What better way to celebrate the first day of spring than to sign up for the annual Master Gardeners Spring Gardening School, which will be held virtually this year for the first time in its 30-year history. The day-long program from the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County will kick off on Saturday at 9:30 a.m. with “Nature’s Best Hope,” a keynote address by Doug Tallamy.
Mr. Tallamy, a professor of entomology and wildlife ecology at the University of Delaware, will discuss how yards play a key role in supporting nature, feeding birds and insects, cleaning the air, and managing fresh water, and how native plants and trees mitigate against species decline.
The author of two books, “Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens” (2007) and “Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard” (2020), he was awarded the 2008 silver medal by the Garden Writers Association, and the Garden Club of America Margaret Douglas Medal for Conservation and its Tom Dodd Jr. Award of Excellence in 2013.
Edwina von Gal, a landscape designer based in Springs and founder of the Perfect Earth Project, will introduce Mr. Tallamy and discuss their “Two-Thirds for the Birds” initiative, a collaboration focused on inspiring people to plant more native species in their gardens.
Mr. Tallamy’s talk will be followed by three one-hour sessions, each featuring talks by four horticulture professionals. The first session, which will start at 11 a.m., will include Ann-Marie Powell, a Royal Horticultural Society Chelsea Gold Medal garden designer based in England; Nancy Gilbert, a conservation easement donor and member of the Peconic Land Trust board; Tamson Yeh, an educator with the cooperative extension who specializes in pesticide alternatives, and Jessica Damiano, Newsday’s longtime Gardening Detective.
Session 2, set for 1 p.m., will feature Anne Raver, who has written about gardens and the environment for Newsday for over 30 years; Mina Vescera, the nursery and landscape specialist for the cooperative extension; Noah Wilson-Rich, an expert on honeybees and pollinators and co-founder of Best Bees in Boston, and Michael Veracka, an award-winning garden designer based in Providence, R.I.
The final session will include talks by Dennis Schrader, who runs a wholesale greenhouse operation in Mattituck; Heather Coste, a horticulturalist who manages the Four Seasons Garden and Breezy Island at the Bayard Cutting Arboretum in Great River; Larry Lederman, a noted garden photographer whose books include “The Rockefeller Family Gardens” and “Magnificent Trees of the New York Botanical Garden,” and Louann Rothe, a master gardener and vice chairwoman of the Herb Society of America’s Long Island chapter. Session 3 will start at 2:15.
The Cornell Cooperative Extension website has a link for registration. Full-day tickets, which include the keynote plus the 12 programs, are $75, $65 for Master Gardeners. The keynote and one program from each of the three sessions can be had for $50, $45 for Master Gardeners. While all programs will be live, they will be recorded and available for viewing at a future time.
