Sandoz Society conference to emphasize horticulture

Co-sponsored by the Nebraska Statewide Arboretum, the conference will begin Thursday morning and run through Saturday morning. “Discover the High Plains of Mari Sandoz” will be the conference theme.

Lucinda Mays of Chadron, the conference’s co-chair, said this year’s program should delight both those who are devoted to Mari Sandoz’s literary works and those who enjoy growing plants in the High Plains’ demanding environment. She said it is rare that so many experts on both old and new methods of horticulture will be at the same location.

The keynote speaker will be Roger Swain, known as “the man with the red suspenders,” while hosting the show, “The Victory Garden,” on public television for 15 years. He will speak at 7 p.m. Thursday in the Student Center. The program will be open to the public without charge.

Swain is the author of five books on plants and gardening. He resides in southern New Hampshire, where he has gardens and orchards.

Beginning Thursday morning, five presentations on horticulture and two sessions on Mari Sandoz’s original documents are scheduled. The horticulture workshops will be led by personnel from the Nebraska Statewide Arboretum and members of the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture at UNL who make up the cast for the popular television show, “Backyard Farmer.”

Thursday afternoon at 3:30, Swain and several of the speakers earlier in the day will form a panel in the Sandoz Center to answer questions. Mays, who will serve as the moderator, is urging those with a green thumb or wish they had a green thumb to bring their toughest questions. This program also will be free of charge.

On Friday, there will be another series of workshops led by experts from as far away as Minnesota and Kansas. Again, there will be heavy emphasis on plants and how they can be cultivated, but several of the presenters will also point to the attention Sandoz placed on the environment in her writing.

Friday evening following the conference’s banquet, Paul Read, UNL professor of horticulture and viticulture, will speak on “Grapes and Wine in Nebraska,” or how grape production in Nebraska promises to provide economic benefits for the state. Also at the banquet, the “Spirit of Mari Sandoz Award” will be presented to Judy McDonald, now of Bemidji, Minn., the founder and first excecutive director of the Mari Sandoz Heritage Society.

A choice of three sessions will be available Saturday morning. They are an archives workshop for researchers, a tour of the Chadron State herbarium that is the second largest in Nebraska and a carpool to the Mari Sandoz gravesite at the place where “Old Jules” Sandoz moved into the Sandhills between Gordon and Ellsworth and planted orchards after he had originally settled on the Niobrara River south of Hay Springs.

The partnership between the Sandoz Society and the Nebraska Arboretum goes back several years. Earlier this decade when the Mari Sandoz High Plains Heritage Center at Chadron State was being developed, the arboretum contributed $32,500 and the Nebraska Environmental Trust gave more than $19,000 for landscaping and plantings around the center and to connect the campus with the hiking and biking trail located south and southwest of the campus.

Those who have not registered in advance for the workshops may do so just before they are held. A majority of the programs with the exception of the panel discussion Thursday afternoon will be in the Student Center.

The conference's complete schedule may be found at www.marisandoz.org.