Our accomplished group of presenters will include Lenape Nation of Pennsylvania Clan Mother and educator Shelley DePaul, Landscape Designer and Horticulturist Dan Pearson, The Plantsmen Nursery Owner Dan Segal, and NDAL Founder and Landscape Designer Larry Weaner.
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Registration will be open and recordings will be viewable for 3 months after each live session date.
CEUs available for those marked “Professional” (APLD, LA CES, NOFA)
See here for CEU details & instructions.
Student Scholarships & Wild Ones member discounts available! Scroll down below the session descriptions list for details.
“What a tremendously valuable resource this is.”
-2022 Winter Virtual Series Attendee
Photo by Larry Weaner Landscape Associates
The Bridge Between Horticulture and the Environment
(Professional & non-professional)
Dan Pearson
Horticulture is going through a revolution, as our fragile environment becomes increasingly in need of our care. The observation and analysis that is so embedded in this process, and the craftsmanship of tending for a garden, are perfect gateways to thinking about the neglected and overused places beyond the garden. Dan Pearson, whose painterly-naturall landscapes are renowned in Britain and beyond, will demonstrate how landscape design can be the medium that brings together the worlds of nature, agriculture, and garden.
Tuesday, November 28, 2023 | 12:00 - 1:15 PM ET
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Dan Pearson is a British landscape designer, horticulturist, writer, and gardener. He trained in horticulture at RHS Gardens’ Wisley, the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Jerusalem Botanical Gardens, and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Since 2014 he has been a Garden Advisor to the National Trust at Sissinghurst Castle. In 2013 Dan was the subject of an exhibition at The Garden Museum, London, Green Fuse: The Work of Dan Pearson, and was awarded an OBE in 2022 for services to horticulture. Dan’s books include Spirit: Garden Inspiration (Fuel Publishing, 2011) and Home Ground: Sanctuary in the City (Conran, 2011), and his most recent: Tokachi Millennium Forest: Pioneering a New Way of Gardening With Nature (Filbert Press, 2021). He is a Contributing Editor to Gardens Illustrated magazine and writes his own weekly blog, “Dig Delve.”
Artful Plant Community Design: Selection-Arrangement-Stewardship
(Non-professional)
Larry Weaner, FAPLD
Selecting and arranging plants is central to - if not the heart of - fine garden design. Plant community-based design is no different; it simply uses natural vegetative models as its primary template. In this presentation, Larry will illustrate how to associate plants with their preferred environment, create plant compositions that function as integrated communities, and accommodate compositional change over time. But the word garden is not lost in this “wild” shuffle. He will conclude by revisiting fine garden design to show how an ecology-based plant palette can express, and even enhance, many different landscape styles.
Friday, October 20, 2023 | 3:00 - 4:15 PM ET
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Larry Weaner, FAPLD, founded Larry Weaner Landscape Associates in 1982 and New Directions in the American Landscape in 1990. His nationally recognized work combines horticulture, landscape design, and ecological restoration, and spans more than twenty U.S. states and the U.K. He has been profiled in national publications. His book, Garden Revolution: How Our Landscapes Can Be a Source of Environmental Change (Timber Press, 2016) received an American Horticultural Society (AHS) Book Award in 2017. In 2021 he received the AHS “Landscape Design Award” and the Association of Professional Landscape Designers (APLD) “Award of Distinction.”
Increasing Interest in Lenape Gardening:
A Native American Perspective
(Non-professional)
Clan Mother Shelley DePaul
Over the last year there has been a rising interest from various partners to provide information on Lenape plants and practice, and to consult on existing gardens in order to provide native species and medicinal herbs. This has come about at a time when it is crucial to instigate horticultural practices that will increase the production of organic foods, re-introduce native plants into the earth, and provide instruction on the use of medicinal herbs, all of which will help to ensure that the next seven generations of our children will be able to consume natural, nutritious food. This is the goal!
Thursday, October 26, 2023 | 7:00 - 8:15 PM ET
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Clan Mother Shelley DePaul serves on the Council of the Lenape Nation of Pennsylvania as Lenape Language Specialist and Treaty Signer Liaison. She teaches Lenape Language classes and presents educational programs on Lenape History and Culture. DePaul has conferred with numerous organizations regarding Lenape horticulture and medicinal plant practices. She is a PA State certified teacher with a BS in Secondary Education, English, and a MA in History.
Designed Dutch Ecosystems:
Landscape Management Lessons from Heemparks of the Netherlands
(Professional)
Keenan Porter
Netherland’s Heemparks, public parks designed with native Dutch species to reflect local ecosystems, are a unique albeit understudied landscape typology. With more than one hundred established, most for more than fifty years, heemparks offer valuable precedents as to how naturalistic landscapes can be managed to sustain high levels of native vegetation richness for decades. Drawing from three years of research, this presentation will discuss specific heempark management techniques, explain how varying levels of management intensity impacts species richness, and posit how integrating landscape management into the design process is crucial to ensuring that designs remain beautiful and species-rich long after installation, as so many heemparks have successfully achieved.
Tuesday, October 24, 2023 | 3:00 - 4:15 PM ET
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Keenan Porter is currently a landscape designer with Rhodeside & Harwell. His professional experience spans an array of landscape and urban design work in both the United States and Europe, complimented by experiences in a range of related disciplines including planning, historical preservation, urban forestry, and ecological restoration. In addition to his design experience, Keenan is a strong researcher whose work focuses on management of naturalistic designed landscapes. Keenan holds Bachelor of Landscape Architecture (2020) and Master of Science (2022) degrees from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF), and has been recognized as a 2020 Olmsted Scholar by the Landscape Architecture Foundation.
Native Plants in YOUR Landscape: Set it and Edit
(Non-professional)
Dan Segal
In the wild, plants primarily proliferate sexually from seed. As a consequence, even plants of the same species are genetically diverse. In nature, that diversity is a major driver of long-term balance and natural replacement. In the nursery however, where most plants have been propagated asexually from cuttings, divisions, or lab cloning, that genetic diversity is lost. In this lecture, native plant expert Dan Segal will reveal how seed-grown, genetically diverse plants behave at his nursery, and how the benefits he has observed can translate to your garden. He will also explain how to understand and incorporate ecological succession, the natural process that guides vegetational change over time. By understanding these foundational ecological principles, gardeners can guide nature instead of fight it, even at the smallest of scales.
Thursday, October 19, 2023 | 3:00 - 4:15 PM ET
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Dan Segal has been working with native plants since 1990 (33 years). His work has included ecological restoration, native seed collection at local and commercial scales, native plant nursery production and management, residential and commercial native landscaping, and educational efforts in several Western, Mid Atlantic, and Northeastern states. Dan founded the Ithaca Native Landscape Symposium with a partner 15 years ago. He is the owner of The Plantsmen Nursery in the Ithaca NY area since 2006. He has presented for national agencies, regional conferences, and local groups for about 30 years.
Modern Arboriculture Issues
(Professional)
Ken LeRoy
American trees have been affected by globalization and urbanization in so many ways. Ken LeRoy, one of Philadelphia’s most respected arborists, will explore the dynamic issues and challenges that have been ongoing in the urban and suburban forest. We will review the current state of tree morphology, physiology, entomology, pathology, ecology, and modern Arboriculture. Plus, some interesting and surprising anecdotes from Ken’s 40-plus years of experiential learning.
Thursday, October 26, 2023 | 3:00 - 4:15 PM ET
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Ken LeRoy has been a practicing Arborist since the early 1980s when studying at Temple University School of Horticulture and working at the Morris Arboretum of the University of Pennsylvania. Over the years Ken has helped clients care for their trees through modern Arboricultural practices. Born and bred in Philadelphia, PA, Ken has a keen interest in the local history of trees, and the associated places and people.
Wild Residential: Accommodating Spontaneous Vegetation
(Non-Professional)
Larry Weaner, FAPLD
In nature, plants spend millenia evolving strategies to more efficiently procreate. In the garden, we arrest that procreation by weeding virtually every individual that we didn’t plant. Over the last 40 years Larry Weaner has learned to plan for and “edit” spontaneous vegetation within his designed landscapes. Much of these landscapes’ ecological value, reduced management requirements, and experiential dynamism have resulted from this approach, a skill that was largely honed on large properties. Here however, Larry will refocus on the small residential landscape, exploring the practical, ecological, and experiential benefits that loosening the vegetative reigns can provide…even where space is tight and neighbors are close.
Tuesday, October 31, 2023 | 3:00 - 4:15 PM ET
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Larry Weaner, FAPLD, founded Larry Weaner Landscape Associates in 1982 and New Directions in the American Landscape in 1990. His nationally recognized work combines horticulture, landscape design, and ecological restoration, and spans more than twenty U.S. states and the U.K. He has been profiled in national publications. His book, Garden Revolution: How Our Landscapes Can Be a Source of Environmental Change (Timber Press, 2016) received an American Horticultural Society (AHS) Book Award in 2017. In 2021 he received the AHS “Landscape Design Award” and the Association of Professional Landscape Designers (APLD) “Award of Distinction.”
Beyond Plant Lists:
Creating Year-Round, Robust Habitat for Wildlife in Home Gardens
(Non-Professional)
Shaun McCoshum, PhD
Creating wildlife habitat in gardens is most often described with plant lists, especially for birds and pollinators. Plants however, mostly feed wildlife and do not provide the appropriate places to shelter, reproduce, hydrate, and overwinter. Join us to learn more about creating beautiful gardens with plants and non-flower resources like logs, stones, and diverse soils. Shaun will also discuss how to incorporate selective ecological disturbances into annual garden maintenance, a very important habitat element that is often overlooked.
Thursday, November 2, 2023 | 7:00 - 8:15 PM ET
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Shaun McCoshum, PhD, is a Conservation Ecologist and Certified Wildlife Biologist, with expertise in pollinator and plant communities. His published works include scientific, peer-reviewed articles, educational articles and videos on insect and wildlife habitat, wildlife gardening books, and a variety of informational pieces. Shaun has worked across the country, collecting data, publishing papers, and studying ecosystems, habitats, wildlife, and insect life-cycles to help build better restoration and land management programs. His expertise and experience brings restoration practices, wildlife life-cycles, and gardens together to create robust habitats in gorgeous urban landscapes.
Practicing New Naturalism:
Site-Specific Plantings and Wild Gardening in Public and Private Places
(Professional & Non-Professional)
Kelly Norris
Given the dramatic shift towards ecologically-driven landscapes, how do we shift the narrative of landscape design from construction and maintenance to cultivation and stewardship? How do we make space for habitat in landscapes close to home? How do we cultivate new practices and knowledge that can transform the meaning of a garden? Join planting designer, artist, and thought leader Kelly Norris for this vibrant exploration of his recent and future work at the intersections of horticulture and ecology. His presentation will explore various projects, their narratives, plant palettes, and the relative success or progress of each project to date with a preview of new developments in the seasons ahead.
Tuesday, November 7, 2023 | 3:00 - 4:15 PM ET
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Kelly D. Norris is an award-winning author and plantsman who explores the intersections of people, plants, and place through ecological, site-specific design and art. He is the former Director of Horticulture and Education at the Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden, where for 8 years he directed efforts in design, curation, programming, garden and facility management. Kelly’s work in gardens has been featured in The New York Times, Better Homes and Gardens, Martha Stewart Living, Fine Gardening, and Garden Design. His most recent book, New Naturalism: Designing and Planting a Resilient, Ecologically Vibrant Home Garden (Cool Springs Press, 2021), was named one of the Top 10 Books of 2021 by the American Horticultural Society.
Photo by Mark Weaner
“As always, these presentations are excellent and offer so much important and practical information. Very useful.”
“I loved it all! My brain was definitely on fire with ideas and how to apply them into my practice.”
Registration & NDAL Events Portal
When registering on the NDAL Events Portal you will be asked to either sign into your existing account or create one. This account will give you exclusive access to the session recordings and course materials. These materials will be available until three (3) months after the live event dates.
To register multiple staff members at once, please email info@ndal.org with their full names, email addresses, and session title(s). We can then register them and send an online invoice for payment.
Students please email verification of student status (ie. course schedule, student ID) to info@ndal.org for student discount code.
Wild Ones members please email verification of member status to info@ndal.org for discount code.
Registration will be refunded only if notification is received before ten (10) working days prior to the live event date less a $10 processing fee.
Student Scholarships | Free Individual Session Attendance
Students and recent graduates are invited to apply for scholarships granting free registration to one of the virtual sessions. Two scholarships per session will be awarded.
Eligibility: Current undergraduate/graduate student or matriculation in 2023.
To apply: Please submit no more than 1 page description of why you’re interested in the particular session you’re applying to attend, and your resume. You are welcome to list multiple sessions as your next choices.
Due date: Applications taken on a rolling basis until filled. You are also welcome to apply after a live session date to view the recording.
To apply: Please email your letter and resume to Sara Weaner Cooper, NDAL Executive Director, at sweaner@ndal.org.
“I keep coming back. Haven’t been disappointed yet.”
Questions? Please contact:
Sara Weaner Cooper
Executive Director
New Directions in the American Landscape
sweaner@ndal.org
510-518-0430
Photo by Mark Weaner