2018 Yard and Garden Lecture Series, David Montgomery and Anne Biklé

The 2018 Master Gardener Yard and Garden Lectures will be held Saturday mornings from 10:00am to12:15pm, January 13-February 17, 2018, at the Port Townsend Community Center on Tyler Street Uptown. Series tickets are $55 and can be purchased at Henery’s Garden Center or brownpapertickets.com. The January 27 presentation focuses on the gardening medium: soil.

David Montgomery is a MacArthur Fellow and professor of geomorphology at the University of Washington. He is an internationally recognized geologist who studies how erosion shapes topography and the effects of geological processes on ecological systems and human societies. Anne Biklé is a biologist with wide-ranging interests that have led her into watershed restoration, environmental planning, and public health. She has worked extensively with community groups and non-profit organizations on environmental stewardship and urban livibility projects. She spends her free time out in the garden with her hands-on plants and dirt.  Married, they live in Seattle, with their black lab guide-dog dropout Loki.

1st Hour: Growing a Revolution—Bringing our Soil Back to Life

For centuries, agricultural practices have eroded the soil farming depends on, stripping it of the organic matter vital to its productivity and now threatening disaster for the world’s growing population. Growing A Revolution introduces farmers to ditching the plow, planting cover crops and growing a diversity of crops to help feed the world, cool the planet, reduce pollution, and return profitability to family farms.

2nd Hour: The Microbial Roots of Life and Health—The Hidden Half of Nature

Set aside what you think you know about yourself and microbes. Good health—in people and plants—depends on Earth’s smallest creatures. From garden to gut, The Hidden Half of Nature shares the story of our tangled relationship with microbes and their potential to revolutionize agriculture and medicine.

The lecture Includes book sales and signing