Solving Garden Design Dilemmas – Full Day Symposium and Workshop
Date: October 20, 2018
Want to jazz up a tired landscape, reduce maintenance or garden more sustainably? Karen Bussolini, Nancy DuBrule-Clemente and Christine Froehlich will show you how during this day-long workshop. They will each share their take on renovating gardens and offer practical advice that will help you to evaluate your own gardens and come up with a plan of action to correct the problems.
Schedule of Events & Talks
8:00 a.m. Registration, book sales and socializing
9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Gardening With What You Have – Christine Froehlich
Many homeowners who want to create new gardens or improve existing ones struggle because they lack design experience and don’t know where to start. Buying more plants sounds like fun, but it doesn’t usually improve the situation! When you get right down to it, most garden problems boil down to plant, site or design issues. If you’d like to improve your garden or landscape, it takes three things – your eyesight, a little imagination, and a plan of action. In this slide lecture, Christine will show you how to evaluate your existing landscape and how to correct common problems – from plant choices and siting to design. She’ll lead you with before and after images through some of the projects she’s worked on. You’ll leave with plenty of tips for creating the gardens that you want by working with what you have before buying more plants.
Eco-Friendly Garden Coach Brainstorm – Karen Bussolini
For those of us who don’t draw, site-specific, plant-centered design is a more intuitive approach. First, we’ll look at landscape legibility and how creating a sense of flow ties into ease of maintenance. Can you “read” the landscape as a coherent design or is it a jumble of disconnected parts? How easy is it to move through the space? Where do you view the garden from? What are the fixable problems and problem plants that you’ve been pretending not to see? We will consider all the interrelated practical, aesthetic and ecological pieces of the puzzle with Before and After photos from several successfully completed projects, identifying solutions to common problems. Focusing on creating layers with beautiful low-care, mostly native plants that support pollinators, birds and other wildlife throughout the year, and conserving natural resources (including your own time), you will learn how to create sustainable yards full of life, diversity and delight.
Garden Renovation- Now That You Know What You Want to Do, How Do You Get It Done? – Nancy DuBrule-Clemente
Nancy has been helping clients analyze, redesign, and renovate their gardens and landscapes for over three decades. She will teach you how to logically come up with a plan of action for your garden after an honest assessment of your problem areas. Nancy will explain the latest concepts in no-till soil preparation, organic soil amendments, timing, dividing plants, and staging a project over many weekends in the fall or early spring. Included will be a focus on some of Nancy’s favorite easy-care plants that she uses to solve the most common design problems.
Breaks for refreshments, book sales, socializing and time for lunch (bring your own or order from a local deli) are included in the day. Ask The Experts Panel with Karen, Christine and Nancy at the end of the day.
Location
Zion Episcopal Church
326 Notch Hill Road
North Branford, CT 06471
COST: $75.00
Contact Karen if you have questions
NOFA Accredited Organic Land Care Professionals eligible for 4 CEU credits
About Your Speakers
Nancy DuBrule-Clemente is the owner of Natureworks Horticultural Services, an organic garden center, landscape design, consultation, installation and maintenance service in Northford, Ct. Started in 1983, the Natureworks crews and retail store have sold and used only organic fertilizers and pest control products since the business began. Education is the primary focus of Natureworks. Emails, handouts, website, social media posts and web videos, articles for local newspapers and magazines, talks to groups and radio interviews all combine to spread the word about organic and sustainable practices. Nancy graduated from the Ratcliffe Hicks School of the University of Connecticut with a degree in Floriculture. She is the coauthor (with Marny Smith) of A Country Garden for your Backyard, (with photographs by Karen Bussolini), published by Rodale Press in 1995. She is the author of Succession of Bloom in the Perennial Garden, self-published in 2004. She is a former board member and past president of NOFA/CT and is currently on the board of the CT. Nurserymen’s Foundation.
Christine Froehlich is an experienced and dedicated gardener with rock solid knowledge and plenty of design expertise. She was a popular instructor at the Rochester Civic Garden Center in Rochester, NY and a well-known speaker who offers lectures to area garden clubs and organizations. Her work as a garden designer and consultant fueled the freelance writing career she embarked upon in 2004, and her articles have been published in The American Gardener, Country Gardens, American Nurseryman, Fine Gardening, 585 Magazine, Rochester Magazine and The Upstate Gardeners Journal. You can find out more about Christine and tune into her monthly blog, classes and lectures at gardeningwithwhatyouhave.com.
Karen Bussolini is a nationally known garden photographer with six books to her credit, a writer, speaker and eco-friendly garden coach. Her art background and focus on environmental topics – ecological landscaping, native plants, biodiversity, xeriscaping, organic gardening, planting for wildlife, pollinators and other beneficial insects – inform every aspect of her work. Her slide talks combine beautiful original images, recent scientific findings, personal observations, hands-on experience and a touch of humor. She is a NOFA-Accredited Organic Land Care Professional and active member of The Ecological Landscaping Alliance, GWA (The Association of Garden Communicators) and The New England Wildflower Society.
You can sign up for her online newsletter, “Eco-friendly News, Views, Clues and How-To’s” below.
