Cleveland Botanical Garden invites guests to ‘eat their yard’

1/19/2012 – West Side Leader
By Staff Writer

CLEVELAND — Back for its seventh year, the Cleveland Botanical Garden’s (CBG) Sustainability Symposium, taking place Feb. 4, will focus on healthy food required for a healthy life. The theme this year is “Eat Your Yard.”

According to CBG officials, the symposium is taking a cue from the growing field of permaculture, the science of designing productive landscapes that integrate all life into a self-sustaining ecosystem that yields crops.

Dr. Michael Roizen will deliver the event’s keynote presentation, “The Health and Nutrition Connection.” Roizen is the chair of the Cleveland Wellness Institute and the chief wellness officer at the Cleveland Clinic, and is the author of eight books.

Highlights of the symposium include:

• An introduction to permaculture by Brad Charles Melzer and Jonathan Hull, of The Green Triangle;

• A walkthrough of the common pitfalls of edible landscaping that can frustrate first-time growers and the solutions to fix them by Timothy Milanich, of the Lorain County Extension Office; and

• A special “Dirt on Dirt” Workshop that covers several key areas of soil treatment to create an abundance of productive and sustainable plant life systems in a backyard.

The symposium runs from 8 a.m. to noon, following by the “Dirt on Dirt” Workshop from 1 to 2:30 p.m. at the CBG, 11030 East Blvd.

Advanced registration is required and can be made at www.cbgarden.org or by calling 216-721-1600, ext. 100. Costs to attend are: for the symposium only, $40 for CBG members and $48 for nonmembers, and for the symposium plus the workshop, $60 for members and $73 for nonmembers.