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Whether you garden for flowers or food, there will be plenty of “food for thought” at Colonial Williamsburg’s 66th Garden Symposium, “Beautiful Gardens: Bountiful Options,” on April 15-16. Participants discover alternative plant choices and techniques that will help grow gardens that are both beautiful and productive.

Guest speakers and Colonial Williamsburg landscape staff will offer a bounty of tips and ideas to make the best use of time and space in the garden and include:

· Rosalind Creasy, garden and food writer, photographer, landscape designer and author, discusses “Edible Landscaping: The New American Garden.”

• Wesley Greene, gardener, Historic Trades, Colonial Williamsburg, and author, “Vegetable Gardening, The Colonial Williamsburg Way,” discusses “Gardening Under Cover.” 
• Lee Reich, author, lecturer and consultant, “Luscious Landscaping with Fruiting Trees, Shrubs and Vines.”
• Ethne Clarke, editor-in-chief, Organic Gardening, “The Purest of Human Pleasures.”
• Kerry Mendez, garden consultant, designer and writer, “EXTREMELY Low-maintenance, Bountiful Gardens.”
• Don Haynie, garden lecturer, “Herbs in the Landscape.”

Other concurrent sessions feature:

• Stacey Hirvel, Spring Meadow Nursery, Grand Haven, Mich., “Thinking Outside the Plot: Vegetables in Containers.”
• Bill Krebs, Williamsburg, Va., “A Year in the Life of a Honeybee Colony.”
• Rhys Lewis, executive chef, and Tenita Weygand, chef, Williamsburg Lodge, “History Never Tasted So Good,” an interactive culinary demonstration and tasting featuring foods and dishes introduced to the New World by the first American foodies.
• Barbara Temple Lombardi, Colonial Williamsburg photographer, “Photography in the Garden.”
• Maitreyi Roy, Pennsylvania Horticulture Society, “City Harvest: Philadelphia’s 21st Century Community Gardens and Urban Farms.”
• Clark Taggart, Williamsburg Inn floral designer, “Seventy-five Years of Hospitality: The Beauty of Williamsburg Floral Style.”

Garden Symposium attendees can choose from one of three optional programs:

• Flowers and Forges. Colonial Williamsburg’s Ken Schwarz, master blacksmith, and Susan Dippre, landscape supervisor. Learn about the plants, design and maintenance of several intimate gardens, then visit Colonial Williamsburg’s reconstruction of Anderson’s Blacksmith Shop and Public Armoury. Discover how this site evolved from a small, commercial blacksmithing operation into an extensive and diverse public manufactory.
• Garden Archaeology. Colonial Williamsburg’s Meredith Poole, staff archaeologist, and Laura Viancour, manager, landscape services. This tour focuses on the documentary and archaeological evidence discovered at the St. George Tucker and Peyton Randolph properties.
• Wildflower Walk. Colonial Williamsburg Historic Trades gardeners Wesley Greene and Don McKelvey. This early morning walk through the Bassett Hall woods explores a relatively young forest populated with both natural and exotic species and the roles they play in forest succession.

The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and the American Horticultural Society (AHS) are co-sponsors of the 66th annual Colonial Williamsburg Garden Symposium.

Registration is $135 per person for Sunday only and $110 per person for Sunday only for AHS members; $110 per person for Monday only and $100 per person for Monday only for AHS members; $225 per person for both days, and $200 for both days for AHS members. Nominal fees are charged for optional tours.

Register for the conference online at www.history.org/conted  or call 1-800-603-0948, Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. – 5 p.m.

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