Auburn University Public Horticulture: Day two: Restless Leg Syndrome

Hey y'all! This post is being written by the Fab Five (pictured below) and we are the incoming class/second year students in the Public Horticulture Program. We are excited to be here for the first time at the APGA!

L-R: Kira Chaloupka, Hilary Heath, Jeremiah DeVore, Hanna Pettus, & Seth Allen

Let the sessions begin!

The conference has officially started and we spent the day attending different sessions pertaining to various aspects of public gardens. Below are short blurbs describing some of the sessions we sat in on.

Session 1:
-- Creating Restorative, Empowering Environments for Therapeutic Healing:
Tuesday morning’s education session consisted of three presentations. The first was given by Barb Kreski, director of horticultural therapy services at the Chicago Botanic Garden. She explained the relevance of horticultural therapy in involving all members of the population, including the growing demographic of those with Sensory Processing Disorders. Nancy Chambers recently retired from being director of The Enid A. Haupt Glass Garden. Their organization oversaw many programs. Most striking to me was a program implemented fourteen years ago working with elderly homeless clients in NYC to establish community and amend the isolation many of these people seek. Kara Roggenkamp wrapped up the series, giving specifics of her work with the Pioneer Education Center and Western Pennsylvania School for Blind Children. (Jeremiah DeVore)

--Designing Beauty:
Four speakers presented during the seminar; each speaker exhibited different yet beneficial and educational views on defining the meaning of beauty, how to create beauty and different prospectives of beauty. Some important points I personally feel are the core entities of beauty, which were reiterated and heavily emphasized by each speaker, more so landscape architect Gary Smith, include design elements and principals such as balance, proportion, texture, etc. Other important aspects of beauty include the emphasis of certain themes that make a space beautiful, relationships between art and horticulture, cohesiveness of the entire staff within a design or project in order to facilitate a complete and holistic understanding of a design within the management as a whole and more. Concerns for sustaining beauty were voiced in a Q & A session at the end of all the presentations, which is crucial for our industry, especially public gardens because we as designer or horticulturalist need to be able to adapt and change with the trends or the environment itself in order to maintain the interest of the public and the space as well. Hardscape maintenance was one of the sustainability issues that caught my attention because most people think of sustainable plants first and seem to forget the importance and impact hardscapes have in creating and maintaining a beautiful space. All in all it's the simple aspects within a design that make a space beautiful and the way the viewer interprets or is impacted by the space. (Hilary Heath)

-- Emerging Trends for a Changing World:
What do visitors want when they visit a public garden, zoo or aquarium? How can gardens adapt to the rapidly changing demographics in the United States? These are a couple of questions public horticulture professionals have to begin addressing now. Some think that the technological revolution is still in the beginning stages. This is not the case. Technology is the now, not the future. It doesn't separate people from others like some would believe, but actually allows people to be more connected than ever. Children, adults and even seniors can benefit from the technological revolution. As an industry, public gardens have to adapt to this change and develop creative ways to integrate education, hand-on experiences and even storytelling to keep visitors connected and entertained as they experience the beauty and diversity of nature. As a young professional this session really made me think about how I can contribute and be, as Caroline Lewis of the CLEO Institute said, "an authentic leader." Can you become a champion of change? (Hanna Pettus)

Lunch:
-- Keynote speaker: Dr. Christián Samper, President & CEO of the National Conservation Society
For lunch we were served a delectable southwest chicken salad. It took a while to get down, however, for an award ceremony was simultaneously underway. The following apple cobbler was much easier to enjoy, as we took a hiatus from applause to receive a lecture from Dr. Cristian Samper, president and CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Society. Dr. Samper addressed the importance of maintaining biodiversity and how that can be facilitated by collections in botanical gardens. His enthusiasm permeated the room through his speech, giving rise to a standing ovation at its conclusion. (Jeremiah DeVore)

Session 2:
-- Student Presentations:
This session is just what the name implies... Presentations given by the students. These ranged from research the student had/has been working on to interested topics. Some of the themes included research on Collaborative Marketing Groups, Grant application process for children's gardens, Engaging the community in public gardens as well as the interest in Rediscovering the story of Helena Rutherfurd Ely (who helped found the Garden Club of America). After each student presented there was a time of Q & A. (Kira Chaloupka)

Profession Section:
-- Emerging Professionals:
Professional sections are a time when groups of professionals in a certain category meet to discuss ideas and future projects they would like work on. As "emerging professionals," several of us sat in on this meeting along with about 15 other peers. Working through an agenda, we talked about an annual project we would like to see accomplished. We decided a webinar with garden directors would be great; they could give tips on what they are looking for as future employees and how we can best represent ourselves in the field. We also brainstormed ideas for the following year's annual project. After an engaging round of discussion we agreed a mentoring program would be an exciting plan to implement. The basis of it would be to find a director and garden to sponsor a rising senior from a local school in the area of that year's conference and invite them to annual APGA. Once there, they would be paired with someone in the Emerging Professionals section and have the opportunity to explore the APGA and even go to lunch with the sponsor director. Being such a wonderful but new area of horticulture, we want to expose people, especially future generations, to all it has to offer. (Kira Chaloupka)

-- Historical Landscapes:
The Historic Landscapes Professional Section was a meeting of the Alliance for Historic Landscape Preservation which provides a place for public gardens to share resources and insight into the preservation of gardens of historic interest. They discussed plans for their upcoming meeting and asked the attendees what sorts of topics they would be interested in having presented. The group discussed a variety of topics such as which programs they used to organize their plant records, determining the time period and the original designers intent when restoring a garden and ways to advertise their gardens to promote them to a wider audience. For more information their website is http://www.ahlp.org. (Seth Allen)

Reception/Social:
Being our first time to the APGA, we approached the reception with a little hesitation -- not knowing anyone but those we came with and seeing everyone else act like one big family didn't help much. We grabbed a drink and a side plate of nachos and wings then settled on a wall to chow down. After several minutes of eating, one of our session leaders, Rebecca Turk, came over to talk with us some more. It was almost as if the flood gates opened and our fears were washed away because from then on we were nothing but chatty Patty's, talking with anyone who would give a moment of their time. Conversations were held with a University of Hawaii professor, the founder of the CLEO Institute, a director of the Smithsonian Institution, and many more.