CLASS LISTING
Morning Classes A
Seth Luginbill
Ornamental Escapees: Stopping Noxious Weeds Before They Can Start and Creating Resilient Landscapes
A01
We all deal with weeds in our gardens and intentional landscapes, but often times we ignore the potential impacts that ornamentals bring into a landscape leading to unintended introductions and negative impacts to our own living space. Currently close to 50% of the species listed on the Washington state noxious weed list are classified as “ornamental escapees.” Learning how to identify species known to easily escape as well as how to create a landscape that can help minimize the risk of escape can help mitigate the damaging effects that these species create.
Tricia Heimer
Camellia 101 - The Basics of Camellia Care
A02
Native to eastern Asia, camellias come from a climate very similar to the Pacific Northwest. Their gorgeous blooms brighten the winter garden. Tricia will explain the basics of camellia care to get you started growing these exceptional plants.
Marcia Dillon
The Basics of Tomatoes—Easy Ways to Improve Your Success SOLD OUT
A03
Tomatoes are one of the most rewarding crops to grow, but those vine-ripened treasures don’t always come easy. This class will offer tried and true tips for keeping plants healthy and productive and minimizing pest and disease issues. You’ll come away with knowledge about determining what varieties will be more successful in your garden and a multi-step plan for a bountiful tomato harvest. This class is appropriate for the novice tomato grower, but will include many helpful tips for the experienced grower as well.
Diana Wisen
Ready, Set, Garden! 25 Steps to Make You a Better Gardener SOLD OUT
A04
Are you looking for tips to help you garden more successfully? Perhaps you now have more time to garden or are new to the PNW? This class will cover a wide range of information to help you become a more successful gardener, whether you are a beginner or a seasoned expert. These hints will prompt you to head outdoors and put your gardening talents to work.
Sue Gibson
Strawberries! SOLD OUT
A05
Don’t we all love strawberries? Yes, you can grow your own! Strawberries are one of the easiest fruits to grow, and they are far more flavorful than those you bring home from the grocery store. We’ll explore plant selection, how-to planting for your spaces — especially here on Whidbey, care and concerns through the season from harvesting to storage and some fun facts and interesting history.
The class is designed for beginners to experienced gardeners who want to expand or refresh their knowledge or get more creative with their plantings or new varieties.
Harvey Brenneise
Orchids
A06
Orchids are mostly exotic tropical plants that will often grow well and bloom in modern houses as houseplants. The class will focus on practical issues for making this possible and how they are different from terrestrial (dirt-based) plants. By the end of the class, participants will understand issues of temperature, water, light, fertilizers, growing media, and other issues of growing them at home. The class will provide the most benefit for participants with basic knowledge of growing houseplants in traditional media.
Tobey Nelson
Developing and Designing Climate Resilient Gardens SOLD OUT
A07
Our gardens are forever engaged in a dance with the environment. Climate change is changing the tune. In this class we'll identify ways to help our landscapes, both old and new, keep tempo with the demands and impacts of this new era of weather and climate impacts. We'll discuss key concepts including drought, flooding, heat domes and fire, and then breakout strategies and solutions (from large to small scale) to implement that will make our gardens more resilient and sustainable.
Mara Grey
Less Water, More Blooms: Drought Tolerant Flower Gardening in the Pacific NW SOLD OUT
A08
Don’t just drop a drought-tolerant plant into a hole and figure you’re done. There are many ways to increase its chances of surviving dry spells and wet ones as well. We’ll take a look at the reasons why drought-tolerant plants fail and how we can increase their chances of flourishing.
Jessica Dahl
Roots of Landscape Design: How Historic Principles Shape our Contemporary Practice
A09
Have you ever wondered how gardens were first designed, and why we are drawn to certain places in the landscape? Part history lesson, part spatial psychology lesson, this course will look at the ways in which landscapes have been created from ancient gardens to contemporary landscapes, and the overarching principles of garden design that have resonated with people across history. The discussion will highlight examples from Italian, Roman and Renaissance era landscapes, the mid-century West Coast modernist design movement, and spatial psychology and sociology studies from the 1970s and 1980s, all of which have had a profound impact on landscape design today.
Participants will learn the historical background and design terminology of cultivated landscapes, and how these can help us better understand (and better design!) the landscapes we create around our homes today. Anyone with a passion for history and/or a love of being outdoors should enjoy this course. No prior experience is necessary.
Lisa Phillips
Mason Bee House (Make-n-Take) SOLD OUT
A10
Not everyone can keep honeybees, nor should they. Learn about some of our native pollinators and their life cycles. This class will equip you with a way of thinking about your gardens that will help all pollinators in your area. You will leave with a completed Mason Bee house to enjoy at home.
Eva Gordon
Fun with Fungi: An Introduction to Mushrooms SOLD OUT
Join Eva, for a fungi-fantastic introduction to the magical Kingdom Fungi, where we’ll explore everything from the mushrooms’ taxonomy to their bizarre anatomy and life cycle. But wait, there's more! Eva will delve into the wild and wonderful world of fungi's ecological roles, showing you just how important these funky fungi are in our ecosystem. She’ll shine a spotlight on the two most noticeable groups of the fungal world—Basidiomycota and Ascomycota—and introduce the common mushrooms within each group. Participants will leave with greater knowledge about fungi and their ecological importance.
B01
Toni Grove
Creating an Herb Garden
If you’ve long suspected there were other herbs besides chives and oregano that could be easily grown in your home garden, this is the class for you. Like any plants, herbs need the right environment to thrive, and some of us just need the right information so we can thrive as herb gardeners. Learn about common perennial and annual herbs and how to care for them, which ones are best kept in containers, which ones make great additions to your landscaping and, most important, how to preserve them after harvest.
B02
Vanca Lumsden
Ornamental Grasses: Sound and Motion SOLD OUT
Vanca loves ornamental grasses and grass-like plants, and is excited to tell you why. Extremely versatile plants, grasses can be used to create different effects for a number of situations. Ideas on their uses and photo displays of ornamental grasses you might consider for achieving certain effects will be presented. She might even include a campaign speech for their use!
B03
Don Ham
Tool Selection, Use, and Care
Can you imagine gardening without tools? Good tools are your ticket to the garden of your dreams. Learn more about how to select the best tools for yourself and how to properly clean, sharpen, and store them. Good tools pay off in the growth of your garden, efficient use of your time, energy, and money, and in your pleasure while performing even minor garden tasks.
B04
Don Krafft
A Convenient Truth: Composting in Home and Community Gardens
Composting is getting on the right side of nature to provide fertility, tilth, hydration, and microbiology to your soil and to sequester carbon using simple and routine processes. This motivating workshop covers benefits and reasons to compost, a basic technical description of the composting process and composting material, and the challenges and choices that gardeners face.
We'll look at how to make compost including input materials, where to compost, hot vs. cold composting, trouble-shooting, and using the final composted product. The objectives of the class are to enhance gardeners' knowledge of the composting process, encourage home and community gardener composting, and help in understanding challenges and benefits of this natural and sustainable soil improvement method.
B05
Karen Chapman
Deer Resistant Garden Design SOLD OUT
Wildlife is highly over-rated! Trying to create a garden that the deer will leave alone but that you can be proud of is incredibly frustrating, especially if your entire focus is on plant selection.
Discover eight time- and taste-tested design strategies, tips, and tricks that will help you create a beautiful fence-free garden that thrives despite the deer.
Whether you are a novice gardener or a landscape professional, this presentation will leave you better informed, inspired, and primed for success.
B06
Tobey Nelson
Eco-Friendly Garden Care
Every action we take can have positive or negative impacts on the planet. This is also true in the garden. In this class we'll discuss "horticulture for a healthy planet." We'll learn about garden maintenance practices that support our gardens as part of a greater ecosystem. This will include strategies for how to maintain your garden while developing and protecting habitat for wildlife and pollinators, as well as building a robust and self-sustaining soil ecosystem. We'll cover ways to preserve water and natural strategies for weed and pest control. We'll also cover a few tips for what you can do in the garden to help fight climate change.
B07
Sue Goetz
Garden Design Makeovers
Breathing new life into a garden can be daunting and rewarding. Get started with practical, easy tips, ideas, shortcuts, and advice on simple fixes you can do to make over the garden. Renovate your garden to low-maintenance beauty. Take away ideas, from healthy soil, to choosing the right plants, water-wise practices, and more! Learn shortcuts to adding design using photographs, insider tips, and before and after inspiration from an award-winning garden designer.
B08
Martha Hollis/Dawn Hawkins
Just the Basics, Please: Gardening for Beginners
This class provides an overview of many of the principles needed to garden successfully from two perspectives: Martha with a lifetime of experience, and Dawn who is a newer gardener. Participants will find opportunities to learn more in-depth knowledge about many important gardening topics. We include planning, planting and permanence for the beginning or more experienced gardeners.
Participants will learn to investigate and make good plant selections, and to maintain their plantings for a rewarding gardening experience.
B09
Deb Mitchell
Practicing the Skill of Transplanting Seedlings (Make-n-Take) SOLD OUT
This hands-on class will guide you through the process of transplanting seedlings. You'll learn the little tricks that make transplanting a success. You will get a mini flat, a selection of tomato and pepper seedlings (maybe a flower), and planting medium (seedling soil mix). You should be able to plant all your cells in the allotted time; but if not, you can take a small selection home with you along with the mini-flat with humidity dome. Once home, bottom heat will greatly assist the growing process along with strong, indirect light and gentle stimulation. This is a "Make-n-Take" class, and you'll go home with perfectly planted seedlings!
B10
Afternoon Classes C
Afternoon Focused Classes C
Lisa Taylor
C01
The Basics of Pruning
Join Lisa Taylor, author of the “Maritime Northwest Garden Guide” and “Your Farm in the City: An Urban Dweller’s Guide to Growing Food and Raising Animals” and garden educator extraordinaire in a lively discussion about the basics of pruning trees, shrubs, canes and vines. Learn about the different pruning cuts and when to use them. Learn about your yearly pruning budget and the best time to prune your ornamental and edible plants. Explore a variety of pruning tools and which are best at getting the job done. Learn how to clean, sharpen and maintain your pruning tools.
Afternoon Focused Classes C
Toni Grove
C02
Controlling Weeds
Mother Nature has had millions of years to perfect her strategy for taking over the world, even if it’s one sheep sorrel, creeping buttercup, and morning glory at a time. That means we humans must work that much smarter to get ahead of those weedy invaders and gain the upper hand. Learn how popular strategies like landscape fabric, ground covers and rock can actually work against you, which plants from your local nursery will only make it worse, and how to figure out which tools are going to work best with your landscape and your level of fitness.
Afternoon Focused Classes C
Dan Vorhis
C03
Fruit Trees: Selection and Care
This class is an abbreviated version of a 3 hour class taught at Pacific Rim Institute each year. We'll go over basics of selecting fruit cultivars and rootstocks that will do well in home orchards in our area. Focus will be on disease resistance, pollination compatibility, and other key, science-based components that affect productivity and quality of tree fruits and vines in maritime Washington.
Afternoon Focused Classes C
Dr. Robert Pelant
C04
Meadowscaping - Enhancing Lawns and Yards SOLD OUT
Learn about locally appropriate native plants and how to incorporate them into your garden or lawn. The discussion will include using bare-root plants, plugs, bulbs/corms, rhizomes, and seed. Examples of varying successes and failures will be shared. The style of the class will be free-flowing with questions welcome throughout the presentation.
Afternoon Focused Classes C
Lore Sampson
C05
Rediscovering Peonies SOLD OUT
The current resurgence in peonies is no accident. Until recently, their omission from modern garden design had persisted nearly half a century, but that’s rapidly changing as gardeners discover the exceptional qualities of newer varieties that have been specifically developed for today’s smaller, low maintenance gardens. These aren’t your grandmother’s peonies!
Join Lore as she shares everything you need to know including peony selection, flower forms, planting, propagating and care. In addition, Lore will discuss how to use peonies as cut flowers including tips on storing peonies for later use in flower arrangements and competitive shows. She will share the historical journey of three millennia of garden use of both tree and herbaceous peonies and the ongoing development of the exciting new Itoh intersectional crosses. Bring your questions and get ready to rediscover these incredibly beautiful and majestic landscape aristocrats!
Afternoon Focused Classes C
Sharon Collman & Dave Pehling
C06
Improving and Enjoying Plant Diagnostics
Diagnosing plant diseases and disorders is a combination of fact-filled science with the art of intuition. Sharon Collman and Dave Pehling, respected and entertaining WSU Extension educators, will share their diagnostic adventures of two careers spent trying to solve plant problems. Come bring your plant problem questions and expect a lively story and idea exchange. The instructors will discuss applying your strengths in the diagnostic process, looking at symptom patterns to help you determine if the origin of damage results from nonliving and/or living cause(s), and how understanding the plant disease triangle concept will help you focus your efforts on prevention and management of garden and landscape problems.
Afternoon Focused Classes C
Paul Kusche
C07
Small Space Planting
Anybody can enjoy the bounty of a garden with a little planning and creativity. Learn what "Growing in 3 Square Feet" can do for you, how to include your personal food production with your flowering plants and perennial shrubs, and the value of alternative planting designs.
Afternoon Focused Classes C
Laura Watson
C08
Grow the Heck UP: Embellish Your Garden with Vines
Learn how to embellish your garden with the beauty of vines that do well in our area. Using great photos and a friendly speaking style, Laura will provide details about their care and pruning. Receive an informative and detailed handout to take home.
Afternoon Focused Classes C
Jessica Dahl & Sue Goetz
C09
A Purposeful Approach to Pollinator Gardens SOLD OUT
Pollinators play a crucial role in our ecosystems, yet many are facing population decline from the pressures of pesticides and habitat loss. The good news is that even a small pollinator garden with the correct elements can make a difference!
Learn how to build a framework for attracting a range of pollinators to your landscape through key strategies for designing habitats. Pollinators need food, water, and shelter throughout the seasons and throughout their lifecycles. Native plants are often their preferred choice for both food and shelter. Four often-overlooked native plants that play a key role in supporting native pollinator species in all seasons will be highlighted.
Success with ornamental plants in the pollinator garden includes consideration of the design, layering, and seasonality of plants to create a sustainable ecosystem. Learn about these crucial aspects for pollinator support along with specific examples of design elements and plants that are most beneficial for our local pollinators. Sue will also explain how layering and cold-season bloomers can provide additional benefits for pollinators and create a garden with four-season interest.
Afternoon Focused Classes C
Carol Anne Ebert & Dawn Griep
C10
Discover the Art of Kokedama (Make-n-Take) SOLD OUT
Discover kokedama, the centuries old Japanese art form, whose origins lie in bonsai. Kokedama, which loosely translates to moss ball, provides a graceful repository and growing habitat for indoor and outdoor plants. You’ll be guided through a modern take on this unique planting technique and create a decorative plant sculpture that is a self-contained, sustainable home for a living plant. The moss surround makes these decorative kokedama orbs verdant and stunning especially when you put your own creative spin on the twined wrapping. Displayed on a piece from your cupboard, hung from an invisible string, or given as a gift, this “Make-n-Take” might be the beginning of a new hobby.
Afternoon Classes D
Lisa Taylor
Small Space Organic Gardening: Grow More Food on a Tiny Footprint SOLD OUT
D01
Growing your own organic vegetables and fruit in small urban spaces is fun and easy. Join Lisa Taylor, garden educator and author of the “Maritime Northwest Garden Guide” and “Your Farm in the City; An Urban Dweller’s Guide to Growing Food and Raising Animals” in a lively discussion about growing organic vegetables vertically, in containers and raised beds. Learn how to re-image your garden and maximize your food production. Discover the best place for edible crops and how make a healthy, diverse garden that resists disease and pests. Explore container and vertical garden basics for growing a diverse and successful edible garden. We will identify vegetable and fruit varieties that are best suited to small space gardening.
Dave Thomas
Gardening Wisdom SOLD OUT
D02
Let’s start with answers to questions you haven’t even thought to ask, like why does your garden look so much nicer than mine, or why are weeds so much easier to grow than the plants I want to grow?
After almost 75 years of gardening and 42 years as a Master Gardener, I think I have some of the answers. This instructor's goal is to have you say "Wow, that was something!" when you leave the class.
Anza Muenchow
Vegetables: Year-Round Crop Rotations SOLD OUT
D03
Do you love eating from your garden? Anza’s class will help you get the most from your small farm or garden year round. This class will cover the basics of soil, bed preparation, microclimates, season extension, timing your plantings and harvesting tips. Now is a good time to create your garden maps for your best harvest ever.
James Watson
Backyard Habitat Stewardship
D04
Do you care about how your landscape connects with the natural world? Would you like to learn more about how to maintain and improve, enhance, restore, and/or revitalize the native habitat in your backyard? This class will help to guide you on your stewardship journey with your natural landscape.
You will learn how to select native plants and locations for them in your backyard, as well as how to care for and maintain the plants and landscape to get the most out of your effort. The class offers a wealth of information for all experience levels, from those who are just getting into gardening to those who may be experts in the field or earn a living doing the work.
Susie Reynolds
Rhododendrons and Azaleas in Your Garden
D05
Topics include how to grow and care for rhododendrons and azaleas, how to choose the best-suited varieties for home gardens in our area, and how to incorporate them into diverse landscapes. Specific examples from Meerkerk Gardens will demonstrate how to combine other trees, shrubs, and plants with rhododendrons and azaleas to create a beautiful, four-season landscape.
Craig Cogger
Raised Beds for Home Gardens SOLD OUT
D06
Topics include a discussion of situations where raised beds are beneficial (shallow soils, high water tables, contaminated soils, high risk of runoff, improved accessibility, limited space, gardening with children), choosing soils and framing materials for raised beds, considerations for gardening in raised beds, and drawbacks of raised beds. This presentation will highlight new information in the forthcoming revision of the WSU Raised Beds fact sheet.
Robert Hallbauer
Building Lush Soil in Glacial Sediment
D07
Learn to improve the fertility and water holding capacity of your soil by understanding, supporting, and feeding the microbial ecosystem in your soil. We’ll cover the basics of the microbiota in soil, and learn how to build healthier, more productive soil that’s drought-resistant and requires less watering. Learn how to tap into the nutrients in your soil, and make them available to your plants. Make your garden more fertile, drought-resistant, and productive without chemical fertilizers.
Dr. Robert Pelant
Collecting and Preserving Seeds
D08
This class will review aspects of collecting and preserving seeds of native plants from Whidbey Island and the surrounding region. It will include grasses and forbs.
We will discuss nursery production, wild seed sourcing and collecting, processing, and storage. Examples of different types of seeds will be on display which will explain the different collection and processing methods. The style of the class will be free-flowing with questions welcome throughout the presentation.
Paul Kusche
Dahlias: Growing Myths and Misunderstandings SOLD OUT
D09
Whether you dig and divide or just leave them in the ground for next spring, it is good to learn about dahlias and how to grow and care for them. You will learn about the myths and misunderstandings around growing dahlias. Bring your questions and your enthusiasm so we can have a conversation, but most of all bring your love for the flower that brightens our gardens from August to October.
Carol Anne Ebert & Dawn Griep
Discover the Art of Kokedama (Make-n-Take) SOLD OUT
D10
Discover kokedama, the centuries old Japanese art form, whose origins lie in bonsai. Kokedama, which loosely translates to moss ball, provides a graceful repository and growing habitat for indoor and outdoor plants. You’ll be guided through a modern take on this unique planting technique and create a decorative plant sculpture that is a self-contained, sustainable home for a living plant. The moss surround makes these decorative kokedama orbs verdant and stunning especially when you put your own creative spin on the twined wrapping. Displayed on a piece from your cupboard, hung from an invisible string, or given as a gift, this “Make-n-Take” might be the beginning of a new hobby.
