Sara Williams -- Book Launch
Tuesday Jul 22 2014 7:00 pm, Saskatoon, Travel Alcove
Saskatoon Forestry Farm Park and Zoo: A Photographic History (Friends of the Forestry Farm House)
What we know as the Saskatoon Forestry Farm & Zoo began life as a federal tree nursery just over a century ago. During its working life, it distributed over 147 million trees to prairie farmers, transforming the treeless prairies into the landscape of shelter belts we know today. As iconic to Saskatoon residents as our riverbank or the Bessborough, the Forestry Farm has been the scene of many a family picnic and hosted such famous visitors as Neville Chamberlain, later prime minister of England. Saskatoon Forestry Farm & Zoo: A Photographic History tells the stories of the people who worked there, how these trees were produced, its evolution from a lone porcupine into an accredited zoo, and how it became the park we love today. Amazing archival and contemporary photos are combined with insightful vignettes from the forest nursery station's beginning on a stubble field through two World Wars and the Depression, to its transfer to the City of Saskatoon and subsequent development.
Retired as the horticultural specialist of the University of Saskatchewan, is author of a number of gardening books, including In A Cold land: Saskatchewan’s Horticultural Pioneers and Creating the Prairie Xeriscape. With Hugh Skinner, she has written Best Trees and Shrubs for the Prairies, Best Groundcovers and Vines for the Prairies, and Gardening, Naturally: A Chemical-free handbook for the Prairies. She was inducted into the Saskatchewan Agricultural Hall of Fame in 2013. Sara developed her first garden in the 1960s in the school courtyard in Tanzania in East Africa where she was a volunteer teacher. In the last several years she has helped to raise over $200,000 for a hostel for impoverished Tanzanian girls so that they can attend secondary school. She gardens on 5 acres of sand near Saskatoon.
See:
Gardening, Naturally
- Sara Williams 
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Trade paperback
$24.95 - Add to Cart
Reader Reward Price: $22.46
An expert look at alternatives to the "chemical stew" to keep your lawn and garden healthy, and the entire planet happy, and safe. More than two generations of gardeners have practiced their craft with the arsenal of chemical pesticides and herbicides developed since WWII. The "folk knowledge" used for generations prior to that, much of which does indeed have a "scientific" basis, is largely unused and even forgotten today. Much of the more recent scientifically based research into alternatives has had limited distribution. As the "green movement" grows stronger in Canada, and pressure increases to limit the use of cosmetic pesticides and herbicides within urban and even rural municipalities, there is a growing need for information about effective alternate tools. The desire to go "chemical free" is there. Here are the tools to make it possible, with comprehensive, understandable, workable practices.
