Register today for the 2010 American Horticultural Society National Children & Youth Garden Symposium, to be held July 22 – July 24 in Pasadena, California. The Symposium’s theme is “The Vitality of Gardens: Energizing the Learning Environment.” Featured keynote speakers include Alice Waters, chef, author, and proprietor of Chez Panisse Restaurant in Berkeley, and the founder of The Edible Schoolyard. Also, meet Sam Levin, one of six co-founders of Project Sprout, an organic, student-run garden on the school grounds in Massachusetts, and Roger Swain, familiar to many American gardeners as the genial host for 15 years of the popular PBS television program The Victory Garden. The Symposium is hosted by the Descanso Gardens, Garden School Foundation, the Huntington Library Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, Kidspace Children’s Museum, Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden, the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Gardens, and the University of California Common Ground Garden Program. For more information, log on to www.ahs.org.
The restoration we seek in gardens is more essential than ever, but gardens are also sources of healthy food, environmental protection and personal fulfillment. The garden can be an incubator for fostering engaged citizens. For children and youth, a garden can be a science lab, art studio, kitchen, gathering place, theater of the imagination, a special place to explore the world.
Come learn how to create and use gardens to provide dynamic environments for experimentation, social engagement, self-expression, and connection to the natural world. Hear from youth, the adults in their lives, and national experts about the vital role of gardens in the lives of today’s youth.
As a symposium attendee you will participate in the only national symposium that explores the positive impact of gardens in the lives of children and youth, meet and learn from leading youth garden experts, receive useful and relevant project, curriculum, design and garden management ideas, explore the gardens and programs of the Symposium hosts, participate in 3 dynamic days of workshops, lectures, poster sessions and field trips and network and share your own expertise with children’s gardening advocates from across the nation. The early full registration fee is $330 (AHS members $290) before June 1, and $350 thereafter.  Lodging is available at the Westin Pasadena Hotel (the location of the sessions) at a discounted special rate of $155/night for reservations made by July 9. Call the hotel at 866-837-4181 and ask for the National Children & Youth Garden Symposium room block.
