The Plant Experts are available to answer your questions about the plants at auction. They will be wearing nametags identifying them as Plant Experts.

RICHARD L. BITNER is a practicing, board-certified anesthesiologist. Dr. Bitner earned an M.D. at the University of Pennsylvania. He currently teaches at the Penn State School of Medicine/Hershey Medical Center. He studied horticulture at Longwood Gardens, completing the Series I and Series II
Certificates of Merit in Ornamental Horticulture and has been a Plant Study Walk Instructor since 1993. Dr. Bitner conducts the Ornamental Plant Labs for the Professional Gardening Students and teaches the Conifers and the Deciduous Flowering Shrubs II certificate courses. His writing and photographs have appeared in Green Scene, Horticulture, The American Gardener, and
the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s Plants & Gardens. He is a member of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s Gold Medal Plant Award Committee, and is on the host committee preparing for the August 2006 national meeting of the Garden Writers Association to be held in the Brandywine Valley. His Garden Conifers: An Illustrated Encyclopedia will be published by Timber
Press in spring 2007.

CHARLES CRESSON is the award-winning author of several gardening books, a nationally known lecture r, and an instructor at Longwood Gardens. Hedgleigh Spring, his two-acre garden near Philadelphia, has been a family project for over a century and is known for its collection of rare plants. This lovely garden
is featured in articles and books by Ken Druse, the late Rosemary Verey, and more recently in the March 2002 issue of Martha Stewart Living. As a garden consultant, Charles has helped many avid gardeners develop their own gardens.
He was awarded the Certificate of Merit from the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society in 2001.

PATRICK CULLINA currently serves as the Vice President of Horticulture and Facilities at Brooklyn Botanic Garden in New York. He was formerly Associate Director of The Rutgers Gardens, the botanical garden on the campus of Rutgers University, where he oversaw the restoration, development, and
expansion of the collections and the organization for more than ten years. He is a popular lecturer both inside and outside the university setting, an avid horticultural photographer, and an active member of a number of leading horticultural organizations. Mr. Cullina has served as a horticultural adviser to a wide range of municipal, commercial, and private clients. His work in public
horticulture has been recognized by a number of horticultural institutions, including the National Garden Clubs, Inc., which presented him with the Distinguished Service Award in 2003 and their Gold Medal in 2005.

ROBERT HERALD currently works part-time at Chanticleer as their Plant Recorder, and is a self-employed garden consultant, gardener, lecturer, and teacher. After graduating from Iowa State University with a B.S. in Botany, he worked at Longwood Gardens for 17 years, ten years as a Curatorial Assistant, and seven years as one of Longwood’s head-gardeners, responsible for the
(former) Hillside Garden, and Heath and Heather gardens. Mr. Herald teaches Deciduous Flowering Shrubs, which is a seven-week Certificate of Merit course offered by Longwood Gardens. He has also worked on projects for the Scott Arboretum, Tyler Arboretum, and Nemours.

JEFF JABCO has worked for Swarthmore College since 1990. He is the Director of Grounds and Coordinator of Horticulture for the Scott Arboretum. In this role, Jeff oversees the gardeners, the College’s 360 acres of property, and the maintenance and development of the college-arboretum’s plant collections and gardens. He is an instructor at Longwood Gardens where he teaches a four-course Botany series in the Certificate in Ornamental Plants program, courses in landscape design and construction, and is an instructor for the two-year Longwood Professional Gardener program. He is owner of Countrie Greene, a part-time landscape design firm. He has written
for Fine Gardening magazine; Green Scene, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s magazine; American Nurseryman; and The Hybrid, the quarterly publication of the Scott Arboretum. He lives in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, where he tends an ever-changing garden featuring a cottage-style border, two ponds, a bog, an extensive dry-stone wall, and an ever-increasing number of
plants to trial.

JEFF LYNCH is currently the horticulturist/Land Manager at Rock Cobble Farm, a 1,200 acre property located in Litchfield county Connecticut. He was formally the Horticultural Director of Quaker Hill, the private estate of William Ziff, and the Flint Family Land Manager also overseeing the Delaware Nature Society’s Flint Woods Preserve. Prior to that, he was a Section Gardener at Longwood Gardens, and manager of the Longwood Gardens Experimental Nursery. Jeff is an accredited Pennsylvania nurseryman and a member of the International Plant Propagators Society. He has worked in the horticultural field for more than 20 years, and has participated in two plant exploration trips to Asia. He and his family currently reside in Cornwall,
Connecticut.

SUZANNE PHILLIPS, a Pennsylvania Certified Horticulturist, graduated from Penn State University with a degree in Ornamental Nursery Management. Broadly knowledgeable about plants, she has worked in the horticulture industry for 29 years, first at Rose Valley Nurseries and then at J. Franklin Styer Nurseries, Inc. where she is currently the “woody plant” buyer. Suzanne is actively involved in the Pennsylvania Landscape and Nursery Association.

CHRIS STRAND is Director, Garden & Estate, at Winterthur Museum and Country Estate. His career has included seven years as Director of Green Spring Gardens, a 27-acre public garden in Alexandria, Virginia. Before Green Spring, Chris worked at the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University,
Callaway Gardens, and the Denver Botanic Gardens. Raised in Colorado, it wasn’t until graduate school that Chris was introduced to the wide range of plant material available to mid-Atlantic gardeners. A graduate degree in public horticulture sponsored by Longwood Gardens quickly convinced him that he
needed to learn more about the eastern flora. His current interests include the genus Hamamelis (witch-hazels), beeches and oaks, Convallaria (lily of the valley), landscape preservation, and ecology. He is especially interested in helping gardeners take advantage of the broad palette of ornamental plants
available in this part of the country.

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