PAST LECTURES

Saturday, June 2

11-12pm
Dick Lighty - Caring for the Garden: Is it a Delight … or a Chore?
On a virtual tour of two very different gardens we've made, and through a typical year of garden tasks, Dick will show the amount of time and effort it takes to maintain garden areas of varying levels of intensity - and reward, leaving it to the listener to decide what they might prefer in terms of work and enjoyment. The conclusions are supported by handouts showing the actual data on time required per unit area for each level of gardening. Another handout describes the techniques used to maintain each area throughout the gardening season.

1-2pm
Anne Raver - Milestones in the Organic Garden Anne Raver, a frequent contributor to the New York Times and Landscape Architecture Magazine, will offer an anecdotal timeline for the organic movement in this country. Anne has been an organic gardener since the early 1970s and has interviewed hundreds of gardeners and farmers, as well as CEO's of chemical companies, in over 30 years of writing about the environment.

2:30-3:30pm
Rick Darke - Emerging Ecologies: Gardening Sync'd to the Nature of Our Time
Ecological change is the signature of our age, and it is accompanied by unprecedented opportunities to embrace the new 'Nature' in our gardens and community landscapes. Rick Darke will use a wide array of public and private places to point out the creative possibilities of a time in which the only constant is the accelerating pace of change.

Sunday, June 3

9:30-10:30
Pete Johnson - Pete's Greens, Vermont's Four Season Organic Vegetable Farm
Learn how Pete's Greens grows and sells a wide array of organic produce year-round in Northern Vermont's challenging zone 3 climate. This workshop will cover a basic overview of Pete's 3 acres of greenhouse and 65 acres of outdoor production, season extension, root cellaring, freezing and other preserving of farm produce, field operations, and how Pete's Greens fits into the agricultural renaissance that is rapidly expanding in the Hardwick, VT region. In addition Pete will discuss farm profitability, how to achieve it and why economic success is an important component to rebuilding our local food system.

11-12:30
Eric T Fleisher & Paul Wagner - Creating a Healthier Landscape Through Organic Practice
This symposium will focus on teaching the methods to manage successful organic landscapes; including soil management, pest and disease control, irrigation, pruning, plant selection, and specialized compost design and practice. Eric T Fleisher and Paul Wagner are two of the most influential advocates for organic landscape practices. This approach focuses on encouraging the natural nutrient cycling systems thereby eliminating the use of inorganic fertilizers, insecticides, fungicides, and herbicides. This eliminates the toxins that have traditionally been used in landscape maintenance, and results in a healthier more vibrant landscape.