Jenny Elder Fitch Memorial Lecture: Digging Deeper into Ecological Horticulture
Date: Sat, Oct 31, 2026
Time: 4:00 PM - 5:15 PM
Venue: North Carolina Botanical Garden, Chapel Hill
Price: Free
Category: Classes
Join us for this year’s Jenny Elder Fitch Memorial Lecture as Uli Lorimer with the Native Plant Trust explores the questions and challenges shaping ecological horticulture today. Successful gardens are being asked to be both beautiful and to provide ecological function. Welcoming more native plants into designed spaces has been shown to provide great benefit for humans and wildlife alike. Environmentally conscious garden decisions are based on assumptions that native plants better support ecosystems, that genetic diversity is essential, and that native cultivars may not be as functional as species. This talk will explore the assumptions and the challenges to those assumptions. What role does the nursery industry play in providing the right kinds of information for gardeners to make informed decisions? Do maintenance practices influence biodiversity, and how do science and research factor into these assumptions?
