Events

Ms. Ace will explain what a Shade Tree Commission does for your municipality, how it protects the urban tree canopy and how a Shade Tree Commission functions.

Kristin Ace is a champion for trees and as a founding member of the Morristown Shade Tree Commission, has helped establish this state-sanctioned body to ensure the appropriate management of the Morristown community forest and also promotes the responsible stewardship of common greenspace and shade canopies. By combining decades of experience as a storyteller and performer with extensive training and involvement with tree care, she has propelled tree planting and care in public spaces, working with various stakeholders to achieve these goals.

Following the program, we’ll celebrate with our usual spread of delicious savory and sweet treats, accompanied by coffee, tea, and wines.

The event is free for members, but you must register as attendance is limited to 100 people.

Please Register here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd0WhzLxNWiiyQyT-EkGWHVO3zOqLQf6yFmkyYTtQV-tHsICQ/viewform?usp=sf_link

What better time to explore some recipes that will surely bring comfort during the dark, cold days of January?

Join us for a cozy afternoon exploring some new recipes, tasting some great food and finding new ways to incorporate them into your own repertoire.

Join professional garden photographer Rob Cardillo as he illustrates how he crafts sweeping landscapes and compelling plant closeups through a series of engaging stories. Using examples from his many books and magazine projects (including his most recent work, Private Gardens of Philadelphia), Rob will show how he doesn’t always get it right the first time and how perseverance and patience pays off in the end. You’ll leave with new ideas and new techniques to help you find and translate your own vision of Eden, even if you only use an iPhone.

Rob Cardillo has been photographing gardens, plants and the people who love them for nearly thirty years. He’s been credited as the primary photographer for over twenty-five books including Private Edens and Private Gardens of South Florida and The Art of Gardening at Chanticleer, The Layered Garden, Chasing Eden and his most recent work Private Gardens of Philadelphia. Rob’s work is also seen in publications such as Gardens Illustrated, Garden Gate, Flower and The New York Times. Along with his Blue Root Media partners, Rob provides editorial content for an award-winning regional gardening magazine, GROW, published quarterly by the venerable Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. Winner of numerous photography awards, Rob was inducted into the Garden Writers Association Hall of Fame in 2015.

Rob lives and gardens in Ambler where he grows a little bit of everything in drifts of one.

The presentation will be followed by a book sale and signing. Light refreshments will be served.

Since 1979, the Friends of The Frelinghuysen Arboretum have supported horticultural education through a scholarship named for Dr. Benjamin Blackburn. Dr. Blackburn was a professor of Botany at Drew University. His involvement with the Morris County Park Commission began with his friendship with Henry and Robert Tubbs, whose property, Willowwood, eventually became the Willowwood Arboretum.

Dr. Blackburn published many articles and wrote a number of books on gardening as well as being the host of a very popular radio gardening program. He generously shared his vast knowledge and deep love for horticulture with many staff members in the Horticulture Division and with his countless fans, members of the Friends of The Frelinghuysen Arboretum and area garden clubs.

Admission fees for this program support the scholarship that is offered to students in the Landscape Technology Program at County College of Morris (CCM). This scholarship allows interested students the opportunity to explore the different horticultural, environmental, and design studies offered through the accredited CCM programs. The increased knowledge the students acquire in the classroom and through hands-on programs at CCM will benefit them as they enter their chosen field in horticulture and landscape design.

The Friends are grateful to Mendham Capital Management for its generous sponsorship of the Benjamin Blackburn Scholarship event.

This program is eligible for 1.0 Rutgers Master Gardener CEU’s.

The Friends of The Frelinghuysen Arboretum and Rutgers Cooperative Extension of Morris County are teaming up to present their Annual Community Garden Conference for the 15th year in a row. This year we are very excited to have Dr. David Robinson, NJ State Climatologist as the keynote speaker. We have an impressive list of session speakers too, all experts in their field. They will cover topics relevant to not just community gardeners but backyard vegetable gardeners as well as garden managers, and those trying to establish a new community garden.

The topics for the 2025 conference are:

 Keynote Speaker Dr. David A. Robinson, Distinguished Professor, Department of Geography
NJ State Climatologist, NJ Agricultural Experiment Station Rutgers University

New Jersey’s Changing Climate
Since 2010, New Jersey has experienced its wettest and warmest years in over a century of observations. Extreme weather/climate events, including Ida, Sandy, and Irene, along with a number of hot summers, suggest that something is happening to NJ’s climate regime. Natural variations alone cannot account for these NJ (and global) anomalies. Human influences on climate are significant, prompting discussion as to how society might mitigate or develop greater resiliency to increasing climate change. This presentation will explore the physical dimensions of the issue, both short and long term.

Dr. Dave Robinson is a Distinguished Professor of Geography at Rutgers University and New Jersey’s State Climatologist. As state climatologist, he works with a wide array of user communities who require climatological information and expertise to solve problems. He also directs the Rutgers NJ Weather Network, a constellation of 69 automated weather stations, and co-leads the NJ chapter of the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network. Globally, Dave conducts research on the role of snow cover in the climate system and as an indicator of climate change. Dave has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, is past president of the American Association of State Climatologists, has received the Lifetime Achievement award of the American Association of Geographers, and is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society.

 Morris County Agricultural and Natural Resource Agent, Rutgers Vegetable Expert and Conference Co-sponsor Peter Nitzsche will discuss the findings from the season-long community garden demonstration plot trials on the Genetic Diversity of Potatoes Originally Grown from Seed and the Dwarf Tomato Project.

Learn all about this super fascinating trial, what we discovered and if Dwarf Tomatoes may be right for your garden.

 Farmer Shaun Ananko, Director of Agriculture and Education, Grow It Green Morristown

Back by popular demand, Shaun presents his talk on Soil Management, Extending the Growing Season and Small Scale Tool Use, all topics of critical importance for community gardeners.

A native of Morristown, Shaun Ananko began developing his love for farming as a small child when his mother taught him how to grow tomatoes in their home garden. Shaun was raised to appreciate the benefit of growing one’s own food, but has witnessed society move away from these values. Now as Farmer Shaun for Grow It Green Morristown, he is proud to share his knowledge of food cultivation to the Morristown community and students of local schools.

 Jeff Quattrone: Jersey Tomatoes As An Intersection Of Culture And Activism

We love our Jersey tomatoes. They’re our local pride that we grow in the soil where they were developed. You can’t get more local than that. Come hear the seed stories of functionally extinct Jersey-bred tomatoes and how these seeds connect us to the collective generational experiences that created them when seed and food sovereignty were daily life and not the social actions needed today. Not only do the seeds connect us to the past, by growing them and saving them, we can continue the passion and commitment of those who created them with community action. It’s historical preservation that we can do in our gardens.

Jeff Quattrone never expected to be a Jersey tomato seed historian, a leader in the Seed Library movement and a biodiversity and seed leader with Slow Food USA. Once he found seeds and the stories that they tell, he was drawn into the intersection of the complex relationship of biodiversity, seeds, culture, history, science and nature. He founded the Library Seed Bank project in 2014 where he brought seed libraries to South Jersey. Once it became a self-sustaining community project, an email popped into his inbox that started his journey into the history of Jersey tomato seed breeding and reviving functionally extinct Jersey tomatoes in New Jersey. This journey is documented in his Iconic Jersey Tomato project, and his book titled Iconic Jersey Tomatoes: An American Folklife and Foodway. It will be released in early 2025. His research has been republished by the Smithsonian Magazine, into Rutgers University archives, and can be found in the archives at Seed Savers Exchange. His StoryCorps interview is archived in the Library of Congress, and in 2024 he presented a draft version of a seed vision document for Slow Food International at Terra Madre, Slow Food International’s global food festival. This seed vision document is the result of a programming decision made by Jeff in 2021 at the launch of the Slow Seed Summit that launched Slow Food USA’s Slow Seed campaign that he was instrumental in creating. He approaches Jersey tomato seed history by respecting it, reviving it and reinventing it. 

 The Coordinator’s Round Table moderated by Ned Gardner, Manager of the
Ted Largman Community Garden in Morris Township and Mike Dziomba,
Manager of the Randolph Community Garden.

This is a chance for managers of community gardens to connect with other managers and get questions answered and share successes and perhaps not so successful endeavors they’ve encountered.

This program is eligible for 5.0 Rutgers Master Gardener CEU’s.

Registration for this program will close at 12:00 Noon on Friday, February 28.

For questions, contact: mennist@arboretumfriends.net

Please register below. Note: If you DO NOT want lunch, click on the $65 Members box below. If you DO want lunch, click on the $80 Non-Members box below.

Feel free to bring your own lunch and water.

The 2025 Flower Show’s theme, Gardens of Tomorrow, invites visitors to envision a future where gardening can help create a healthier planet. The show will feature large-scale floral displays, innovative designs, and exhibits from designers and horticulturists around the world.

Join the Friends on this always popular and highly anticipated trip. Chat with garden experts and watch how-to gardening demonstrations in the Gardener’s Studio, shop acres of vendor booths brimming with merchandise in the Marketplace and enjoy lunch on your own at the show or at nearby Reading Terminal Market.

No refunds after February 19.

The bus will leave the Arboretum parking lot at 10:00 AM SHARP and will be back by 8:30 PM.

Join Chef Paul Gatzke for a culinary adventure down Spice Road that will titillate your taste buds! 

Born and raised in Mendham, New Jersey, Paul went to the Culinary Institute of America right out of high school. After graduation, he honed his chef skills in New York City and with his own catering business in North Jersey. He took a 10-year hiatus from his culinary career and dove into the travel business; this new career took him to the four corners of the Earth where he was able to experience first-hand the culinary tastes and techniques of Europe, Asia, the Far East and South America. 

In 2012, New Jersey beckoned and he returned home. He is as passionate as ever about food and cooking and is a Cheese Monger and “semi-retired” caterer in Morris County. Though his formal training is in classic French cooking in the Escoffier tradition, his repertoire has expanded to include Asian, Middle Eastern, Spanish, South American, North African and especially local regional American food.