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Our upcoming meetings are described on the Meetings Page - here you can read about some of the exciting and inspiring speakers we've had in the past. Members may borrow CDs and DVDs of past meetings from our Library.

August 11 – The Secret Life of Cool Season Crops

On Monday, August 11, 2008, Emmy-Award winning TV personality, garden writer, and horticultural consultant Pat Welsh will present a program about growing and harvesting winter crops. Growing organic vegetables is all the rage, and it’s hit the big time coast to coast. Yet many local gardeners only grow tomatoes, a warm-season crop, and never stick their toe into the cooler but bracing waters of growing a year-round garden. Now is the time to take the fear out of cool-season vegetables and find out why they’re actually much easier to grow than their warm-season counterparts.

Winter veggies require less water, have fewer pest problems, and many are more nutritious than summer crops. Best of all, they thrive in our mild Mediterranean climate to which many of them were native thousands of years ago. But winter vegetables do have a few simple and easy secrets and odd quirks that can make all the difference between failure and success. Now learn the special tricks, hints, and secrets of all the best-known winter crops from an old hand in the veggie patch, a gal who grew up on a farm growing vegetables the organic way.

Pat is the well-known author of Pat Welsh’s Southern California Gardening: A Month-by-Month Guide, often called “the gardener’s bible.” In 1989 she became the first Garden Editor of San Diego Home/Garden Lifestyles Magazine and later was longtime host of an evening news segment called “Newscenter 39’s Resident Gardener” on the NBC station in San Diego, the first news segment of its kind nationwide. Among her other books are: The American Horticultural Society’s Southwest SMART GARDEN™ Regional Guide, All My Edens: A Gardener’s Memoir, and The Magic Mural and How It Got Built: A Fable for Children of All Ages. Welsh is also a lifelong amateur painter in oils and watercolors. Her professional art projects include design and building a 90-foot-long, multi-media mural in front of the Del Mar Public Library, in collaboration with graphic artist Betsy Schulz and volunteers. Pat Welsh is the recipient of many awards including: The San Diego Area Emmy Award for Performance, The San Diego Press Club Award, The National Quill and Trowel Award, The Lifetime Achievement Award from Quail Botanical Gardens, Cuyamaca College Horticulturist of the Year, San Diego Horticultural Society’s Horticulturist of the Year, and Honorary Master Gardener of San Diego. All four of Pat’s books will be available for sale. Learn more about her at http://www.patwelsh.com/.

FREE for SDHS members, $5 for non-members.

July 14– Robert Herald, Philadelphia's Best Public & Private Gardens

In early June the San Diego Horticultural Society sponsored a garden tour to visit extraordinary gardens in and around Philadelphia. Robert Herald, one of our tour guides, will present an exciting program about the gardens we visited, including Chanticleer, Meadowbrook Farm, Mt. Cuba, Bartram’s Garden & Arboretum, Winterthur, Longwood Gardens and outstanding private gardens. These justly-famous gardens are inspiring, and while some are on a grand scale all of them have ideas you could try at home.

Chanticleer is a breath-taking 30 acre pleasure botanical garden near Philadelphia featuring perennials, tropicals, containers, woodlands, and wildflowers. Meadowbrook Farm's 25 acres offer outstanding garden plants, flowering baskets, trees and shrubs, and one-of-a-kind specimen plants. Mt. Cuba Center is a 650-acre non-profit horticultural institution dedicated to the study, conservation, and appreciation of plants native to the Appalachian Piedmont Region, and their woodland wildflower gardens are recognized as the region’s finest. Bartram’s Garden is America's oldest living botanical garden, a pastoral 18th century homestead in Philadelphia, featuring a wildflower meadow, majestic trees, river trail, wetland, and garden of American native plants. Winterthur's 1,000-acre country estate encompasses rolling hills, streams, meadows, and forests. Longwood Gardens includes 1,050 acres of gardens, woodlands, and meadows with over 11,000 types of plants and more fountains than any other garden in the US.
Please join us to enjoy these public gardens, plus some exceptional private gardens, too! FREE for SDHS members, $5 for non-members.

Chanticleer: a pleasure garden.

May 12, 2008 – A SPECIAL EVENING WITH KEN DRUSE, Making More Plants: Adventures in Horticulture!

When you find a new rare plant, the best thing to do is give it away; or more precisely, a piece of it. Then, if something happens to your precious agave, philodendron, or fabulous native plant, you'll know where you can get it back. Learning how to propagate your plants is not only a path to plant insurance, but to gift-giving, experiencing the thrill of nurturing something from practically nothing, and many ways to grow your garden collection. Ken will present up-to-the-minute findings and the results of his own experiments in this lively talk.

Ken Druse is the author of 16 books on gardening including bestsellers and award winning titles like The Natural Shade Garden, The Natural Habitat Garden, and The Passion for Gardening. His next book will be out this fall. Ken is a contributor to the New York Times, nearly every shelter and gardening magazine, and his own weekly podcast: Ken Druse REAL DIRT (www.realdirtradio.com). He is a Fellow of the Garden Writers of America, and received the Sarah Chapman Francis medal for lifetime achievement from the Garden Club of America.

Copies of Ken’s books Making More Plants: The Science, Art, and Joy of Propagation and Ken Druse: The Passion for Gardening will be available for sale. For more information visit http://www.kendruse.com.

April 14, 2008 – Duane Johnson, Developing Bioenergy From Camelina, A “New” Crop for the U.S.

Can an herb related to mustard, cauliflower and nasturtium replace fossil fuel? Dr. Duane Johnson thinks so, and you’ll want to hear why! The plant kingdom has long provided us with not only beauty but practical service as food, medicine and fiber. More recently, plant uses have expanded to industry and energy, and rediscovering forgotten crops has opened doors to new products which can replace petroleum as a raw material. Camelina (Camelina sativa) was eaten by Neolithic peoples, used to light Bronze Age lamps, and as massage oil by ancient Romans. Today, this long-neglected plant could help solve the energy crisis.
Dr. Johnson has led development of new crops in Arizona, Colorado and Montana since 1979. He was Director of the Institute for Biobased Products at Montana State University and Director of the Montana Agricultural Innovation Center from 2002-2006. He now works with Great Plains Oil to develop one crop – camelina – for manufacture of biodiesel and jet fuels, high omega-3 livestock feed, and new lubricants. Camelina’s low production costs mean it can reduce the cost of biodiesel by as much as 45%. To learn more visit http://www.camelinacompany.com.

March 10, 2008 – Marcia Donohue, Planting Sculpture, Sculpting Plants

Berkeley area artist and sculptor Marcia Donahue has created one of the most fascinating and beautiful gardens in the country, and it has appeared in countless books and magazines. She’ll share this passion in her talk about the gardener as sculptor. Pruning, placing plants with objects, making objects for the garden, noticing combinations: are all sculptural activities. Marcia has been practicing this kind of sculpture in her garden and others for thirty years, and speaks about her experience.

Marcia Donahue has a Masters of Fine Arts from Lone Mountain College, San Francisco. She works as an artist making sculptures for gardens and gardeners, public and private. She and her garden in Berkeley have been collaborating for the past thirty years. Both are still works-in-progress. Her garden is open to the public on Sunday afternoons and for the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days program. Marcia may be best known for granting permission to gardeners to be as playful and adventurous in their gardens as they care or dare to be.