Friends of Farm AGM Features Eminent Scientist

The Friends of the Farm is a non-profit volunteer organisation formed to protect the Charlottetown’s  agricultural research station property (also known as Ravenwood, The Experimental Farm and The Home Farm) from commercial development. [At one time, this property, like the Upton Farmlands, was in danger of being transferred to the Canada Lands Company and being developed for profit. However, unlike the Upton Farmlands, it has been retained by Agriculture Canada and the Friends are working hard to retain it for the pleasure and use of all residents].

The Friends’ AGM took place Nov. 13 and featured a lecture by Diana Beresford-Kroeger entitled “Island Trees, Island Treasures”. Beresford-Kroeger said: “PEI has the climate, the soils, and the inclination to grow a treasury of trees: the kinds of trees that beat the stock market and keep the Island solvent in a most interesting way ….”

Diana Beresford-Kroeger is a scientist and author specializing in classical botany and medical biochemistry. She is known for her captivating and well informed lectures and is the author of Arboretum America: A Philosophy of the Forest and A Garden for Life, about growing gardens for pleasure which are also eco-friendly, which won the 2005 American National Arbor Day Foundation Media Award. Beresford-Kroeger has regularly contributed to, written for, or hosted programs on CBC radio, National Public Radio (USA) and CTV. She is a regular columnist for the Canadian magazines, Nature Canada, and Eco/Farm and Gardens, and the community newspaper, the Merrickville Phoenix. She continues to write and conduct research in her extensive private gardens at Merrickville, Ontario. A documentary film completed in 2007, about her life and her garden, will be broadcast in March 2008 in North America and Europe.

For more information: http://friendsofthefarm.blogspot.com

Photo Credit: Friends of the Farm