Ms. Trish Aleshire
A native of south Louisiana, Trish Aleshire is a graduate of Louisiana State University with a degree in horticulture. A licensed horticulturalist for 21 years, she worked in the wholesale and retail nursery industry before coming to Rosedown Plantation State Historic Site in 2002. After spending five years as Horticulturalist at Rosedown, Trish became Site Manager in 2007. Her specialties include heirloom plants, antique roses, camellias, and southern historic gardens.
Dr. David Creech
As Regent’s Professor, Dr. Creech has been at Stephen F. Austin State University, Nacogdoches, Texas since September, 1978. He is currently the Director of the 10-acre SFA Mast Arboretum. Dr. Creech also directs the 8-acre “Ruby M. Mize Azalea Garden,” which opened in 2000. He is also co-Director of the 40-acre SFA Pineywoods Native Plant Center, only the third garden affiliated with the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas. As an outreach of his position at SFA, Dr. Creech has accumulated a long list of international consultancies since 1981 to Pakistan, Guatemala, Mexico, Nepal, Israel and China.
Dr. Jeff Kuehny
Dr. Jeff Kuehny grew up on a farm in Northern Oklahoma with a passion for Horticulture. He pursued his interest at Oklahoma State University earning a B.S., North Carolina State University earning an M.S., Clemson University earning a Ph.D. and Cornell University as a Postdoctoral Researcher. He has lived in the deep south for over 16 years as a Professor of Horticulture at Louisiana State University. He has taught a diversity of classes in Horticulture and his research programs have included new plant introductions and sustainable landscape management. More recently he has been working on the implementation of a master plan for Burden Center that will help meet the needs of Horticulture in the 21st century by combining the historic gardens of Steele Burden and programs of research, extension and education in one location that is like no other.
Mr. Ron Morgan
One of the most sought-after and well-recognized floral designers in the United States, Ron Morgan has dazzled lecture and garden club audiences for over twenty years with his wit, knowledge, and unparalleled creative talents. His career in floral design began at age ten, when he won his first flower show competition in San Joaquin County in California. Over the course of his extensive career, he has designed window displays for Harrods and David Jones, opened retail floral and antique shops, consulted as an interior designer, conducted flower arranging classes, and, most importantly, become a highly popular speaker at garden club events around the world. He now lives in Alameda, California, and devotes most of his creative energies to the garden club lecture circuit.
Dr. William Seale
William Seale is a historian who, for most of his career, has been headquartered in Washington D.C. He has written a number of books, notably The President's House: A History (2 vols., 1986 and 2009) and The White House: History of an American Idea (1992, reprint 2000). Earlier works on interiors include The Tasteful Interlude (1975). He has been actively involved in historic restoration. His projects include several historic southern houses, including an interpretive master plan for Rosedown. He has served as historical design consultant on nine state capitols and five governor's mansions. He supervised the restoration of the George Eastman House, Rochester, New York, and most recently the Wisconsin home of the actors Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne. He lives in Washington, DC and Jasper County, Texas.
Dr. Mark Plotkin
An ethnobotanist and a plant explorer in the Neotropics, Mark Plotkin is an expert on rainforest ecosystems and an advocate for tropical rainforest conservation. After attending Isidore Newman School in New Orleans, Plotkin was a college dropout working at Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology when he joined an expedition searching for an elusive crocodilian species in 1978 and was galvanized into returning to education. He completed his bachelor's degree at Harvard, his master's degree in forestry at Yale University and his Ph.D. at Tufts University. He is the author of the book Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice. In 1995, Plotkin and prominent Costa Rican conservationist Liliana Madrigal formed the Amazon Conservation Team to foster partnerships with indigenous groups to protect their culture by passing traditional learning to a new generation in Suriname, Colombia, and Brazil.
Mr. Rick Webb
Rick Webb is owner, along with his wife Susan, of Louisiana Growers, a wholesale nursery located in Amite, Louisiana. The nursery specializes in Gulf Coast Native trees and shrubs and was established in 1988. In addition to residential gardens and arboretum plant sales across the south, native plant material from Louisiana Growers has been used in numerous significant public and commercial projects including the New Orleans Botanical Garden, the native plant demonstration garden at L.S.U.’s Burden Center, the Make It Right Foundation’s LEED certified landscapes in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward, ExxonMobil’s green space enhancement project in Baton Rouge, and many others. Rick is former president of the Southeast Louisiana Nursery Association, the Louisiana Nursery and Landscape Association, the Louisiana Native Plant Society and the Amite Chamber of Commerce.
