Colston Burrell to present talk on designs for winter gardens

By Staff Reports

Garden designer and award-winning author, Colston Burrell, will deliver the annual Gathering in the Garden lecture on “Design Ideas and Plant Combinations for Winter Gardens” Thursday, Sept. 20, at 7 p.m. at the Kingsport Renaissance Center, 1200 E. Center St., Kingsport.

With beautiful photography Burrell will focus on the unique challenges of creating interest with both living and built elements during winter and present a variety of approaches to fashioning plant combinations that add texture, color and fragrance to the unsung season.

Burrell is the author of many garden books and has twice won the American Horticulture Society book award — in 2007 for Hellebores: A Comprehensive Guide and in 1998 for A Gardener’s Encyclopedia of Wildflowers. Burrell is a contributing editor for Horticulture and frequently writes for Landscape Architecture and American Gardener. He lectures internationally on design, plants and ecology. Copies of several of Burrell’s books will be available for sale and signing.

Burrell holds two master’s degrees: one in horticulture and one in landscape architecture from the University of Minnesota. He is a lecturer in the College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of Virginia and principal of Native Landscape Design and Restoration. He grows hellebore species and hybrids alongside natives and other treasures in his garden in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Charlottesville, Va.

Sponsored by Southern Appalachian Plant Society, this program is free and the public is invited. For more information, call 348-6572 or e-mail jnjmoore@embarqmail.com.