Monarch on milkweed
Ken Parker

Ken Parker

Carolyn Summers

Carolyn Summers

This event is being presented by HGCNY and Baltimore Woods Nature Center.

If you have questions about event registration or details about program space please contact Baltimore Woods Nature Center and have at (315) 673-1350.

If you have questions about the agenda or the 20th anniversary event, please contact Jennifer Staples at [email protected].

A Native Plants Celebration!

Saturday, September 7, 9:30am-4pm

Join Wild Ones’ Habitat Gardening in Central New York Chapter (HGCNY) for a day-long celebration of our 20 years advocating for native plants.  You can expect inspiration, education, camaraderie, and more at this special event!

This event includes two speakers, a native plant sale featuring several local nurseries for one-stop shopping, a free raffle of native gardening books, and a tour of a Baltimore Woods restoration project.  The morning speaker will be Ken Parker, one of the founders of the WNY Native Plants Collaborative in Buffalo and owner of Native Plant Guy Consulting.  The afternoon speaker will be Carolyn Summers, landscape designer,  author of Designing Gardens with Flora of the American East, and co-director of Flying Trillium Gardens and Preserve Inc. in the Catskills.  

At lunchtime, enjoy your bag lunch from Brooklyn Pickle with other native plant enthusiasts, put your raffle tickets in the basket for your favorite native plant books (drawing at 1 p.m.), shop at the native plant sale, and visit Carolyn Summers, who will be selling and signing her newly revised and expanded book, Designing Gardens with Flora of the American East.  See below for full program details. 

Please note: this will be an in-person event only and will not be live-streamed or recorded.

Program for Event: HGCNY 20th Anniversary Celebration

  • 9:30am: Check-in
  • All day, Outdoor pavilion: Native plant sale featuring several local native plant nurseries
  • 10 – 11:30 am (Program Room, Interpretive Center): “Decolonizing Your Garden,” presentation by Ken ParkerKen Parker is a passionate Indigenous horticulturalist and member of the Seneca Nation of Indians.  A New York State Certified Nursery Landscape Professional (CNLP) and a Green Infrastructure Program Trainer, he is one of the founders of the WNY Native Plants Collaborative in Buffalo and owner of Native Plant Guy Consulting. Ken has spent much of his life devoted to growing, installing, teaching and promoting indigenous plants of North America. He has participated in various environmental projects, including conservation, restoration, education and consulting throughout the United States and Canada over the past 25 years. He will discuss native plant profiles and Indigenous cultural uses of plants.
  • 11:30am – 1pm: Lunch break. There are picnic tables and tables with seating on the deck. Carolyn Summers will sell and sign her newly revised book, Designing Gardens with Flora of the American East
  • 1pm (Program Room, Interpretive Center): Drawing for the book raffle and announcements
  • 1:15-2:45pm (Program Room, Interpretive Center): “Garden to Support Nature’s Intricate Web,” presentation by Carolyn Summers

    Carolyn Summers     is the author of Designing Gardens with Flora of the American East (2010), and co-author with daughter Kate Brittenham of the revised edition published in February 2024. Her photographs grace the pages of The Pollinator Victory Garden, by friend and colleague Kim Eierman. After completing her BSLA (Landscape Architecture) degree at CCNY, she began her career with the Trust for Public Land, producing a report that has guided preservation efforts to create an urban wildlife refuge on Staten Island in New York City. She then worked as the first Director of Natural Resources in the city’s Department of Environmental Protection, notably implementing a native plants policy for all agency construction/restoration projects that continues today. Following this, she joined the Natural Resources Defense Council for work on habitat restoration in the New York-New Jersey Bight. Ms. Summers is currently an adjunct professor at Westchester Community College with The Native Plant Center’s Go Native U certificate program. She and her husband have recently opened their country home Flying Trillium Gardens & Preserve for public tours so that designers, gardeners and homeowners will be inspired by the beauty of native plants in both garden and natural settings to create more of the same.
  • 3-4pm (Meet at the back deck): Choice of 2 tours of Baltimore Woods project areas, to be announced

Refund Policy: We expect this to be a sold-out event. If you cannot attend, please alert us ASAP so we can offer your spot to someone on the waiting list. If you cancel by Friday, August 23, 2024, you will be entitled to a full refund. After that date, there will be no refunds.

Waiting list: If spaces open up, we will contact people on the waiting list in the order they signed up.