Speakers

Linda Beutler

January 6, 2025 – via Zoom

Clematis expert speaks about the Queen of Vines.

Linda Beutler is the curator of the Rogerson Clematis Collection and was elected president of the International Clematis Society. She is also the author of ‘Gardening with Clematis’, ‘A Plant Lover’s Guide to Clematis’ and ‘Garden to Vase: Growing and Using Your Own Cut Flowers’. She has also been an instructor of horticulture since 1996, lectures internationally and writes articles for several publications including Pacific Horticulture. She gardens on a city lot in Portland,OR.

Jo Wakelin

February 3, 2025 – via Zoom

New Zealand gardener speaks about her spectacular
drought tolerant garden.

Jo Wakelin teaches horticulture at a college level and is very interested in the ecology of her local flora. Her garden was started in Central Otago, New Zealand in 2005 and contains many natives grown from seed she collected from her region. She also researched drought resistant plants from other parts of the world with a similar Mediterranean climate. Using the philosophy that a garden needs to adapt to the conditions you have without additional water, she has created a stunning resilient dry garden. Her garden has been featured in the books ‘Wild: The Naturalistic Garden’ by Noel Kingsbury and in ‘Visionary-Gardens and Landscapes for our Future’ by Claire Takas with Giacomo Guzzon. Her garden was also the first New Zealand garden to grace the cover of Gardens Illustrated on its March 2024 cover.

Dave Eckert

March 3, 2025 – in person

Deerly Missed, a Pangram Garden

Dave Eckert and his wife Pat live in Salem. Their seven-acre property, ‘Deerly Missed’, includes a thirty-year ‘collectors’ garden surrounding a home originally built in 1893. You can see images of their garden at deerlymissed.smugmug.com. Dave was a long-time president of the Salem Hardy Plant Society and has published articles in several horticultural journals. His photography has won both Best of Contest and Best of Show in international competitions of the American Rhododendron Society.
Gardening is truly a competitive sport and Dave will address that aspect of gardening in his talk, Deerly Missed, a Pangram Garden. A pangram is a sentence that uses all twenty-six letters of the English language. A pangram garden should have a special plant or two for each alphabetical plant genus. The rarer, the more developed, the more stunning each selected plant the more points awarded. Come see our possible entries for the Pangram International Garden Society (PIGS). Wonderful plants, most with their own special story, and each photographed at Deerly Missed Garden.

James Cassidy

April 7, 2025 – in person

Making the Most of Your Soil.

James Cassidy is a senior instructor at OSU who teaches several courses on soils and organic farming and gardening. He has won many teaching awards and is a very engaging speaker. He is also the Faculty Advisor for the OSU Growers Club, an OSU master gardener instructor and has spoken for hundreds of farming and gardening organizations. Back by popular demand, James will speak to us about making the most of our gardens’ soil. The better the soil, the better our plants will grow.

Lawrence Birch 

May 5, 2025

These Are A Few Of My Favorite Herbs

As a gardener, herbalist and wildcrafter for nearly 40 years, Lawrence has had the pleasure and privilege to get to know many different plants on a variety of levels, from the medicinal to the spiritual, and from the nutritional to the esthetical. Join him on a fun and fascinating journey to get to know a select handful of his favorite herbs.

Lawrence has been an Instructor at several Oregon Community Colleges since 2005, offering classes in a variety of subjects: Herbalism, Fasting and Cleansing, Aromatherapy, Cooking, as well as Anatomy, Physiology and Pathology. Lawrence currently operates Viewmont Gardens, a seasonal Farm Stand in South Corvallis.

The May program concludes with our Spring Plant Exchange. 

Jo Gettman 

November 3, 2025

Backyard Gardening

Jo will be discussing several different aspects of backyard gardening. Some of her talking points will include how to lay out a successful garden, succession plantings, intensive gardening for small areas (such as vertical or container gardening), and planting locally adapted varieties. This speech will be aimed towards backyard gardeners with some experience but will also be beginner friendly.

Jo grew up in a small rural community in eastern Oregon, which encouraged an early interest in gardening and natural resources. She worked on a small organic farm throughout middle and high school and gardened as a hobby. Since coming to OSU for a degree in Botany and Soil Science, she has taken jobs on farms and in greenhouses, an internship with the U.S. Forest Service and regularly helps neighbors with their gardens. After graduation, she hopes to begin a career in either conservation or extension services.

December’s Green Party

Wednesday, December 2, 2025

For many years, the Evening Garden Club and the Benton County Master Gardeners Association each held a greens party where we would bring various greens from our garden to create a lovely wreath or whatever else you wanted to celebrate the season. Last year the decision was made to combine the event and the consensus was this was a great idea so we’re meeting together again this year.
The event will be held at Guerber Hall at the Benton County Fairgrounds (same as last year) December 2nd, beginning at 3 PM ending at 7 PM. In addition to various greens, you should bring a wire or grapevine ring if you’re going to make a wreath. There will be lots of other supplies provided.
In addition, please consider bringing a beverage or food item to share.

Wesley Younie

January 4, 2026

Designing Sustainable Gardens in the Pacific Northwest: Plants and Strategies for Challenging Spaces

Born in Portland, Oregon, Wesley Younie is a visual artist turned landscape designer who describes his practice as “painting with plants.” With a degree in Painting from Portland State University, he brings an artist’s eye to outdoor environments — thoughtfully blending color, texture, and form to create immersive, living compositions.

Wesley’s path to landscape design was rooted in hands-on experience — working in retail nurseries, floral design, and themed construction — where he developed a deep knowledge of plant life, materials, and space-making. In 2020, he launched his own landscape design business, offering creative, site responsive design solutions that reflect both beauty and function.

Wesley works on a wide range of residential and commercial landscapes throughout Oregon, including numerous tasting rooms in the Willamette Valley. His projects are known for their artistic sensibility, ecological awareness, and the ability to evoke emotion and connection through natural design.

Jason Smith

February 2, 2026 – meeting is ZOOM.

A discussion about propagation with a focus on what a gardener can do at home.

I will be discussing propagation with a focus on what a gardener can do at home, interesting techniques, easy natives to try, and a brief overview of what its like to make baby plants at a nursery.

My name is Jason Smith and I am the Propagator in Chief at Dancing Oaks Nursery. I have worked at the nursery for 10 years and have succeeded and failed at propagating many different plants. I focus more on cuttings and divisions – while Leonard does more of the seed sowing. I went back to school at Linn Benton Community College to learn horticulture before being hired at Dancing Oaks. I interned at Fry Road Nursery one term and gained an extreme love for fuchsias, which I have been trying to temper ever since. One of my current loves is finding and propagating new Manzanitas from the wild. They are a never ending source of entertainment.

Erin McMullen

March 2, 2026

Flowers and fillers for bountiful bouquets throughout the season

We’ll discuss some of my favorite blooms, including tried and true varieties along with more obscure and odd options. Our goal is to have a continual selection of beauty to bring to the table throughout the growing season.”

Erin McMullen has been growing specialty cut flowers for 25 years in the heart of the Willamette Valley. Flowers from her farm, Rain Drop Farms, travel up and down the west coast, from Seattle to Los Angeles, helping to create beautiful and unique floral installations and designs for events and everyday occasions. Specializing in dahlias, garden roses and foliage plants, Rain Drop Farms is a 25 acre oasis nestled into the foothills of the Oregon Coast Range. With a background in horticulture, botany and environmental science, Erin strives to grow fun, unusual and interesting plants in a way that improves the land that they grow on. Joined by her husband, Aaron, and an amazing crew, Erin and her team spread the beauty of flowers everyday.

Kristin Currin and Andrew Merritt

April 6, 2026

The Beauty in Biodiversity; Gardening with Pacific Northwest Native Plants

Native plants give us a sense of place and a heartfelt connection to nature. They characterize the natural landscape, mark the seasons, and attract wildlife iconic to an area. Native plants occur naturally in the geographical region in which they evolved, thus shaping the landscape as much as they are shaped by it. And because these plants have co-evolved along with the insects, birds, mammals, and even soil of a particular place – they are uniquely adapted to support the diversity of life and healthy functioning of the local natural world. Join us as Kristin Currin speaks about the importance of incorporating Pacific Northwest native plants into your garden and landscaping. Learn about our amazing local flora, the significance of planting and conserving native plants, the many benefits of native plant gardening, and how we can all support local biodiversity. Followed by Q&A with Kristin Currin and Drew Merritt.
Kristin Currin and Andrew Merritt are the co-authors of The Pacific Northwest Native Plant Primer and co-founders of Humble Roots Nursery, a native plant nursery in the Columbia River Gorge recognized for its efforts in sustainability and promoting native plants. While ethically propagating many important species, their work and passion for Pacific Northwest plants has involved them with innumerable native plant endeavors including pollinator and conservation plantings of all shapes and sizes, school gardens, backyard habitats, restoration projects, oak conservation, rare plant conservation, and efforts to increase the availability of locally adapted native plant seeds.

Tom Cook

May 4, 2026

Searching for Great Gardens

As an avid gardener, I like just about every garden I see because I know how much work goes into creating and maintaining even a simple backyard. What about the so called “Great Gardens”, those created by icons of the garden world or maybe just eccentric characters? Tonight, I want to share some of the gardens I have visited in recent years and my impressions of those gardens. We will look at gardens from across the USA and England including Biltmore Estate, Dumbarton Oaks, Sissinghurst, Hidcote Manor and Biddulph Grange.

I am an Associate professor emeritus of Horticulture at OSU. My career was spent teaching Turf and Landscape Management to undergraduate students at Oregon State. I continue to study garden history and famous gardeners. These days I spend most of my time playing in my garden in Corvallis and visiting gardens whenever I can.