ELA Conference & Eco-Marketplace

Save the dates – 26th Annual Conference

March 4 & 5, 2020

Details and Registration in December

Looking for New Ideas? Solutions? Inspiration?

Save the Dates! March 4 and 5, 2020

Full brochure and registration available on December 1, 2019.

Sneak Preview

Wednesday, March 4 will feature two intensive workshops:

Soil Workshop

Soil biodiversity is the variety of organisms within the soil including bacteria, fungi, beetles, worms, nematodes, fungi, and other organisms. The maintenance of soil biodiversity is essential to both healthy plant communities and to the environment as the organisms interact and contribute to global carbon and nitrogen cycles. Spend the day learning from soil experts as we examine soil in the managed landscape.

Meadow Workshop

A properly constructed meadow is aesthetically pleasing while providing valuable ecosystem services including erosion control and biodiversity. The biodiversity of a meadow includes a varied ecosystem populated by many species from all levels of the food chain. “The more it swarms, crawls, flies the better it is.” Biodiverse meadows sustain a wide variety of pollinators including bird populations by supplying many forms of food. The ultimate success of a meadow requires proper site preparation, installation, and maintenance.
Join us for a day of meadow presentations to educate and inspire.

Thursday, March 5 will feature three simultaneous presentations throughout the day:

Select from a total of 12 conference sessions featuring both design and practice topics. Join us to learn how to restore lost ecological connections, more effectively manage land, and create beautiful, highly functioning landscapes.

And much, much more!

Keynote Speaker March 4: JENNIFER JEWEL

Ms. Jewell is the creator, writer, and host of Cultivating Place: Conversations on Natural History and the Human Impulse to Garden. Jennifer’s weekly public radio program & podcast is a voice for, with, and about gardeners and nature lovers of all manner around the globe, exploring how and why we garden and what we mean when we garden.

Gardens encourage a direct relationship with the dynamic processes of the plants, animals, soils, seasons, and climatic factors that come to bear on a garden, providing a unique, and uniquely beautiful, bridge connecting us to our larger environments — culturally and botanically. Through thoughtful conversations with growers, gardeners, naturalists, scientists, artists and thinkers, Cultivating Place illustrates the many ways in which gardens and gardening are integral to our natural and cultural literacy – on par with Art, Science, Literature, Music, Religion. These conversations celebrate how all these interconnections support the places we cultivate, nourish our bodies, and feed our spirits.

Scheduled to release on International Women’s Day, The Earth in Her Hands: 75 Extraordinary Women Working in the World of Plants, Jennifer Jewell’s new book profiles 75 women working in careers ranging from horticulture, botany, and environmental science to floral design, landscape architecture, herbalism, and farming. The featured women represent a wide range of ages and a variety of backgrounds, and they have all made lasting contributions in the wide world of plants. Readers will learn each woman’s unique story—what led them to their career, what drives and inspires them, what they have learned along the way, and what they plan to do in the future.

Exhibiting at ELA Conference

To reserve an exhibitor space for March 4 & 5, contact Trevor Smith, trevscape@comcast.net, or call 617-308-7063.