Using the Cross Timbers and adjacent prairies as our workshop, the symposium will explore and teach ways to use and conserve native plants and habitats, saving money and water and sustaining our ecosystem in the process. Our audience and our presenters will consist of homeowners, ranchers, developers, conservationists, landscapers, growers, irrigation designers, landscape architects, educators, city planners, garden club members, and those who manage municipal, commercial, urban or rural properties and open spaces, parks, roadsides, nurseries, botanical gardens, and nature centers.
Symposium 2010 Keynote Speakers
DAVID BAMBERGER. Since 1969, David Bamberger has worked tirelessly to restore what he calls “the sorriest piece of land in Blanco County” to the model of land stewardship that it is today. For many years, Bamberger has led by example, while communicating a conservation message to children, teachers, landowners and policy makers. David Bamberger has proven, in the world of business and the realm of stewardship, that he is a man ahead of his time. He took an impoverished piece of land and turned it back into habitat for two endangered birds, the golden-cheeked warbler and black-capped vireo. He made it possible for water to actually flow once again in the creeks. Furthermore he built a man-made bat cave and helped protect a natural bat cave. He is quick to learn and is unwilling to back down when he’s right, even when his path is controversial. When he began his work at Selah-Bamberger Ranch Preserve, he was ridiculed. Today, he is the father of a movement in Texas which has transformed literally millions of acres and become one of the finest models of land conservation.
JILL NOKES. Jill is a landscape designer and author living in Austin, Texas. Her educational background includes a bachelor of arts degree in the Plan II Honors program at the University of Texas, and a master's of science degree in horticulture from Texas A&M University in 1977. Her studies in graduate school focused primarily on the propagation and uses of native plants; an area of horticulture that until that time had been largely overlooked. Her first book, How to Grow Native Plants of Texas and the Southwest, published in a revised edition by the University of Texas Press in 2001, records the knowledge of several generations of plant experts and growers. Some consider it a classic reference text that has been influential in increasing awareness of the value of native plants in both vernacular and built landscapes.
DOUG TALLAMY. Dr. Douglas Tallamy, Professor and Chair of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware. Dr. Tallamy is one of the most outstanding scientific voices in speaking to the interaction of native plants with insects in the ecological food chain He is the author of Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens, published by Timber Press of Portland, Oregon. Our members will recognize Tallamy’s thesis: gardeners are the frontline defenders of native habitats through their use of plants native to their eco-regions in their gardens, thus restoring ecosystems extirpated by human agricultural, commercial and residential expansion. His principal area of research, according to his website, is “Impact of Invasive plants on Terrestrial Food Chain – quantifying the degree to which alien plant species are reducing populations of native insect herbivores and the animals that depend on them.” Not only is Dr. Tallamy a great, personable speaker, he is a voice of national prominence.
Abstracts of all speaker presentations
List of faculty
Handout for Kiphart Monarch class
Handout for Dietz GPS Workshop
To contact us:
Email: symposium2010@npsot.org
Phone: 830-997-9272
Mail: N.P.S.O.T., P.O. Box 3017, Fredericksburg, TX 78624