The Forgotten Annuals and an Old-Fashioned Seed Swap

This event is a kind-of "make up" for our Seed Exchanges on January 30 that did not get canceled, but did have lower attendance due to the nuisance snow storm that day. Who knew that the following weeks would bring us so much worse?

Save the date for:
The Forgotten Annuals and an Old-Fashioned Seed Swap
Part of the The DC Urban Gardening Talk 2010 Series
Presented by Washington Gardener Magazine and the Historical Society of Washington, DC
Sunday March 28 2:00-3:30pm
at the Auditorium of the Historical Society of Washington, DC
801 K Street, NW at Mount Vernon Square Washington, DC 20001

Janet Draper (pictured here), Horticulturist of the Mary Livingston Ripley Garden at the Smithsonian Institution, will discuss: "What Happened to Growing Thing From Seed? The Forgotten Annuals." She will describe those wonderful self-sowing and easy-to-start annuals many of us remember from our grandmother's gardens. From Columbine to Nasturtium to Zinnias, Janet will walk us through each flowers' attributes and the best ways to start them from seed.

Janet's talk will be followed by an old-fashioned seed swap. Bring your new, un-used, or self-collected seed packs for a fun seed trading session. Please fully label all your seeds and be sure that none are on the Mid-Atlantic invasive plants list. Be prepared to say a little about the seeds you have brought.

Speaker Bio:
Janet Draper is Horticulturist of the Mary Livingston Ripley Garden at the Smithsonian Institution. For about a decade now, Janet has been refining the Ripley garden and also maintaining the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden plantings, along with the numerous security planters along Independence Avenue. Janet’s training includes what she refers to as her ‘Pedigree’ in Horticulture from Purdue University, but her real hands on training came from internships after college where, she says, the real education began. Her first stop was at Mt Cuba Center for the Study of Native Piedmont Plants in Delaware, then on to Maryland to learn ornamental grasses and perennials at the nursery of Kurt Bluemel. The next stop for the Indiana farmgirl was at the Staudengartnerei Grafin von Stein-Zeppelin (Perennial Nursery of Countess von Stein-Zeppelin) in Germany’s famed Black Forest. She was then accepted to work at the nursery of Beth Chatto, one of England’s Victoria Medal of Honor holders. Janet still considers Beth Chatto’s garden to be one the most inspiring gardens she has ever had the opportunity to see. After her time in Europe, Janet returned to the US and worked in numerous nurseries before beginning a residential design business and started putting plants into the ground instead of little black nursery pots.

This event is FREE and open to the public.
Seating is limited to 150 and it is on a first-come basis.