Unusual Edibles for the Backyard Gardener

$10; FREE for PHA members. Proceeds benefit Polly Hill Arboretum and help make it possible for us to hold future affordable and free educational programs for our community. Thank you for support! Register here: bit.ly/Hortus-Webinar

This program is sponsored by the Dukes Soil Conservation District.

Join Allyson Levy and Scott Serrano for a virtual talk and visual presentation on the diversity of unusual fruiting plants of the world as well as some of the great native fruits of the United States. It will cover such plants as hardy citrus, ancient medlars, Baltic quince, hazelnuts, and blight resistant American chestnut trees. Scott and Allyson will inspire you to plant dozens of hardy, low maintenance plants and share practical tips for surrounding your home with these rare, beautiful, edible plants.

Allyson and Scott are botanical artists who moved to upstate New York twenty years ago. Their interests have expanded beyond their art and have grown into Hortus Arboretum and Botanical Gardens, a young, recently accredited arboretum.

The goal for Hortus Gardens is to be a living textbook of the plant life that can thrive in the Hudson Valley of New York. They began the process of creating a botanical garden by planting native trees, shrubs, perennials, and unusual edible plants, then expanded this to include a large collection of plants from all over the world. In 2017 they received Level II Accreditation by the ArbNet Arboretum Accreditation Program and the Morton Arboretum. As a young botanical garden/arboretum, their goal is to grow the largest diversity of plant life in the Hudson Valley accessible to the general public and to fulfill their mission to be an aesthetically designed experimental test station for pushing the boundaries of what edible plants can be grown in a USDA zone 6 planting area. This mission mirrors the experimental tradition of PHA’s founder Polly Hill.