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Welcome to Our New Trustees on the Board of Directors

In 2019, we welcome five new Board members.

Irene Barber lives in Durham, Maine and works at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay, Maine. As the Registered Horticultural Therapist and Program Coordinator of Adult Education, Irene works with many populations at various learning levels. Irene’s degrees in Communications, Horticulture and a certificate in Horticultural Therapy are educational components that compliment many years of working within the Landscape and Horticulture and industry. In her 10th year working at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, Irene focuses on inspiring people to connect to nature and gardening, and there’s no better way than through the extensive educational and wellness offerings at the Gardens. In 2011, Irene started Greenscapes Design LLC, an ecologically considerate landscape design business that incorporates therapeutic and accessibility design principles. Since taking on more educational programming responsibilities at CMBG in 2018, she has continued to design landscapes and gardens on a reduced schedule. Irene is a participating member of the Maine Landscape and Nursery Association, Ecological Landscape Alliance and Northeast Organic Farmers Association, AOLCP accreditation program. In 2014, she was awarded the Young Professional Nurseryman and Landscaper Award from the New England Nursery Association and Maine Landscape and Nursery Association. Design projects that Irene has worked on include the Fort Williams’ Arboretum in Cape Elizabeth and Portland, Maine’s Back Cove Yardscape Project, both of which were demonstration projects of ecologically diverse plant selections and environmentally responsible design solutions. Currently, Irene is overseeing installation and establishment phases of a pollinator garden project that she designed in 2018 at the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, Maine.

Heather Heimarck’s career is shaped by her fondness for people, places and plants (remember that great magazine?). Heather is a licensed practicing landscape architect and educator. She is self-employed, the principal of HighMark Land Design a landscape architecture and planning firm currently busy with affordable housing, community connectors, and private residential work. In addition to her traditional landscape architecture practice, Heather teams with her husband, Jose Rivera, landscape gardener and contractor on smaller scale jobs as a design-build team. In terms of education, Heather has years of experience in adult education, certificate programs, and organizing workshops and seminars both online and onsite. Heather is currently an adjunct at Northeastern University teaching sustainable site design in the School of Architecture. When possible, Heather restores her spirit by escaping to the White Mountains to hike and camp with her family.

Photographer and author Dan Jaffe has over ten years’ experience with ecological horticulture. He is a propagator of native species, the photographer and author of Native Plants for New England Gardens and a lecturer on numerous topics including pollinators, sustainable landscape practices, foraging and cultivation of edible species, low-maintenance horticulture and others. He has developed a native plant horticultural database (http://newfs.app01.clarity-connect.com/plant-search) and has years of nursery management experience. He earned a degree in botany from the University of Maine, Orono, and an advanced certificate in Native Plant Horticulture and Design from New England Wild Flower Society. He is the Horticulturalist and Propagator for Norcross Wildlife Sanctuary in Wales, MA.

Penn Marchael is a Landscape contractor based in Brooklyn and Bedford Hills NY. Throughout his career he has cultivated a deep understanding of horticulture and ecology which he uses to execute successfully vibrant landscapes. Penn has over ten years of experience in project management, landscape construction, and maintenance. In those ten years he has installed and maintained meadows from Virginia to Northern New York with a total of over one hundred fifty acres installed and many more maintained and monitored. Previously working with Larry Weaner Landscape Associates, Eastern Land Management, JW Townsend and other firms. His present focus is growing his business, Pennington Grey, where he aspires to train a new generation of land managers that will lead the landscape industry away from traditional practices and towards a more sustainable and dynamic approach.

Julie Snell wants to live in a world where everybody can recognize a red maple or a white oak, where there is no need to use the qualifier “sustainable” and where landscape maintenance is recognized as skilled labor. Julie is co-founder and principal at TEND landscape inc., a women-owned landscape architecture firm in Philadelphia, where she focuses on the bridge between landscape design, installation, and maintenance. TEND’s mantra, Design with Maintenance in Mind, guides all projects from idea stage to authoring specifications to leaving each garden with an owner’s manual. Since discovering landscape architecture and pursuing a Master’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania (a good 10-years after undergrad at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art), she’s racked up 20 years working with public landscapes, first with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society and most recently at TEND since formation in 2013. Julie lives in South Philadelphia with her husband, John, their teenage son, Tristan, an 8-year old shepherd-mix named Clover and a getting-up-there cat named Button.