Thirteenth Annual Garden & Landscape Symposium 

The King’s Garden at Fort Ticonderoga presents the Thirteenth Annual Garden & Landscape Symposium on Saturday, April 5, 2025. This program features practical strategies for expanding an improving your garden and landscape. We invite you to join us, whether you are an experiences gardener or just getting started, for helpful insights from garden experts who live and garden in northern climates.

STREAMING THE GARDEN & LANDSCAPE SYMPOSIUM!
Those who are unable to travel to Ticonderoga for the symposium can sign up to participate online through Fort Ticonderoga’s Center for Digital History using ZOOM.

Symposium Schedule:

9:00am Welcome

9:10-9:20am Challenges of the 2024 Growing Season—Fort Ticonderoga’s Horticulturist-in-Residence Ann Hazelrigg presents a brief review of the challenges gardeners faced in 2024.

9:20-10:20am Inspired Garden Design Lessons from Magnificent Gardens and Gardeners—Stunning gardens will be our classroom for emphasizing striking design essentials that elevate gardens from ordinary to sublime, regardless of the hardiness zone or sunlight conditions. We will consider texture, movement, color, repetition, focal points, vertical elements and more. Tips and shortcuts to maximize color and reduce maintenance also will be covered. Kerry Ann Mendez is an award-winning garden educator, author, design consultant and proprietor of Perennially Yours based in southern Maine.

10:30-11:30am Hill-Stead: A Country Place Estate—Learn about the evolution of the landscape of Hill-Stead Museum, once the private estate of a collector of French Impressionist paintings, located in Farmington, Connecticut. This presentation will focus on the restoration of the Beatrix Farrand-designed Sunken Garden and a walking garden awaiting its turn to shine anew. Landscape vistas then and now will place the two gardens in context with the home and estate’s agricultural heritage. Melanie Bourbeau is Senior Curator of the 1901 historic house, open as a museum since 1947. In addition to overseeing all aspects of collections care and stewardship, she also manages the museum’s extensive archives that includes family papers and institutional history.

11:45am-12:30pm Lunch—Included in the registration fee.

12:30-12:40pm What to Expect in 2025—Fort Ticonderoga’s Horticulturist-in-Residence Ann Hazelrigg shares about what to expect in the 2025 growing season.

12:40-1:40pm Living History and Heirloom Produce: Researching and Sourcing Seasonal and Historically Accurate Food Items—An apple isn’t always just an apple! This talk will explore the ways in which produce common in the eighteenth century differs from what is common in our twenty-first century garden and kitchen, as well as the ways in which living historians research, source, and interpret these items. Kitchen gardens and the sensory implications of produce differences when used in historical cooking will also be explored.  Sara Evenson is a food historian who studies kitchen labor and food production in New York’s long eighteenth century. She is currently completing her Ph.D. at the University at Albany.

1:50-2:50pm The Arnold Arboretum—a place for everyone to learn plants—The Arnold Arboretum is Harvard University’s museum of trees and a key Boston City Park within the Olmsted designed Emerald Necklace. Join Rodney Eason as he provides an overview of how a vision started 152 years ago has manifested into a beloved place for all people. He will also provide a glimpse at how the Arnold is preparing for the next 100 years, with a goal of bringing more people closer to nature and illustrating the importance of plants and design within our world. As Director of Horticulture & Landscape at the Arnold Arboretum, Rodney leads the horticultural care and design of Harvard’s museum of living trees.

3:00-4:00pm How to Love a Forest—What is a forest, why are forests important, and what does it mean to take care of them? Join Ethan Tapper, a forester, digital creator, and the author of How to Love a Forest: The Bittersweet Work of Tending a Changing World (published in September 2024 by Broadleaf Books), for a presentation that will invite you to reimagine forests, ecosystems, and our relationship to them. For over a decade Ethan has worked as a service forester and a consulting forester in Vermont—advising landowners, municipalities, conservation organizations, foresters and loggers, stewarding thousands of acres of public and privately-owned forests, and holding hundreds of public educational events. Ethan has been recognized as a thought-leader and a disruptor in the conservation community of the northeastern United States and beyond, and has received several national awards for his efforts.  He is also a regular contributor to Northern Woodlands magazine and a variety of other publications, and a digital creator with tens of thousands of followers on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and TikTok (all under the handle @HowToLoveAForest).