Peggy Olwell, Bureau of Land Management and Plant Conservation Alliance, Washington, D.C., will speak on global climate change and how it will affect the gardener.  Peggy is currently also chair of the North American Plant Specialist Group of the Species Survival Commission (SSC) of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).  Ms. Olwell is a dynamic,highly sought-after speaker. 

 Ellen Hornig and Panayoti Kelaidis have been long-time promoters of South African plants, and Panayoti recommended our Banquet speaker as an authority on this relatively new (to gardeners) temperate and subtemperate flora. J.P. (Koos) Roux will give us a tour of South African flora, and on Sunday will introduce us to South African ferns, one of his specialties. He is curator of Compton Herbarium, South African National Biodiversity Institute, Cape Town, South Africa. Some NARGS members will know him from a NARGS trip several years ago.

 Many of us have drooled over photographs of  high Andean treasures which may be grown at the Betty Ford Garden high in the Rockies but not in most of our gardens. Mark Bridgen, Director of the Cornell University Long Island Horticultural Research & Extension Center, Riverhead, NY, leads the effort to breed, select, and trial novel floricultural plants such as various Rhodophiala, Alstroemeria, Achimines, Conanthera, Leucocoryne species. He has patented several Alstromeria cultivars (most recently A.’Mauve Magic’) but will talk to us on many other Chilean geophytes that are growable for us. 

 Tony Avent, who "considers any plant hardy until he’s killed it three times”, has made a specialty of aroids and will share with us some of his experiences with the hardier ‘jacks’ and his recommendations on plants to try in more northerly gardens. His talks on his plant exploration adventures have entertained and enlightened rock gardeners for many seasons and his Plant Delights Nursery catalog is a perennial pleasure (as are his plants).

 Many of us have a Lenten Rose in our garden. Judith and Dick Tyler will open our minds to the many other species of Helleborus that can enhance our gardens, including ones often regarded as too tender for our climate.  Their family-run Pine Knot Farms is a source of many modern cultivars, and Judith recently co-authored (with Cole Burrell) Hellebores: A Comprehensive Guide, for which Dick took the pictures.

 Bill McLaughlin is a curator at the United States Botanic Garden, Washington, D.C. As designer of the new Regional Garden, Bill will talk about will talk about outstanding plants native to the mid-Atlantic region and other native plants for rock and dry gardens. His knowledge of their natural habitat will help us use many of these less frequently seen plants.

 We don’t just grow plants, we take photos of them.  We like to show them to friends and use them to show off the rare and unusual plants we are growing. More of us are using the new digital technology than ever before but sometimes finding it less satisfactory than film. Karen Rexrode has been a long-time member of NARGS, and for some thirty years ran a well-loved nursery near Middleburg, VA before moving professionally into the field of photography. She will help us to make sense of digital in one of the breakout sessions.

 The ultimate rock garden may be an alpine gravel scree, but aspects of the scree make a good garden for the muggy Washington, DC summer climate.  Mike Bordelon, manager of the Smithsonian Institution’s Botany Research Greenhouse, has successfully built such a garden using gravel and tufa at the greenhouse work site.  Underlain with scattered piles of well-aged compost and the standard heavy Washington area rocky mineral-rich clay, it has proved to be very low-maintenance requiring no supplemental watering after the initial planting and watering-in.  Audrey Faden has developed a similar dry garden through her own efforts and with the help of volunteers as the Coordinator of Simpson Park Gardens.  Between their two gardens, Mike and Audrey have tried an extraordinary number of plants successfully in this environment. They will discuss what they’ve learned in another breakout session.

 With the new global economy, many of us are importing new plants that would have required a major expedition to acquire only a few years ago.  In another breakout session, William Aley will give us the latest information on plant and seed import rules and procedures. He is a senior import specialist with the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) and will tell us ways to avoid some of the pitfalls of plant importation.  If attendees complete the on-line application for a plant import permit, Bill will endorse the application for them.

 There is reason to believe that lower precipitation rates and new patterns of rainfall will be a part of climate change for most of us. While Nick Turland is currently co-director of the Flora of China project at the Missouri Botanical Garden, St Louis, MO, he has a long-term interest in the flora of Crete. He will share his love for the wonderful Mediterranean flora as he has seen it over many years.

 Primulas are grown by all of us, but how will they fare in a warming earth? Richard Critz, for many years editor of the Primrose Journal, and a longtime Primrose guru will present a program on maintaining primulas in warmer gardens.

 Richard Olsen, Research Geneticist at the U.S. National Arboretum in Washington, D.C., will discuss some developments in woody plants. Dick was previously at North Carolina State University, The goal of his work at the Arboretum is to develop stress-, disease-, and pest-tolerant cultivars of important landscape trees using classical and modern genetic manipulation techniques, but as an avid gardener he keeps up on perennials as well.