Are you curious how to make your garden work for you? While the addition of trees and shrubs can certainly make your landscape look nicer, the practical benefits of an ornamental garden are too numerous to ignore. With thoughtful consideration, intentional placement and creative plant selection, your shade trees could reduce your energy costs, your perennial border could solve your stormwater issues and your privacy hedge could be filled with tasty fruit.

Join the JC Raulston Arboretum for a morning symposium for everyone who loves plants, horticulture and gardening and is ready to go beyond beauty to make sure their gardens are not only gorgeous but have purpose. Whether you’re looking to maximize the benefit you get from a single planting or you’re one flannel shirt away from turning your home garden into a permacultural homestead, the Winter Symposium at the JCRA has something to teach you.

NC State’s Barb Fair and Sam Hubert from One Green World Nursery in Portland, Oregon, will show you the practical potential in your ornamental landscape that’s waiting to be unlocked. Fair will give you the tools you need to lower your bills while helping the environment through your plantings. Hubert will open your eyes to the substantial palette of fruiting plants that’s available to zone 8 gardeners. Their knowledge and passion will inspire and empower you to fill your landscape with plants with benefits and to plot a more purposeful garden.
The symposium will be available in person and online. Registration is required. If you register to participate in the symposium online, you will receive instructions on how to join the class via Zoom.