Fall is a good time to attend gardening lectures. Not that there isn’t a lot of work still left to do in the garden: harvesting if you have vegetable gardens, putting your plants to sleep for the winter if you have flowers, bringing in summer bulbs like gladioli, planting next spring’s bulbs like daffodils, etc. But since there are many good lectures going on in the Fall, like the Perennial Plant Conference on Friday, October 17th at Swarthmore, when readers have free time, they should make every effort to attend.
To that end of going to lectures to learn more, TheGardenLady attended a lecture entitled “Conifers for Your Garden” given by Steven Kristoph who has taught about conifer trees at Rutgers University for over 25 years. He also owns Steven Kristoph Nursery and has a website.Â
Steven opened his lecture by saying how pleased he was that so many people attended his lecture since so many excellent websites can be Goggled up on conifer trees that one can find out just about all there is to know about conifers without leaving home. Conifer trees are defined as a grouping of trees with needle or scale-like leaves (e.g. pine, spruce, cypress) and bear cones. They are usually, but not always, evergreen. A website that he recommends is The American Conifer Society. This website lists all the conifers with photos as well as tells the readers where there are lectures or symposium on conifers.