Keynote Speaker

With degrees in both engineering and horticulture, TARA DILLARD is a national award-winning garden designer, speaker and author. Tara is host of The Better Gardening Show on Atlanta television station WGCL/CBS 46 and cohost of Georgia Gardener on Georgia Public Television. She is a contributing author to Gardening 'Round Atlanta and has authored several gardening books, including The Garden View: Designs for Beautiful Landscapes, Beautiful by Design: Stunning Blueprints for Harmonious Gardens, and Garden Paths and Stepping Stones. Her garden photography has appeared in magazines, and her slides are a beautiful feature of her public presentations. Dillard is a frequent lecturer at flower shows across the southeastern United States, as well as at garden clubs and state master gardeners conferences.

Featured Presenters

Jack Brown is Professor Emeritus of French and Medeival Literature at the University of Mississippi.  He opened the Oxford Garden Center in 1974 and has been advising Oxford's gardeners for over 31 years.  His own love of gardening began much earlier when, at the age of four, his mother taught him the difference between larkspur seedlings and crab grass.

Jeff McManus came to Ole Miss in May of 2000 to help guide Landscape Services in providing excellence in environmental care while enhancing the exterior academic atmosphere.  The University has many historically important buildings, and the approach to landscaping these areas has to be undertaken with great care and attention to detail.  Landscape Services' goal is to provide professional services to ensure that the University's natural splendor is well maintained, environmentally sensitive, and aesthetically pleasing. The objective is to expand the beauty of the campus in order to attract, support, and increase a healthy safe learning background.  In 2002 Ole Miss received the coveted national award for best maintained grounds in the United States from the national organization Professional Grounds Maintenance Society.

Kristin Lamberson is the Interpretive Gardens Specialist at Strawberry Plains Audubon Center in Holly Springs, Mississippi.  She has worked on staff at Strawberry Plains for three years, having previously served there as a volunteer while employed by Morgreen Nursery in Collierville, Tennessee.  She takes her garden design cues from nature, which is also her source of solace, learning, and joy.  “By allowing the wild into our lives through the venue of the home landscape we give ourselves the opportunity to experience magnificence in the small and grandeur in the common, enabling our souls to sing.”

Madge Lindsay is the director for Strawberry Plains Audubon Center and executive director for Audubon Mississippi.  A native of Alabama, Lindsay lives in Holly Springs and comes to Audubon Mississippi from Texas Parks and Wildlife.   While in Texas, she initiated the Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail, the first regional highway trail for bird watchers in America.  The trail recently won the British Airways Tourism Tomorrow Award and is now a model for other birding trails in the U.S.  At Audubon Mississippi Lindsay is helping shape a conservation plan that includes a statewide birding trail featuring the state's Important Bird Areas, a Bird Conservation Office on the Mississippi River, and a new Audubon Center on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast.  At Strawberry Plains Audubon Center, Lindsay has launched new outreach programs for schools and communities including demonstration gardens for native plants and developing the spectacular fall Hummingbird Migration Celebration.  Among other awards, Lindsay was named one of seven “Heroes for Birds” by Birders World magazine in 2002. 

Chad Pope is an ecologist with the Strawberry Plains Audubon Center in Holly Springs, Mississippi.  His job at the sanctuary involves the restoration of a nongame wildlife habitat at what was historically a 2,600-acre cotton plantation.  He promotes conservation and environmental stewardship throughout the state.

For more information, please contact:

Mary Beth Lasseter
Office of Outreach
Center for the Study of Southern Culture
P.O. Box 1848 - Barnard Observatory
University, MS 38677
662.816.2055
marybeth@olemiss.edu