Asia is comprised of 48 nations, and this class focuses on the many and varied greens of China, Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia. There are mustards and mizunas, tatsois and bok choys, and even an edible chrysanthemum! Learn how to grow the hardy and nutritious greens of these nations and what to use them for in your kitchen. Explore traditional growing methods and best practices for today’s kitchen garden. Everyone will plant their own flat of specially chosen seeds and receive recipes for easy, tasty dishes featuring their home-grown bounty.
Garden historian and writer Lesley Parness has worked in public gardens in America and abroad for the past five decades. She is a popular speaker throughout the mid-Atlantic region, offering illustrated lectures and hands-on workshops to garden clubs, Master Gardeners, libraries, historic societies, and institutions with rare books collections of horticultural merit. Before she retired, Lesley served as Superintendent of Horticultural Education at the Morris County Park Commission, where she oversaw education, programming and interpretation at The Frelinghuysen Arboretum, Willowwood Arboretum, and the Bamboo Brook Outdoor Education Center for fifteen years. Currently, Lesley is a feature columnist for Gardener News Magazine, and a contributor to many print and online gardening publications. She is a member of the Herb Society of America, The Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries and Garden State Gardens, a non-profit consortium of New Jersey’s public gardens, of which she is also a past President and Founding member.
Personal statement: The range of gardening topics I speak about is wide, but my lens is narrow. Liberated from socio-economic and geo-political constraints, I make plants - our silent, sentient partners in the green history of the world - the star of every story.