Naturalistic garden design supports wildlife and the environment by creating diverse, integrating plant communities, but it can be complicated to manage these gardens over time, an approach that lies at the heart of Mt. Cuba Center’s horticultural practice. Within these landscape designs, plants are allowed to interact, compete, and evolve, revealing both the beauty and the complexity of managing living systems. In this class, explore how to honor a design vision while encouraging ecological processes to take place freely. Utilizing strategies like thoughtful plant selection, encouraging self-seeding, balancing plant competitiveness, and selective editing, learn how to gently guide naturalistic gardens into maturity with less garden care intervention over time. This class includes an instructor led tour of the Mt. Cuba gardens, where you will see examples of how the horticulture team makes decisions that balance plant competition and selective editing to maintain the integrity of design. Leave feeling emboldened to take on your own naturalistic garden, prioritizing lower maintenance. You will receive a comprehensive take-home resource that includes design theory and management practices. This program takes place in-person at Mt. Cuba Center Saturday, May 30, 2026. 🥬 Continuing Education Units (CEUs) available 🥬 New class About the Instructor: Leah Blanton is a planting designer and horticulturist, using her artistic eye and plant knowledge to create functional urban landscapes for the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, where she designs a diverse range of public horticulture projects in Philadelphia. She co-owns an ecological garden design company and earned her certificate of Sustainable Garden Design from the New York Botanical Garden. REGISTER NOW: General Public Individual+ & Dual+ Members Supporter, Advocate & Conservator Members
A botanical garden that inspires an appreciation for the beauty and value of native plants and a commitment to protect the habitats that sustain them.
