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  • Start: 2025/08/20 09:00
  • End: 2025/08/20 12:15
  • Location: 12101 Lee Highway Fairfax, VA 22030 United States

For Landscaping Professionals Only – learn about landscaping with native plants

This conference is for professionals in the landscaping industry only(landscape designers, landscape architects, crews, growers, nurseries, landscape maintenance, property managers, builders, etc.)

You are welcome to either pay online or pay at the door. If you pay in person, please bring exact change for the entry fee ($35). You can get a free email reminder about this event by selecting the free ticket titled ‘Free Reminder.’

Agenda:

  • Earth-friendly lawn care – Paul Tukey
  • Alternatives to turfgrass lawns: low-growing native plants to make any HOA happy – Adele Kuo
  • Making native plants your business – Neal Beasley

Abour our speakers:

Paul Tukey is an award-winning journalist, author, filmmaker, HGTV host, consultant and motivational public speaker who is internationally recognized as a pioneering leader in sustainable landscaping. Having served as Director of Environmental Stewardship at Glenstone since 2010, Paul helped to create a “living classroom” on the all-organic 300-acre site that includes native meadows, a five-acre organic lawn, restored streams and tributaries, forests and more than 12,000 recently planted native trees.

Winner of the prestigious Communicator of the Year Award from the American Horticultural Society, as well as the 2018 Green Medal Award from the Garden Writers of America, Paul has been featured in thousands of media outlets from Martha Stewart and Good Morning America as well as National Geographic, Readers Digest and the New York Times, which called him, “The godfather of the natural land care movement.” His books include the Organic Lawn Care Manual (Storey 2007). His 2010 feature-length documentary film titled, “A Chemical Reaction,” profiling the lawn pesticide bans sweeping across Canada and the U.S., earned three EMMY nominations. ​

Adele Kuo is the founder of Deco Footprint, a full-service landscape company blendin architecture and landscapes into livable, enjoyable spaces. also serves on the Chesapeake Conservation Landscaping Council (CCLC) Board of Directors, co-chairs the Development Committee, and is a certified Chesapeake Bay Landscape Professional (CBLP) Level 1 & 2, and VA Living Shorelines. She holds a Masters degree in Sustainable Landscape Design from The George Washington University and a BA from the University of Virginia. Adele shared her passion for living a more sustainable lifestyle by researching, writing, and reporting “It’s Easy Being Green” featured on Arlington Weekly News from 2011 to 2019. You can view it on YouTube.

Neal Beasley is a licensed Landscape Architect, Certified Arborist and Virginia Certified Horticulturist with significant project management experience both in the field and as a design consultant. Neal is currently a Senior Project Manager with Timmons Group, a multi-disciplinary site design firm headquartered in Richmond, VA and approaching his 20th year with Timmons. Formerly the Manager of Horticulture at the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden in Richmond, VA, during the largest garden expansion period, Neal brings years of construction and landscape management into the design community focusing on project coordination, elaborate planting design, site lighting, irrigation and administering construction support services for municipal, recreational, residential, and commercial properties.

Neal has been a VNLA Board Member since 2019 and chairs the Virginia Certified Horticulturist program. Most recently, he has represented the industry, participating in strategic planning for and supporting state agencies dealing with managing invasive plant species. Since 2020, Neal has contributed time to work groups managed by the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS), served on the Noxious Weed Advisory Committee, participated in a three-day planning session for removal of invasive species lead by the Blue Ridge PRISM (Piedmont for Regional Invasive Species Management) and is now serving on the Advisory Committee to update the 2018 Virginia Invasive Species Management Plan lead by the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation (VA-DCR).

Get some free promotion for your business! Enter the contest for a chance to win. Winners will get free entry to this event. Details on the contest here.

Continuing Education Units (CEUs) Available for Professionals

  • Virginia Society of Landscape Designers (VSLD) (3 hours)
  • Virginia Nursery & Landscaping Association (3 hours)
  • Chesapeake Bay Landscape Professionals (CBLP) (3 hours)

Questions? plantnovanatives@gmail.com