The Alaska Botanical Garden is pleased to present the

7th Annual Spring Garden Conference

Friday & Saturday March 8th & 9th 2013 at the Millennium Alaskan Hotel

Please note - this schedule is a draft, and will change.

Featuring keynote speaker - internationally celebrated Nature Writer, Poet, Ethnobotanist, and Sustainable Food and Farming Advocate Gary Paul Nabhan! The conference will also feature many Alaskan gardening experts.

                The Alaska Botanical Garden is pleased to feature a pioneer of both the “local foods” movement and the heirloom seed saving movement as our keynote speaker at the 2013 Spring Garden Conference March 8 & 9 in Anchorage.

                Gary Paul Nabhan is an internationally- celebrated nature writer, food and farming activist, and proponent of conserving the links between biodiversity and cultural diversity. A recipient of a MacArthur “genius” award, he has been honored as a “visionary” by Utne Reader, Mother Earth News, Bioneers, Saveur Magazine, and Time Magazine.

                As the W.K. Kellogg Endowed Chair in Sustainable Food Systems at the University of Arizona Southwest Center, Nabhan works with students, faculty and non-profits to build more just, nutritious, sustainable and climate resilient food sheds. He was among the earliest researchers to promote the use of native foods in preventing diabetes. Gary is also personally engaged as an orchard-keeper, wild foods forager and pollinator habitat restorationist working from his small farm in Patagonia, Arizona near the Mexican border. He has helped forge “the radical center” for collaborative conservation among farmers, ranchers, indigenous peoples and environmentalists in the West.

                He played key roles in establishing the Ironwood Forest National Monument, community-based seed banks, land reserves for conserving wild crop relatives, and restored habitats for migratory pollinators throughout the West.

                A first generation Lebanese- American who grew up in Gary, Indiana, Nabhan has served as Director of Science at the Arizona- Sonora Desert Museum and cofounded Native Seeds/SEARCH, a nonprofit conservation organization that works to preserve indigenous southwestern agricultural plants and knowledge of their uses. He was the founding director of the Center for Sustainable Environments at Northern Arizona University.

                Nabhan has authored numerous books and articles on the interrelated topics of food and culture, restoring America’s food traditions, biodiversity preservation and climate change, the alarming decline of pollinator species, wild foods and the importance of heirloom seed saving.

                Throughout his writings, he inspires communities to bring the local, heirloom fruits, vegetables, herbs, and other foods back into widespread cultivation. He urges farmers to grow historically important varieties, and chefs and retailers to feature them on restaurant menus and in local grocery stores.

                While much of Nabhan’s work has focused on the food systems, plants, and cultures of the American Southwest, his messages are far reaching, and relevant to all regions. His book Renewing Salmon Nation’s Food Traditions discusses the regional plants and animal species of the Pacific Northwest region, and offers an ethnobotanical record of species that were once abundant in our “Salmon Nation”.

                We hope you will join us in welcoming Gary Paul Nabhan back to Alaska!