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Speakers

Tony Avent

…is the owner of Plant Delights Nursery, Inc., a celebrated international mail order business based in Raleigh, North Carolina, featuring rare and unusual plants. He is also owner of Juniper Level Botanical Gardens, where new plants are trialed and displayed, and which features more than 16,000 specimens. He has traveled to Mexico, China, South Korea, Argentina, South Africa, Vietnam and Thailand as a plant explorer in search of promising plants for American gardens. He is a freelance garden writer and popular lecturer, and has been the recipient of numerous awards for his writing and exceptional contributions to the nursery trade.

Ed Gilman

…received his PhD from Rutgers University and has been on the faculty as professor in the Environmental Horticulture Department at the University of Florida since 1986. He teaches arboriculture, conducts research on planting and pruning and works extensively with industry. Ed is the author of six books on trees and landscape plants, many software programs, and web sites that have received numerous awards. He wrote Illustrated Guide to Pruning, which is in its second edition. He received the Authors Citation Award in 1999 and the Educators Award in 2003 from the International Society of Arboriculture for sustained excellence in publishing and teaching timely information on tree care.

George Hudler, PhD

…holds degrees in forest management and plant pathology and has been a member of the faculty of Cornell University for 30 years. He also conducts active outreach and research programs in the area of tree pathology, including publication of a bi-weekly pest management newsletter, Branching Out. He is the author of a book of the same title as one of his popular undergraduate courses: Magical Mushrooms, Mischievous Molds, and has received numerous awards for teaching excellence. In 2004, George became chair of Cornell’s Department of Plant Pathology, and in conjunction with that appointment became the Director of the Northeast Regional Center for the National Plant Diagnostic Network.

Julie Moir Messervy

…is an acclaimed landscape designer, author and lecturer with an inspired vision for creating outdoor sanctuaries that feed the spirit. Her innovative approach to composing gardens of beauty and meaning is furthering the evolution of landscape design and changing the way people think about their outdoor surroundings. She has won prestigious awards for her writing and design work, and is the principal of Julie Moir Messervy and Associates, Inc. in Saxtons River, Vermont.

Ann Fowler Rhoads, PhD

…is Senior Botanist at the Morris Arboretum of the University of Pennsylvania. She also is an adjunct faculty member in the biology department at the University of Pennsylvania, and Research Associate at the Academy of Natural Sciences. Ann is co-author of The Plants of Pennsylvania, An Illustrated Manual; The Vascular Flora of Pennsylvania: Annotated Checklist and Atlas, and more recently, Trees of Pennsylvania, A Complete Reference Guide with Timothy A. Block. She has carried out numerous surveys for endangered and threatened plants in eastern Pennsylvania in conjunction with the Pennsylvania Natural Heritage Program. She is past president of the Pennsylvania Biological Survey and serves on the Ecosystem Management Advisory Committee to the Pennsylvania Bureau of Forestry.

Fred Spicer

…a Registered Landscape Architect and Accredited Nurseryman, is Executive Director of the Birmingham Botanical Garden in Birmingham, Alabama. He was formerly Manager of Horticulture for the Morris County Park Commission in north-central New Jersey, and oversaw the Frelinghuysen and Willowwood Arboreta. For fifteen years Fred was an adjunct instructor with the Rutgers University Department of Continuing Professional Education, where he taught in their well-known Short Course curriculum and Home Gardener’s Schools. A self-described landscape architect who knows plants, he has lectured extensively throughout the northeast, mid-Atlantic and southeast on garden design and plant selection.