Penn State Extension hosts Garden and Landscape Symposium in Hampton

This April, not just showers will bring May flowers.

The annual Garden and Landscape Symposium and Marketplace, from Penn State Extension, will be held April 27 at the Hampton Community Center. The event will feature lectures from a pair of renowned landscaping experts, along with a plant and garden marketplace.

This year, the lecturers are Mary Palmer Dargan and Bill Thomas.

“They are going to be looking specifically at landscape design and plant pairing,” said Chris VandenBosche, Master Gardener coordinator for Penn State Extension.

That means that the experts will discuss the best plants to complement each other in a garden, either aesthetically, because of their similar needs or because they help a garden serve a purpose.

“If you have a specific job for your garden — let’s say it’s managing storm water — then they will talk about plants that do well in an area of your yard that, for example, gets wet,” VandenBosche said.

Palmer Dargan is a sustainable landscape architect and educator whose work has appeared in Architectural Digest. Along with her husband, Hugh Dargan, she has authored two bestselling books on landscape design.

Thomas is the executive director of Chanticleer Gardens and co-author of American Horticultural Society Book Award-winning “The Art of Gardening.”

The symposium will begin at 9 a.m., and individual lectures by Palmer Dargan and Thomas will be in the morning. Then there will be an opportunity for participants to have books signed, followed by an afternoon session with the two experts called “Stump the Gardener.”

“We are going to be soliciting, from our registrants, photos and questions they have about their personal gardens, so they will pick an assortment of different gardens to show and questions to answer,” VandenBosche explained. Then Palmer Dargan and Thomas will answer those queries onstage.

This program is for gardeners at all levels of experience and expertise.

“Our general audience that we have in mind is amateur gardeners, home gardeners, and we really pick our speakers to address that level of expertise. So we really do welcome everyone to the event,” VandenBosche said.

Registration for the symposium costs $115 and includes lunch. Those wishing to attend must register by April 19.

The Plant Marketplace, on the other hand, is free and open to the public. The Penn State Extension Master Gardeners of Allegheny County will sell plants grown by the gardeners in a greenhouse locally, as well as some finished plants from a nursery.

There also will be plants and plant-related items sold by vendors, including Bedner’s Farm & Greenhouse, Scalpel & Stem, Tree Pittsburgh and others.

“It’s a little earlier than most plant sales happen. We try to plan it then so that people have a chance to harden off the plants because we grow them in a greenhouse,” VandenBosche explained, referring to the process by which plants grown indoors are acclimated slowly to different temperatures and humidity levels before being planted outdoors.

“It also gives us an opportunity to get some education out there before everyone is elbows-deep in potting soil,” she added.

The event serves as the biggest annual fundraiser for the Master Gardeners of Allegheny County. The money raised on April 27 will go toward programs that run throughout the year, as well as spaces that the gardeners maintain as demonstration gardens throughout the county.

“Our gardens have a variety of different landscaping styles, different contents and different environments,” VandenBosche said. The gardens are located in North Park, South Park and Point Breeze, and master gardeners work in them every week.

The funds also go toward programs like Seed to Supper, a newer venture that works with community partners to provide free beginner gardening education to adults experiencing food insecurity so that they can grow a portion of their own food.

“We are able to purchase textbooks and supplies, arrange classroom time, that kind of thing. And it’s free of charge, because we’re able to raise funds through events like this,” VandenBosche said.

The Master Gardeners are a part of Penn State Extension, which is a noncredit education branch of Penn State University.

“We do free or very affordable education for the community about environmentally sustainable and research-based horticulture information,” VandenBosche explained.

They also run a hotline 11 months of the year — they’re closed in December — to help home gardeners with questions

“Our volunteers here are highly trained, they go through a six month training course, it’s a pretty intense curriculum. Most of our volunteers have been here for years. They’ve been well-trained and continue to educate themselves,” VandenBosche said.

For more information and to register for the symposium, visit extension.psu.edu/garden-landscape-symposium.