Talking Water

I’ve been given the title of keynote speaker for a one day symposium at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Hamilton, Ontario this Sunday

MAKING A SPLASH:
A natural approach to water gardens
Sunday, October 21; 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.;
RBG Centre, 680 Plains Road West, Burlington

Here’s a teaser from the page on the web-site talking about the symposium:

Each fall, Royal Botanical Gardens brings together a roster of great speakers to offer an in-depth day focusing on developing and enhancing great gardens. Symposium 2007 turns its eyes to the world of water gardening.

What you will not read on this page is that I am up 1st at 10:30 and they have given me 90 minuts to talk about water, nature, and residential waterfeatures.

My goal is to put all that together and hopefully inspire folks to go out and look at natural waterfeatures-really study them, and then use that new knowledge in their own waterfeatures.

If you read the blog, make sure to let me know. Always interested in meeting readers.

But wait! there’s more . . . .

On Monday I am doing a 1 day workshop for professionals on all things waterfeatures. They don’t know it yet, but I have prepared very little in the way of formal lectures. I want to start off showing some work to form a basis of credibility and show the attendees that this isn’t my 1st rodeo.

Here’s where it gets interesting . . . from that point forward I am willing to go wherever the attendees want to go, and spend as much time as necessary on each subject that they want to discuss.

I do want to spend time on “context” . . . meaning where does a waterfeature fit/belong/happen . . . why here, why there, and the immediate area around the waterfeature and how it relates (the importance of how it relates), and background/foreground of the waterfeature.

I have never been to a “water seminar” where the surrounding area has been discussed. How that surrounding area relates, or how to make the waterfeature a seamless fit into the landscape.

I look forward to this challenge. I have never attempted to do a 1-day seminar like this before. Everything has always been so structured. it will be interesting to see how the participants react.

Will they be excited that I am willing to go off in several different directions? Or will they be disappointed that they have to participate in open dialogue, and give-n-take . . . as opposed to just coming in and being fed some PowerPoint and sent home with a handout?

We’ll see, I am obviously curious as to how this will turn out.

[Part of a 12ft-13ft falls, at a large residence.]