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Speakers

Kathryn Belville

… is a Board Certified Master Arborist, and has been associated with Bartlett Tree Experts for 22 years. She has been a member of the faculty of The Arboretum School of The Barnes Foundation since 2001, where she teaches plant disease identification and control, and an Urban Forestry Consultant for the Chester Economic Development Authority. Kathryn is a Project Leader for The Delaware County Housing Coalition, William Penn School District Multi Municipal Recreation and Open Space Plan.

Richard L. Bitner

… M. D., studied horticulture at Longwood Gardens and has been a Plant Study Walk instructor there for many years. He is a popular teacher of the Conifer and Deciduous Flowering Shrubs II Certificate courses and is an instructor in the Professional Gardener Training Program. His writing and photographs have appeared in various national and regional magazines and he is a member of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society Gold Medal Plant Award Committee. His book Garden Conifers: An Illustrated Encyclopedia has just been published by Timber Press. When he isn’t pursuing his passion for plants, Richard is a practicing anesthesiologist on the faculty of the Penn State School of Medicine/Hershey Medical Center.

Gordon Collier

… has been interested in plants and gardens all his life. Over 45 years he has been Board member, Chairman and Patron of the Pukeiti Rhododendron Trust; New Zealand Vice President of the International Dendrology Society and gardens editor of New Zealand House & Garden magazine. Active as advisor to the National Arboretum, Eastwoodhill, to Government House and many private gardens he takes a leading role in the New Zealand Gardens Trust as senior assessor, and is a long standing member of the Advisory Panel of the Cecil and Molly Smith Garden, Newberg, Oregon. He has a Diploma in Horticulture with Distinction, was awarded Associate of Honour by the New Zealand Institute of Horticulture and more recently was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for distinguished services to horticulture.

Donald J. Leopold

… Since joining the Faculty of Environmental and Forest Biology at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry ( Syracuse) in 1985, Donald J. Leopold has taught courses each year in dendrology, woody plant materials, freshwater wetland ecology, and numerous graduate seminars on conservation and restoration topics. He has published over 55 peer-reviewed papers, six books (including his most recent Native Trees of the Southeast ; L.K. Kirkman, C.L. Brown, and D.J. Leopold; Timber Press, 2007), book chapters, invited book reviews, and many miscellaneous publications, all generally about topics in forest and wetland ecology. Additionally he has been editor of the Natural Areas Journal , associate editor for the Journal of Forestry and is currently on the editorial board of the Northeast Naturalist. He is a former chair of The Nature Conservancy, Central New York Chapter, and was awarded their Friends of the Land Award in 1995.

Philippe de Spoelberch

… is Vice Chairman and creator of Arboretum Wespelaar in Haacht, Belgium. He is an amateur botanist and serves on numerous boards, including Polly Hill Arboretum, the Magnolia Society, the Rhododendron Species Foundation, and is Vice Chairman of the International Dendrology Society and Chairman of the Belgian Dendrology Society. He has a degree in brewing engineering from the University of Louvain and an MBA from Columbia University.

A. Peter Wharton

… has been curator of the David C. Lam Asian Garden of the University of British Columbia Botanical Garden and Centre for Plant Research in Vancouver for over 30 years. He was trained as a forester in the UK before emigrating to Canada in 1975. He has developed and managed a west coast forest garden devoted to wild collected, documented collections from Asia. He has traveled extensively in China, South Korea and recently in northern Vietnam, working with a number of botanical institutions. Peter is the senior author of a new book, The Jade Garden , devoted to first hand experiences of Asian plants that have been introduced into the garden since 1975. Peter lectures extensively and is a passionate advocate for the conservation of biological diversity.