Due to several circumstances, the Board of Directors has decided to have the next LIVE Education Conference in 2024. We always want to ensure that we bring you the finest “Gardening and All That Jazz” conference, and due to the rise in Covid again and other factors, we are moving our next conference out to 2024.
The date and location is yet to be determined.
Our conferences are offered to all who love to garden
All skill levels are welcome, and you need not be a Master Gardener to attend. Master Gardeners receive 5 hours CE Credit.
Chair: Betty Peters
Producer: Orion Neighborhood Television


Past Conferences
2021 Education Conference, Gardening and All That Jazz – In Harmony With Nature, Saturday, April 21, 2021. This event was produced by Orion Neighborhood Television (orionontv.org) and presented as a live event. Keynote speakers were Rick Darke, Doug Tallamy, Heather Holm and Susan Martin. Our sponsors were Proven Winners and PIechnik’s Garden Gate.
2022 Annual Conference
Gardening And All That Jazz – Growing with Style

2022 Keynote Speakers

David Culp
The Layered Garden
The Layered Garden
David Culp will show us how to recreate the majestic display of his beloved two-acre Pennsylvania garden, Brandywine Cottage. It contains a basic lesson in layering—how to choose the correct plants by understanding how they grow and change throughout the seasons, how to design a layered garden, and tips on maintaining it. To illustrate how layering works, David will take you on a virtual tour through each part of his celebrated garden. The lecture culminates with his signature plants for all four seasons.
David Culp
David Culp is the creator of the gardens at Brandywine Cottage in Downingtown, Pennsylvania. He has been lecturing about gardens nationwide for more than 15 years. His articles have appeared in Martha Stewart Living, Country Living, Fine Gardening, Green Scene, and many other publications.
He is a former contributing editor to Horticulture magazine and served as chairman of the Mid-Atlantic Hardy Plant Society. David was Vice President for Sunny Border Nurseries in Connecticut. David is a herbaceous perennials instructor at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, PA.
He has developed the Brandywine Hybrid strain of hellebores and was recently cited in the Wall Street Journal for his expertise on snowdrops. His garden has been featured several times in Martha Stewart Living and on HGTV. Brandywine Cottage is listed in the Smithsonian Institution Archives of American Gardens.
David’s best-selling book, The Layered Garden, published by Timber Press, has been selected by Garden Writers Association as 2013 Best Overall Book. It is now in its eighth printing. David is a recipient of the Distinguished Garden Award from the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society 1997 and 2016 and has also been awarded the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society Award of Merit. He currently serves on the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s Gold Medal Plant Selection Committee. He was the recipient of the Garden Media Award from the Perennial Plant Association in 2014. He has been Honorary Chair, Ladew Garden Fair; Celebrated Garden Artist; Wave Hill Gardener’s Party 2016; Celebrated Plant Expert, Rare Plant Auction, Delaware Center for Horticulture in 2017; and featured in the Garden Conservancy’s 25th anniversary book, Outstanding American Gardens, 2016. Visit his website at: www.davidlculp.com

Kerry Ann Mendez
Hydrangeas Demystified: Great Hydrangeas Plus Tips for Exceptional Flowering
Hydrangeas Demystified: Great Hydrangeas Plus Tips for Exceptional Flowering
Unravel the mystery for having honkin’ Hydrangeas that will be the envy of the neighborhood. This vast genus of shrubs is divided into five groups. Knowing the differences and how to maximize the show from each will be discussed as well as top-performing cultivars. The talk includes how to care for and prune these beauties.
Kerry Ann Mendez
Kerry Ann Mendez is an award-winning garden educator, author and design consultant based in southern Maine. Since 2015 she has presented over 400 lectures to more than 40,000 gardeners in 21 states and Canada. As a popular educator and communicator she has received over 450 five-star reviews from her lecture audiences, which are available for review on the independent national website GreatGardenSpeakers.com. In 2014 she received the Gold Medal award from the Massachusetts Horticultural Society for “Exceptional teaching and writing that increases public enjoyment and appreciation of horticulture.” Her gardens have been featured in numerous magazines including Better Homes and Gardens, Fine Gardening, Country Gardens, Garden Gate and Horticulture. Kerry Ann’s gardens have been featured in many gardening magazines, including Fine Gardening, Garden Gate, Country Gardens, Horticulture and Better Homes and Gardens.
Kerry Ann has been a featured speaker at botanical gardens, arboretums and horticultural societies in 20 states, including the U.S. Botanic Gardens, U.S. National Arboretum, Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, Wave Hill, Chicago Botanic Gardens, Longwood Gardens and many more. She has been a presenter and keynote speaker at Master Gardener conferences in 18 states plus dozens of flower shows including Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, Ohio and Seattle. In addition, she has been a frequent presenter at nursery and landscaping professional organizations and Green Industry events, including New England Grows, Cultivate, CENTS and the Perennial Plant Association’s annual conferences. Kerry Ann has written four gardening books, with the most recent, The Budget-Wise Gardener, released in February 2018. In 2015 Kerry Ann was a Region I representative for the Garden Writers Association of America. Her monthly e-newsletter and blog go out to over 12,000 subscribers throughout the United States and Canada. In 2016 Kerry Ann started producing international gardening Webinars that have been enjoyed by thousands. In May 2018 she joined Estabrook’s Garden Center and Nursery as the head garden designer and consultant. For more information regarding Kerry Ann Mendez please visit www.pyours.com.

Shawna Coronado
Grow UP! Elevate Your Garden Beds and Stop Being a Pain in Your Neck
Grow UP! Elevate Your Garden Beds and Stop Being a Pain in Your Neck
Since Shawna Coronado has been diagnosed with osteoarthritis pain in 2015, she has been learning tips and tricks for how to reduce her chronic inflammatory pain while in the garden. In this workshop, Shawna will teach you all the smart garden tips for pain reduction she knows. She will show full-color photos featuring her extensive elevated bed gardens and will teach techniques on smart ways to grow at waist height. Learn how to grow a large volume of annual flowers, perennial plants, vegetables and herbs, and even succulents in a smaller space while reducing stress on your joints and body. Stop being a pain in your own neck and back – attend the class to get all the down low on growing UP.
Shawna Coronado
Shawna Coronado is a successful author, blogger, photographer, and media host with green lifestyle living, organic gardening, and anti-inflammatory culinary who campaigns for social good. She is also an on-camera spokesperson and social media personality with over half million followers on her various social media venues and a YouTube channel with more than 2 million views. Shawna’s wellness, garden, food, and eco-adventures have been featured in many media venues including news programming, radio broadcasting, and PBS television.
Along with her gardening and green-lifestyle initiatives, Shawna is concerned about promoting and teaching a wellness lifestyle through anti-inflammatory living. She was diagnosed with severe spinal osteoarthritis, this diagnosis has led her to educate audiences about beneficial diet, food, and health practices through her organic living media. She dreams that this will enable more people to be active who suffer from similar conditions. Her successful organic living photographs and stories have been shown both online and off in many international home and garden magazines and multiple books.
You can learn more about Shawna at www.shawnacoronado.com.

Meredith Simpson & Richard Thomas
Oudolf Garden Detroit
Oudolf Garden Detroit
Oudolf Garden Detroit is a four-season, free public garden on beautiful Belle Isle – a setting as unique as Detroit! Inspired by the energy of Detroit after receiving a “love letter from Detroit” from The Garden Club of Michigan (GCM) Piet Oudolf designed this naturalistic public garden on Belle Isle. Both artistic and ecologic by design, he chose perennials, grasses, shrubs, and trees for their hardiness, durability, and ever-changing textures and colors for enjoyment. We will explore how an all-volunteer ‘grounds crew’ has worked together with Piet Oudolf to fund, plan, design, build and now care for this wonderful public asset. Join us as we explore Piet Oudolf’s master plan, planting designs, and extensive plant choices.
Meredith Simpson & Richard Thomas
Meredith is a longtime perennial gardener and naturalistic planting connoisseur, with particular interest in modern planting design and environmental stewardship. She first visited Piet and Anja Oudolf’s nursery and gardens in Hummelo, The Netherlands in the spring of 2007. As an organizing volunteer with Oudolf Garden Detroit, Meredith has led the plant and bulb sourcing, and garden installation efforts. Going forward, Meredith is serving as COO of Friends of Oudolf Garden, and is working on the Belle Isle garden’s care, maintenance, volunteer and public outreach programs.
After participating in the large-scale volunteer planting of the Oudolf Meadow at Delaware Botanic Garden, Meredith worked with the team at Chicago’s Lurie Garden and with Roy Diblik, studying successful Oudolf garden care and maintenance practices over time. Her long-term goal is to serve the people of Detroit and SE Michigan by maintaining a world-class public garden with ecological practices, guided by the artistic vision and design direction of Piet Oudolf.
Richard Thomas studied Art and Education at Indiana Wesleyan University but immediately took up an administrative career in Health Care upon graduation. The education was funded in large part by scholarship and remaining expenses for education were met by working in a local plant nursery. The love for propagation, maintenance and knowledge of plants beyond a normal gardening interest turned, over the years, to a much broader base in the search for knowledge of native plants and habitat. Motivated to study and emulate successful practice in horticulture outside of formal education has led Richard to a number of unusual opportunities. An example is the work he did for the National Parks and Recreation Dept., recreating the original design for Teddy Roosevelt's Flower Garden on his Long Island home, Sagamore Hill (National Registry of Historic Sites). This was based on old photographs of dignitaries visiting the garden during Teddy Roosevelt's years in office. Seven years following that project, a trunk of old documents found in a nearby plant nursery proved every choice made to be historically correct. Richard has run (and is now retiring from) an estate gardening business for 30 years. Richard is a member of The Garden Club of Michigan, the organization sponsoring the design that resulted in the Oudolf Garden Detroit project on Belle Isle. It has been an incredible dream project to be part of and learn from the great master, Piet Oudolf. The project on Belle Isle continues to fuel a boundless enthusiasm for personal learning as well as for introducing people to plants in ecologically sound relationships.