Birds, Butterflies and Blooms are the Focus of the 2019 MG Lecture Series

Mitch Robinson, Conservation Education Manager at Strawberry Plains Audubon Center in Holly Springs will be the first speaker at this year’s Master Gardener lecture series.
Photo provided

The annual spring lecture series sponsored by Lafayette County Master Gardener Association in association with the University Museum will be held on the first three Thursdays in April.

The lectures will begin at noon in the Theora Hamblett Room of the University Museum at the corner of University Avenue and Fifth Street and are free and open to the public. In addition to the presentations by noted speakers, attendees will also have the opportunity to win door prizes of plants and garden-related items. The theme for the 2019 series is “Birds, Butterflies and Blooms.”

Creating a Sense of Place: Supporting Birds and Pollinators with Native Plants
The first lecture on April 4 will feature Mitch Robinson, Conservation Education Manager at Strawberry Plains Audubon Center in Holly Springs. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Natural Resources and the Environment from the University of the South Sewanee.

Prior to joining Strawberry Plains, he served as the Education Coordinator, Land Manager and Interim Director at Wild Basin Wilderness Preserve in Austin, Texas. In and out of his work, he actively seeks to bridge the gap between humans and the natural world, illuminating our interactions and helping others define a sense of place.

Care and Feeding of Native Butterflies
Linette Waters, retired director of the Baddour Center Nursery and Plant Center, will deliver the second lecture on April 11. She began raising butterflies at the Baddour Center and has continued for the past seven years.

Through extensive study and hands-on experience, she has been successful in raising a number of different species, including the monarch, Easter black swallowtail, question mark, gulf fritillary, spicebush swallowtail and the viceroy. She raises the plant material needed by the butterflies herself. She will discuss her techniques and procedures.

Amazing Migrations: Biology and Conservation of Wild Birds
The series will conclude on April 18 with a presentation by Jason Hoeksema, Ph.D., an associate professor of biology at the University of Mississippi. He received his doctorate in ecology from the University of California, Davis.

Prior to joining the faculty of UM, he held positions as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz and as a postdoctoral fellow at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center at Duke University. His research focuses on the ecological and evolutionary consequences of interactions among species, especially mutalism, competition and parasitism among plants and mycorrhizal fungi.

For more information on the lecture series, contact chair Dianne S. Fergusson at 662-236-4088 or email sdsferg@bellsouth.net.

Hottytoddy.com staff report