the learning process ever since, leading to significant new finds. In 2005 he graduated with an M.A. in Conservation Biology, and is currently the President and Executive Director of Quarryhill.

Bill is the rare U.S. recipient of three coveted horticultural awards. In 2010 he was honoured with the Arthur Hoyt Scott Award by the American Horticultural Society (AHS), and in 2017 with the both the Veitch Memorial Medal from England’s Royal Horticultural Society, and the Liberty Hyde Bailey Award from the AHS. He also received the prestigious Eloise Payne Luquer Medal from the Garden Club of America in 2009, the Annual Award from the California Horticultural Society in 2012, and the Award of Excellence from the National Garden Clubs in 2013.

Douglas Justice, Associate Director, Horticulture & Collections, UBC Botanical Garden, Adjunct Professor, School of Architecture & Landscape Architecture, UBC

TOPIC:

“Using Shrubs as Small Trees in the Garden”

Douglas Justice

Douglas’s primary responsibility at the UBC Botanical Garden is the day-to-day operation of the garden and interpretation of the plant collections. He is also involved with public and industry outreach, and teaches horticulture and plant identification courses for the Faculties of Land & Food Systems and Applied Sciences.

Prior to joining the UBC Botanical Garden, Douglas taught horticulture at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Langley where he focused on plant identification, integrated pest management and nursery production. He trained at Massot Nurseries (Richmond) and in his early years worked as a gardener in Vancouver and at Windsor Great Park, England.

Among his publications one of the most familiar is Ornamental Cherries in Vancouver, published most recently in 2014. He co-authored The Jade Garden, “an authoritative guide to 130 of the most fascinating yet little-known ornamental trees, shrubs, and perennials from ‘the green mantle’ of Asia”. In addition, Douglas is the author of the two mobile apps, Vancouver Trees Basic and Vancouver Trees Pro, valuable for identification and usage in our area.

Sarah Common, BSc Agriculture, Bee Master, Hives for Humanity

TOPIC:

Gardeners and Bees – Working Together in Community

 

Sarah Common

Hives for Humanity works to create opportunities for connection to community, through bees. We are passionate about social and biological environments, and this talk will discuss intersections of the two, and share the story of our work. Why are bees great pollinators? How can gardeners create spaces that foster habitat and forage for wild and managed species of bees? How can gardeners and beekeepers be advocates for species of bees living at-risk? What parallels exist between our gardens, bee habitats and our human communities and how might we work to create health and balance in all?