The 2025 Gardening Roundtable

The Gardeners’ Roundtable is back for another year! The 2025 topics include planning and growing a kitchen garden, landscaping with native plants, and growing fruit trees (emphasis on apples, pears and figs). The panelists will talk about their favorite techniques for planting and growing, and share some of their favorite sources for seeds and plants.

Our 2025 panelists, Kiera Faulkner Jekos, Ashley Gamell and Mark Stonehill, specialize in distinct aspects of growing, but share a commitment to sustainable and nature-supporting practices. Each will give a presentation on their individual topic (see below), after which we’ll open the discussion up to a Q and A with you, the audience. Below are brief bios of our panelists.

Ashley Gamell, an ecological landscape designer, educator, and author, built on her decade working at Brooklyn Botanic Garden and her coursework at Oxford College of Garden Design to start her local design company, Studio Hopeland. She’ll be talking about native plants—why and how to use them in any garden to bring an abundance of beauty and life into your space.  Ashley will highlight native plant selections for different soil and sun conditions, featuring native edibles and plants that provide critical support for pollinators and other wildlife.

Kiera Faulkner Jekos, a returning panelist, is the founder of Gardenwell, a kitchen garden design company. She specializes in the integration of organic vegetable and herb gardens into active lives with a focus on education and supporting native ecosystems. Kiera has made a specialty of coaxing edible abundance from small spaces. She’ll talk about how to plant a successful kitchen garden, companion planting, and her belief that Mother Nature is the best gardener if you give her the chance.

 Mark Stonehill runs Full Circus Farm in Pine Plains with his partner, Miriam Goler. After working on organic CSA farms on Long Island and in Maine, the couple founded Full Circus, a horse-driven operation that focuses on certified organic fruit trees and perennials, among them apple, pear, fig, persimmon, paw paw, willow, raspberry and strawberry. Full Circus’ trees are sold through the Hudson Valley Seed Company as well as directly from the farm. Mark will talk about farming with their team of horses (Sandy and Sunshine), growing and propagation, and keeping trees healthy through maturity.

Register here!