Master Gardeners Offer Fall Gardening Workshop

Myth-busting Garden Professor to Speak at Master Gardeners’ 2015 Fall Gardening Workshop

Saturday, Oct. 10 in Friday Harbor from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

 — from San Juan County Master Gardeners —

Linda Chalker-Scott

The San Juan County Master Gardeners have changed their popular biennial gardening workshop from spring to fall. The Inaugural 2015 FALL Gardening Workshop, The Healthful Garden, will be held in Friday Harbor on Saturday, October 10th, and will include many science-based gardening topics.

A popular and dynamic speaker, Dr. Linda Chalker Scott will present “Horticultural Myths: Separating Fact from Fiction“. She is one of the many Seattle based scientists who teach in the San Juan County Master Gardener training.

Dr. Chalker-Scott is an associate professor in the department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture at Washington State University. She is also an Extension Specialist in Urban Horticulture, meaning she has a global classroom rather than one physically located on a college campus. She also maintains an affiliate associate professor status at the University of Washington.
She has a Ph.D. in Horticulture from Oregon State University and is an ISA certified arborist. She is trained as a woody plant physiologist and applies this knowledge to understanding how trees and shrubs function in urban environments. She says “this is a fancy way of saying that she enjoys diagnosing landscape failures – sort of a Horticultural CSI thing”.

Dr. Chalker-Scott is co-chair of the Garden Team at WSU, an interdisciplinary group that produces science-based Extension publications for home gardeners. She is a member of a three person academic team who host the “Garden Professors“ blog and Facebook pages. The “Garden Professors” educate and entertain an international audience about gardening.

She is also the author of four books: the award-winning, horticultural myth-busting The Informed Gardener and The Informed Gardener Blooms Again, Sustainable Landscapes and Gardens: good science – practical application, a comprehensive approach to the science behind urban horticulture and arboriculture, and the recently published How Plants Work: The science behind the amazing things plants do. She has published extensively in the scientific literature as well as in popular magazines such as American Nurseryman, Organic Gardening, and Fine Gardening.