Weidner: The 17th Western Landscape Symposium

With spring drawing closer and the return of that familiar itch that gardeners tend to get at this time of year, you know the Western Landscape Symposium is just around the corner.

This year, the symposium will be taking place on Saturday, March 29th at Pueblo Community College and will run from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. We on the planning committee are excited to share that our keynote speaker this year is well-known garden author and podcaster, Jennifer Jewell. She’ll be speaking on ‘What We Sow in Cultivating Our Places’. This talk pulls on themes from her third book, What We Sow, which explores the state of seed, both literally and metaphorically, in our world.

Jennifer delves into endless fascinating topics on her podcast, ‘Cultivating Place’, which boasts over 400 episodes for us fellow gardeners to enjoy. Drawing upon this extensive background and her own experiences, her talk this year will serve to energize and inspire gardeners and cultivators in their horticultural work and to remember why it is so critically important in our world right now to value this kind of work as highly as anything we do in our lives.

Ms. Jewell is joined this year by an all-female lineup of speakers as a nod to Women’s History Month. We are excited to welcome Irene Shonle, Grace Johnson, Michelle Nelson, and Idelle Fisher as our session speakers.

Irene Shonle, recently retired and much-lauded Horticulture Specialist from CSU Extension in El Paso County, will be hosting a session covering underused native plants for the landscape. This talk will focus on great plant choices that don’t find their way into our yards often enough. There will be an emphasis on plants from southern Colorado that are well-adapted to handle our current and future conditions as climate change effects shift with time.

Grace Johnson joins us from Chatfield Farms, an extension of the Denver Botanic Gardens. She will be sharing a handpicked series of plants to create beautiful, functional, pollinator-friendly planting designs and gardens. To make the list, each plant had to be well-behaved, well-adapted, sustainable, drought-tolerant, and/or beneficial to pollinators. She will also be sure to share maintenance tips to keep these plants performing at their best.

Next up is Michelle Nelson who is a Soil Health Specialist for the Colorado Department of Agriculture. Soil plays an essential role in the success of our plantings and overall health of our ecosystems. She’s excited to share the 5 main principles of soil health and how to apply the most important 6th principle, context, to them all for application in our landscapes.

Wrapping up this year’s sessions is Idelle Fisher’s presentation on ‘Year-round Gardening: Grow More Food’. Idelle is a garden author and blogger who runs an organic community garden in Denver as well as tending her own large organic landscape and garden at home. She places emphasis on pollinators and native plants and enjoys volunteering with PPAN and Front Range Wild Ones. Join her to get the scoop on extending your growing season and reaping the rewards.

This year, during the lunch break which will run from 11:45 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., audience members will have the chance to visit a variety of information, demonstration, and vendor tables. As a fun addition to this year’s offerings, a screening of the local documentary Mirasol will take place at 12:30. Please take note that lunch tickets are not being sold this year, but lunch options will be available on-site or participants can choose to bring their own lunches to the event. Tickets are selling fast, so go to 2025WLS.eventbrite.com now to secure your spot.

To read more about the event, and to see our list of sponsors, you can visit pueblo.extension.colostate.edu/programs/gardening-horticulture/western-landscape-symposium/ and click on the blue links above the logo.

While the symposium has been a favorite of both Pueblo residents and visitors from across the state for years, we would not be able to put on this excellent educational event without our planning committee. The committee is made up of representatives from CSU Extension-Pueblo County, The Pueblo Zoo, Colorado Master Gardeners, Pueblo Food Project, and Keep Pueblo Beautiful.

We hope to see you on March 29th!

More from Amanda Weidner: Weidner: It’s the perfect time to prune your trees and shrubs

Amanda Weidner is the horticulture specialist at the Pueblo County CSU-Extension Office. She can be reached at 719-583-6581 and weidnera@pueblocounty.us.

This article originally appeared on The Pueblo Chieftain: Weidner: The 17th Western Landscape Symposium

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