Lee Reich

Presentation Titles:

• My Weedless Garden (Feature Presentation)
• Luscious Landscaping, with Fruits (Breakout Session)

Presentation Descriptions:

Luscious Landscaping, with Fruits
What could be more pleasant than picking luscious fruits from a plant that you also admire for its beauty? This presentation will introduce some of the best trees, shrubs, and vines for this purpose, plants that require little maintenance yet provide stunning flowers in spring, attractive shape and color through summer, bright colors in autumn, and/or neat form in winter. For landscaping, the ideal is a plant that also is low maintenance, being pest-resistant and requiring little or no pruning. Luscious landscaping is the way to both landscape and put (very) local, healthful, flavorful food on the table.

Weedless Garden
This presentation introduces a novel way for caring for the soil, one that results in fewer weeds. Nurturing the ground from the top down, avoiding compaction, maintaining a soil cover, and pinpointing watering emulates rather than fights Mother Nature, keeping plants healthier and minimizing week problems. This presentation describes how this 4-part system is applied to establish new plantings as well as to maintain existing plantings. The principles and practices are rooted in the latest agricultural research and are applicable to sustainable, small farm systems.

Bio:

Lee Reich, Ph.D., is an avid farmdener (more than a garden, less than a farm) who turned from plant and soil research with the USDA and Cornell University to writing, lecturing, and consulting. He is the author of a number of gardening books and writes regularly for a number of magazines. His column for Associated Press appears biweekly in newspapers across the U.S. and Canada. The “farmden” has been featured in such publications as the New York Times and Martha Stewart Living, has won awards from National Gardening and Organic Gardening magazines, and has been include in “Open Days” tours of the Garden Conservancy.