Frelinghuysen Arboretum
www.morrisparks.net
Programs at the Arboretum (speaker does not travel): Let’s Talk: Color, Contrast, and Harmony; Let’s Talk: Perennials; Floral Arranging with Supermarket Flowers; The Year in Bloom; Tips and Tricks of Patio Container Planters; Let’s Talk: Fall Perennials; The Dirt on Dirt; Got Pests? what you need to know; Demystifying Design. (talk length: 30 minutes or 60 minutes, depending on the program). Speaker: usually Ann Fahey, Superintendent of Horticulture Education.
Grounds for Sculpture
www.groundsforsculpture.org
jnapoli@groundsforsculpture.org
Grounds for Sculpture history and gardens (talk length: 60 minutes).
Speaker: Janis Napoli, Director of Horticulture
Sister Mary Grace Burns Arboretum
www.georgian.edu/arboretum/
mgross@georgian.edu
Sister Mary Grace Burns Arborteum history and gardens (talk length: 45 minutes).
Speaker: Michael Gross, Director of the Arboretum.
Lesley Parness, Independent Scholar, Writer and Garden Historian
www.lesleyparness.com
Lesley Parness is a Founding Member of Garden State Gardens and served as its President and Vice President. After 5 decades of working at botanic gardens around the world, she retired from her last post as Superintendent of Horticultural Education at The Morris County Park Commission, where she oversaw programming at The Frelinghuysen Arboretum, Willowwood Arboretum and Bamboo Brook Outdoor Education Center.
Now focusing on garden history and writing, Lesley also presents her programs to gardeners throughout the Mid-Atlantic region. Her column, The Garden Historian, can be read bi-monthly at gardenernews.com. Lesley’s mission to “connect people and plants, one story at a time,” is realized through her approach to garden history – “The range of gardening topics I offer is wide, but the lens is narrow. Liberated from socio-economic and geo-political constraints, we are free to think solely abut plants – our silent, sentient partners in the green history of the world.”
Current offerings include “Drama Queens”: Dark Plants for your Garden,” “Medicinal Plants of the Civil War,” “Josephine – The Empress Gardened,” “The Final Act, Your Garden in Autumn,” “The Real Housewives of New Jersey: Early American Women and their Kitchen Gardens,” “We Grew it Here: 100 Years of New Jersey’s Horticultural History.”
To learn more about Lesley Parness, visit her website at www.lesleyparness.com