KAMLOOPS – Author and horticulture specialist Sara Williams will open the Horticulture Horizons 2007 conference to be held at TRU next month with a talk on “Xeriscape Gardening,” a topic of great interest to gardeners in the semi-desert.

Williams, who developed her first garden in a school courtyard in Tanzania in the 1960s, is well known in the prairie provinces for her expertise in perennials and xeriscape. Now retired from the University of Saskatchewan, where she taught horticulture, Williams is author of the prize-winning Creating the Prairie Xeriscape and In a Cold Land: Saskatchewan’s Horticultural Pioneers, and co-author of Perennials for the Plains and Prairies, Best Trees and Shrubs for the Prairies, and Best Groundcovers and Vines for the Prairies. She also writes a regular column for The Western Producer and is heard regularly on CBC Radio Saskatchewan’s Morning Edition.

Her talk, scheduled for 8:30 am in the Alumni Theatre of the university’s Clock Tower building, will kick off the rest of the day’s events, which include workshops on such topics as seed collection, new and exciting perennials, organics in the landscape, replanting our urban forest, micro-irrigation, small-space gardening, colour and design, and the English garden.

Presented by the TRU Friends of the Gardens, the conference will run from registration in the Clock Tower at 7:45 am until 4 pm Sunday, April 22.  Registration is $60 before March 30 and $70 after, and includes morning and afternoon coffee breaks and a lunch provided by TRU Culinary Arts.

Those wishing more information may contact Kevin Scollon at 828-5181 or by email at kscollon@tru.ca

For more information, please contact Kevin Scollon at 828-5181 or email kscollon@tru.ca