Annual Seminars

CANCELED due to the pandemic
2020: Sat. May 2 Seminar Doug Tallamy, author of Nature’s Best Hope

We’re pleased to co-sponsor, along with Onondaga Audubon and Go Native! Perennials (and other groups) a presentation by Douglas Tallamy, author of Bringing Nature Home, co-author of The Living Landscape, and author of the newly-released book, Nature’s Best Hope.

2019: Sun., April 28 Seminar featuring Nanette Masi: Designing Your Home Landscape

Our 2019 Spring seminar on designing your home landscape will be held on Sunday, April 28 at Baltimore Woods from 2 pm to 4 pm.

We’re excited to bring Nanette Masi, a nature-inspired landscape designer, photographer, writer and educator to lead our seminar.

In the first part of the program, she will discuss general design principles we can all use to create attractive and functional native plant landscapes.

In the second part of the program, she will use scale drawings of some of our yards to make design suggestions for those yards. This will not only directly benefit those yards’ owners but will be helpful to all of us as we learn from her suggestions about actual CNY yards.

2018: Sat. May 5 Seminar featuring Kim Eierman

The seminar will include two presentations by Kim Eierman , the founder of EcoBeneficial and an Environmental Horticulturist specializing in ecological landscapes and native plants.

Based in New York, Kim teaches at the New York Botanical Garden, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, The Native Plant Center in NY, Rutgers Home Gardeners School, and several other institutions.

The two presentations are:

Boosting the Ecosystem in Your Own Yard (9:00 am)

Bumblebee nectaring on swamp milkweed
Bumblebee nectaring on swamp milkweed ©Janet Allen

Even the most beautiful gardens are not always healthy ecosystems. Your yard is more than a combination of trees, shrubs and perennials — it’s a complex system where all living things are connected.

Gardening with an ecosystem approach contributes to species diversity, attracting and supporting more birds, butterflies, pollinators, and beneficial insects.

Learn how the design choices you make, the plants you select, and the maintenance practices you use can make a huge difference in creating a beautiful, healthy ecosystem, filled with life.

Dealing With Climate Change in Your Landscape (11:00 am)

Overwintering robin eating winterberries
Overwintering robin eating winterberries ©Janet Allen

Have you noticed more robins overwintering in CNY than 20 or 30 years ago? In addition to small changes such as this, we’re also experiencing more frequent droughts, more extreme weather events and increasing temperatures.

What can we do? Learn how the plants you choose and the landscape practices you use can help reduce the impacts of these changes in our climate, improve the environment around us, and even help the robins overwinter.