Winter Lecture Series

Shake off the winter doldrums with our annual Winter Lecture Series. This fully virtual series features presentations by regionally renowned experts on on eight Sundays from Jan. 12 to March 2, 2 to 3 pm. Knowledgeable lecturers address a wide range of topics related to natural history, biodiversity, ecological gardening, native plants, native wildlife and more.

Winter Lecture Series is brought to you, in part, thanks to the generous support of Bucks County Foundation and BLBB Charitable.

For more information, please call 215.862.2924 or email education@bhwp.org.

Jan. 12: Habitat Gardening for Backyard Bouquets with Jennie Love

Perennial plants and their benefits are primarily tied to the outdoors. However, their benefits can extend far beyond your gardens. Learn about how to employ native perennial plants and regenerative growing practices in your garden to increase habitat while also producing beautiful bouquets for your home.

Owner and creative director at Love ‘n Fresh Flowers, Jennie Love is a trained professional horticulturist and an experienced life-long farmer. Love has led hundreds of workshops over the years, including courses at her farm and classes for Longwood Gardens and the Barnes Foundation. She also frequently presents for floriculture and farming conferences, garden clubs, trade associations and other organizations. A passionate farmer and artist, Love found her natural niche as a “farmer florist” for wedding and event design and has been a recognized leader of the local flower movement for the past 16 years. She is a past president of the International Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers (ascfg.org) and writes regular articles for the Cut Flower Quarterly. Love is also the host of two popular podcasts, No-Till Flowers and Floral Guild Radio. She is the founder of the Regenerative Flower Farmers Network, a community of growers dedicated to healing the earth one stem at a time.

Jan. 19: Tiny Forests for Bucks County with Jim Walter, Ph.D.

A tiny forest is a dense, fast-growing native woodland the size of a tennis court. It is based on an established forest management method developing in the 1970s by Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki, Ph.D. The idea is for a tiny forest is to transform a small barren plot into one packed with dense vegetation, trees and complex ecosystems. Tiny forests brings the benefits of a forest— connecting people with nature, raising awareness of the environment, helping to mitigate the impacts of climate change and supporting urban wildlife—right into the heart of our cities and suburban spaces. Discover how tiny forests are being built in Bucks County.

Jim Walter, Ph.D., is certified as a master watershed steward, master gardener and master well owner by Penn State Extension and as a tree tender by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. He is co-chair of the Buckingham Township EAC and a member of the Bucks County Parks and Recreation board. He is a chemical engineer by training, earning his Ph. D., from U.C. Berkeley, and led research and development units for major chemical corporations during his career. Walter is an active volunteer with the Heritage Conservancy, Bucks County Audubon, the Bucks County Conservation District and Bucks County Parks and Recreation.

Jan. 26: Preserving Native Habitats through Scientific Illustration with J. Spahr

Not all of us have access to places of natural beauty. Even when we do it can be difficult to identify keystone flora and fauna or the intrinsic and instrumental value of certain landscapes. Infographic scientific illustrations help to share the many benefits of native habitats to a wide variety of viewers. These images can help viewers understand lifecycles, animal food sources, plant identification, the importance of biodiversity and much more! Learn about the research, process and practical application of scientific infographics and their utility in helping to preserve fragile ecosystems.

J. Spahr is a scientific illustrator with a masters degree in scientific illustration from Maastricht University and Zuyd University. As a freelance illustrator, Spahr works for science centers, botanical gardens, universities and publishers. Her illustrations are found in places such as The Journal of Wildlife Research, The Journal of Comparative Biology, The Brevard Zoo, Florida Fish and Wildlife, Maryland State Parks System and more. Her passion is creating hyper-realistic infographics that demystify the importance of fragile habitats and creatures for the general public. Her goal as an illustrator is to connect audiences with their surroundings in order to inspire people to preserve them.

Feb. 2: From Wasteland to Wonder – Easy Ways We Can Help Heal Earth in the Sub/Urban Landscape with Basil Camu

Join Basil Camu of Leaf & Limb as he examines how the systems of photosynthesis and soil formation work and how they affect water, carbon and all other life on land. Learn how our current management of the suburban and urban landscape is damaging these systems and about the practices we can implement that help heal them based on first-hand expertise developed at Leaf & Limb. We’ll begin with the easiest concepts, like planting saplings and saving mature trees. Then we’ll move to some more challenging, more impactful approaches, like planting pocket forests and replacing our lawns with Piedmont prairies. Finally, for those who want to help shift paradigms even more, we discuss how we can use the Project Pando model to work with our community to gather native seeds, raise them into trees and give them away for free.

Basil Camu pursues his purpose and passions as the co-founder of Leaf & Limb, a tree care company in Raleigh, NC, and Project Pando, a non-profit that aims to connect people to trees. He is a treecologist, ISA Board Certified master arborist and Duke graduate. He sits on some boards and has won some awards, but he still feels most accomplished when he causes his incredible wife (the real brains behind all of this) to fall into fits of uncontrollable laughter. When he’s not having fun at work, he likes to pull invasive plants from his pocket forests, contemplate on his front porch and go hiking with his family.

Feb. 9: Lower Makefield Township’s Native Plant Ordinance at 18 Years and Counting with Jim Bray

Lower Makefield Townships innovative Native Plant Ordinance was adopted on April 4, 2007. A discussion will take place regarding how the ordinance came into being, its salient features and how it actually works in real practice. At its inception 18 years ago, it was considered cutting edge. Discover how it was accepted by developers, copied by other municipalities, how it has stood up to the test of time and its amazing results. Will a native plant ordinance work in your community? Let’s walk through the steps.

Jim Bray, a NY native with a long-term passion for gardening and conservation, has lived in Bucks County, PA, for most of his adult life. He is a Preserve interpretive naturalist, a master gardener and is the past chairman of the Lower Makefield Township Environmental Council. During his time as chair of LMT, they received several national and state awards, among them the Environmental Achievement Award from the U.S. EPA—the only community so honored in the whole Mid-Atlantic region—as well as the PA Governor’s Award for Environmental Excellence. Bray is an avid outdoors enthusiast and biker, and if you walk the canal, you will run into him sooner or later.

Feb. 16: Restoring Nature to Restore Ourselves with Tania Roa

Humans are so deeply intertwined with natural cycles and the Earth’s balance that any disequilibrium impacts our inner well-being. When we lack a connection to our environment, it creates a void that cannot be filled with anything else. There are several ways to carry out ecosystem restoration, each region requiring different needs depending on the severity of the damage, what type of pollution or degradation has occurred and what resources are available. We'll discuss our deep connection and methods to help restore the planet and ourselves.

Tania Roa is part of Soul Fire Farm's Speakers Collective, an Afro-Indigenous centered community farm and training center dedicated to uprooting racism and seeding sovereignty in the food system. She is the communications and outreach coordinator at Sustainable Harvest International, a nonprofit supporting Central American family farmers in their transition to sustainable farming. She is also the co-founder and co-host of Closing the Gap, a social justice podcast that shares stories on the connections between today's global crises and their solutions. Roa graduated from Tufts University with a masters of science in animals and public policy, and through her writing and nature photography she emphasizes the importance of protecting both people and the planet. She loves to snorkel, hike and travel.

Feb. 23: Creating and Maintaining Meadow Plant Communities for Maximum Ecological and Economic Benefit with Sam Quinn

The concept of converting lawns to meadows has existed for decades yet has enjoyed a recent surge of interest in the US. Meadow plant communities support far more biodiversity and ecosystem services than lawns while also serving as beautiful landscape features that can reduce property management costs. Unfortunately, there exists a great deal of well-meaning but often misleading information regarding meadow establishment. Too often discussions of lawn to meadow boil down to just planting native plants associated with meadows rather than information on how to create self-sustaining, functional ecosystems that provide orders of magnitude more environmental benefits. To that end, we will discuss the steps of creating and maintaining meadow plant communities in ways that achieve the most ecological and economic benefits for a given space.

Sam Quinn, of SUNY Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) department of biology, oversees the Conservation on Private Lands Initiative within the Restoration Science Center at SUNY ESF. He has been involved in meadow restoration since 2010, typically working in mixed use landscapes such as farms and residential areas. In his role at ESF, Quinn conducts research and teaches classes on habitat management to enhance biodiversity, ecosystem services and sustainable enterprises.

March 2: Name that Plant – Bird – Insect: A Beginner’s Guide to Using Nature Apps with Juanita Hummel

What’s in a name? Knowing the name of a living thing can open a door into its world and deepen your connection with the nature world as a result. Modern tech has made that knowledge more easily accessible than ever once you know how to use it effectively. This program is an introduction to the best smart phone apps for helping you identify birds, plants and animals in the field. It is tailored for beginners as well as providing tips to improve ID accuracy for those who are already using apps but are not satisfied by the results they are getting. Learn how your observations may be used by scientific researchers and how you can contribute to citizen science project databases. Apps will include eBird, Merlin, iNaturalist, Seek and others.

Juanita Hummel is a volunteer interpretive naturalist at the Preserve, where she also serves on the board of trustees and chairs the education and interpretation committee. Retired from a career in research and a long-time birding enthusiast, she headed outdoors and into the natural world to learn more about plants, butterflies and amphibians and the habitats in which they live. She is a past president of the Washington Crossing Audubon Society, is a Pennsylvania Master Naturalist, has participated in many citizen scientist projects, does nature walks and talks for local environmental and conservation organizations, and enjoys eco-traveling to study the diversity of birds and plants around the world.

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