Dow Gardens presents Know & Grow Seminar

With bitter temperatures and a snowy landscape, February may feel a bit early to start planning your spring garden.

Not so, says Chuck Martin, horticulturalist at Dow Gardens. For 15 years, Martin has helped organize the annual Dow Gardens Know & Grow Seminar, an informational seminar for gardening enthusiasts and plant lovers alike.

We usually do this event in February, though a lot of others (botanical gardens) wait until late winter, Martin said. We hold the event in February to get people really excited about gardening.

The Know and Grow Seminar takes place this Saturday, Feb. 21, from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at Bullock Creek High School Auditorium, 1420 S. Badour. A $75 ticket will grant you access to listen to nationally known speakers on a variety of garden topics. The Midland Master Gardeners will also be on site, hosting a marketplace with items for sale from vendors across Michigan. Lunch is included.

This years event features a breadth of topics covered by well-known professionals in the horticulture world.

Roy Diblik, author of the book The Know Maintenance Perennial Garden, will speak on the topic, Creating Your Perennial Plant Community: The Know Maintenance Approach. A noted plantsman and designer, Diblik has spent more than 30 years cultivating a career focused on plants, designing such well-known gardens as the Lurie Garden at Millennium Park in Chicago.

(Seminars like Know & Grow) are like a pep rally, Diblik said. Its helpful to have these discussions and get everyone emotionally charged up in the mid or late winter because everyone is dreaming about that first 45 or 60 degree day when you can smell green. Its good to have these discussions so people get motivated and theres that thought process and inspiration for your garden.

Best-selling and award-winning author Niki Jabbour will give a presentation titled Year Round Vegetable Gardening. Jabbour will discuss maintaining a year-round vegetable garden and methods of extending your harvest season. Vegetable gardening year-round is a gardening trend gaining popularity, Martin said

Jabbour, who wrote The Year Round Vegetable Gardener, hosts her own radio show and currently writes for such publications as Fine Gardening, Garden Making, Birds and Blooms, The Heirloom Gardener, and Horticulture. She said her passion for gardening dates back to her childhood.

When I was a child, we had a family veggie garden, but it was strictly a May to September garden, Jabbour said. It was, however, enough to pique my interest and by the time I was a teenager, I had taken over the plot and never looked back.

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Dow Gardens presents Know & Grow Seminar