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The 2024 Western Landscape Symposium is proud to present the following speakers.
Keynote speaker: Jennifer Jewell
Jennifer Jewell is the host of the national award-winning weekly public radio program and podcast Cultivating Place: Conversations on Natural History and the Human Impulse to Garden, and President/CEO of the non-profit Cultivating Place Foundation, whose mission is to expand and elevate the way we as a culture think and talk about gardening.
The author of The Earth in Her Hands, 75 Extraordinary Women Working in the World of Plants (Timber Press in 2020), and Under Western Skies, Visionary Gardens from the Rockies to the Pacific Coast (Timber Press, May 2021), and What We Sow: On the Personal, Ecological, and Cultural Significance of Seeds (Timber Press, Sept 2023).
Jewell’s greatest passion the empowerment of gardeners, and the possibility inherent in the intersection between places, environments, cultures, individuals, and the gardens that bring them together beautifully – for the better of all the lives on this generous planet.
Jewell regularly serves as a keynote speaker for horticultural organizations large and small across the country, including The Garden Conservancy, The American Public Gardens Association, The American Horticultural Society, The Thomas Jefferson Foundation/Monticello, The California Native Plant Society, The New York Botanical Garden, Miami University of Ohio, and the Atlanta Botanical Garden, among others. She lives and cultivates her place in interior Northern California with her partner, plantsman, John Whittlesey.
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Irene Shonle
Irene Shonle recently retired after 22 years working for Extension. She has worked extensively with native plants in her career, teaching for the Native Plant Master Program, writing fact sheets, teaching Master Gardeners, as a planning committee member of the annual Landscaping with Colorado Native Plants Conference, and with the Colorado Native Plant Society. She has an award-winning native plant landscape at her house in Southern Colorado and created a native plant demonstration garden in front of the El Paso Extension Office.
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Grace Johnson
After graduating college with a degree in Environmental Science, Grace Johnson has worked in ornamental public horticulture for over 10 years. Prior to maintaining the prairie and Plant Select Demonstration gardens at Denver Botanic Gardens’ Chatfield Farms, Grace worked in the Whitmire Wildflower Garden at Missouri Botanical Garden’s Shaw Nature Reserve where she gardened exclusively with native plants and assisted with prairie restoration. In addition to native plant and water-wise horticulture, Grace has experience in traditional Victorian horticulture, aquatic gardening, seed collection, and propagation. Grace currently maintains the prairie gardens, Plant Select Demonstration Garden, unirrigated cactus collection, and historic iris collection at Chatfield Farms and serves as Assistant Manager to the Horticulture Team. Grace has a passion for ecological and sustainable gardening and plant conservation and hopes to continue creating landscapes that encourage plant diversity and conservation and provide habitat for pollinators.
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Michelle Nelson
Michelle grew up in Weld County on a large irrigated custom farming and cattle feeding operation. She attended Colorado State University and graduated with a degree in Soil and Crop Science with an emphasis in Environmental Soil Science. She now lives in southeast Colorado as part of a family-owned dryland farming operation that primarily produces dryland winter wheat and grain sorghum. She has been doing environmental agronomic consulting in southeast Colorado for the last 20+ years. In April of 2024, Michelle became the Southeast Soil Health Specialist for the Colorado Soil Health Program and has been working with the wide variety of agricultural operations in the southeast corner of our state. From wheat and range grass to urban agriculture operations, to Rocky Ford Melons and peppers, she enjoys interacting with producers and helping to incorporate soil health principles on their fields to meet their objectives.
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Idelle Fisher
Idelle is an avid gardener and runs an organic community garden in Denver where she’s worked with the members to grow lots of organic food and create and maintain a pollinator garden featuring many native plants. Idelle also has a large organic landscape and garden at home and she and her husband have been replacing turf with vegetable garden beds and native plant beds over the past decade. She volunteers with PPAN and Front Range Wild Ones at native plant swaps and in Denver Parks to help take care of the city’s pollinator beds.
Idelle grew up in Thornton, Colorado and is a DU Alumni. In addition to gardening, she paints watercolors, sketches, and loves taking photos of gardens, homegrown veggies and pollinators. She runs her own full-time business offering Website Design and Graphic Design and loves working with green clients that are helping to change the world for the better. Visit her website: picklewix.com
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The Western Landscape Symposium Planning Committee would like to thank all of our speakers for sharing their expertise, enthusiasm and vision.
