Beronda is a writer, science communicator, and researcher currently serving as the Sally Starling Seaver Fellow (2025–2026) at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. She brings more than two decades of experience in higher education leadership and scientific research, most recently serving as Vice President for Academic Affairs/Dean and Professor of Biology at Grinnell College. Previously, she was an endowed Professor of Biochemistry at Michigan State University, where she also held senior leadership roles including Assistant Provost for Faculty Development and Associate Vice President of Research and Innovation.
Dr. Montgomery’s research explores how organisms—and people—perceive and respond to their environments. Her laboratory work focuses on how photosynthetic organisms respond to light and nutrient cues, while her broader scholarship centers on mentoring, leadership, and academic culture.
She is a Fellow of multiple scientific societies, including AAAS and the American Academy of Microbiology, and a recipient of numerous honors for research excellence and inclusive mentorship. In 2025, she received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM).
Dr. Montgomery is the author of Lessons from Plants and When Trees Testify.
Photo credit - Melissa Blackall
Darryl is an award-winning garden and landscape designer and writer. He is author of Gardening in a Changing World: Plants People and the Climate Crisis. He is Director and co-founder of the innovative urban landscape organisation Cityscapes, realising creative approaches to greening city spaces through novel design ideas that ensure ecological, economic and social sustainability.
He is a consultant at Beth Chatto’s Plants & Gardens, co-curator of thehub.earth and a tutor at KLC School of Design. He sits on the Society of Garden Designers Council, and is a fellow of the RSA. His most recent award was for the St Mungo’s Putting Down Roots Garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2022, showcasing sustainability and ecology in public places.
Gardening in a Changing World: Plants, People and the Climate Crisis explores recent developments in planting design, horticulture, ecology and plant science. It addresses our relationship with plants and gardens, looking at the ways we can begin to appreciate and work together with plants in facing the challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss.
David Godshall is a landscape architect, horticultural theorist and the design director of the TERREMOTO office in Los Angeles, which he founded with Alain Peauroi in 2012.
David’s strategic approach to design is inherently rooted in philosophy and the idea that ecology, horticulture and landscape have transformative physical and metaphorical impacts upon a person and a place.
Helen is a lecturer in Healthy Urban Landscapes in the School of Architecture and Landscape at the University of Sheffield, and a NIHR School for Public Health Transdisciplinary Research Fellow in the Sheffield Centre for Health and Related Research.
Helen's research lies at the intersection of nature and human wellbeing, informing policy and practice to prioritise biodiversity and wellbeing in the context of a changing climate. She believes passionately in collaborating closely with those who juggle these priorities on the ground. Much of her research involves introducing nature-based interventions in partnership with policymakers, practitioners, and communities, and measuring the impacts. She is currently working part of a large multidisciplinary partnership led by Luton Borough Council, awarded a £1M grant by the highly competitive Natural England Nature Towns and Cities Heritage Lottery Fund. This project ‘Roots to healthy places: nature connections in Luton’ will focus on improving health, access and connections to nature across communities, with a particular focus on communities already identified as facing barriers to access.
Helen is a member of the Adaptation Committee of the Irish Climate Change Advisory Council where she shares expertise in nature-based solutions and biodiversity.
Jac is a plant practitioner and director of award winning Super Bloom plant practice bringing dynamic living beauty, diversity and delight through planting design, high skill horticulture and plant x art projects, with a mission of 'plants for the people' in a changing climate. With over 20 years of considered experience with plants and people, the interface of public experience and wondrous resilient future forward planting is Jac’s singular super power.
Internationally recognised horticulturist, planting designer and innovator in wondrous resilient summer dry climatic planting, based in Australia and working internationally. Author of SUPER BLOOM and The Super Bloom Handbook and Flower Power with Thames and Hudson, published worldwide. Jac’s next book FLOWER POWER: Designing gardens for year-round wonder is soon to be released internationally in March 2026.
Photo credit - Sarah Pannell
Jake is an interdisciplinary researcher working at the nexus of microbiome science, ecosystem restoration and human health.
Grounded in systems and 'multispecies' thinking, his work explores how ecological and cultural processes interact to shape resilient futures.
Jake contributes to global initiatives, including the UNFCCC and Grounded Minds Consortium and leads science-driven projects that bridge research, public engagement and imagination infrastructure.
He is passionate about making science accessible to everyone and is the author of Invisible Friends (2023), TREEWILDING (2024) and The Nature of Pandemics (2025).
He hosts two podcasts (Interconnected and Naked Thinking) and a new YouTube channel: @naturegutbrain. For more information, visit: www.jakemrobinson.com
Kelly is one of the leading ecological horticulturists of his generation. In his practice, he explores the narrative of place through site-specific plantings and landscape interventions.
An award-winning author and plantsman, Kelly’s work in gardens has been featured in The New York Times, Better Homes and Gardens, Martha Stewart Living, Fine Gardening, Garden Design, and numerous television, radio, and digital media appearances. His latest book is Your Natural Garden from Cool Springs Press.
Kelly’s eponymous design studio works in public and private places across North America. The studio annually produces the New Naturalism Academy, a virtual school for enthusiastic designers, as a commitment to continuing education and lifelong learning. He’s also the founder and curator of The Public Horticulture Company, an emerging ecological landscape startup based in Des Moines, Iowa.
He is the former director of horticulture and education at the Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden, where for eight years, he directed efforts in design, curation, programming, garden, and facility management after serving as the owner’s representative to nearly $20 million in capital projects.
Photo credit - Austin Hyler Day
Monica is an award-winning barrister and the author of the critically acclaimed book A Barrister for the Earth, referred to as ‘a vital book for our times’ and ‘radically rethinking our way of inhabiting the Earth’.
Monica acted in the seminal Rights of Nature case Los Cedros - a world precedent on an eco-centric approach to nature protection, and on landmark climate cases globally. Her work has contributed to systemic changes addressing climate change and the protection of the natural world.
Monica was a ‘Barrister of the Year’ finalist at The Lawyer Awards 2025 and The Times’ first 'Lawyer of the Week' in 2025. She has been referred to as 'one of Britain's most dazzling legal minds’ and her work has been featured in The Times, The Guardian, Prospect Magazine, Vogue, Vanity Fair Italia, and BBC Radio 3 and 4.
Having changed career in the early 2000’s, Sheila studied at Kew, worked for English Heritage, and was a garden manager at RHS Garden Wisley with responsibility for Education, Edibles, Seed and Wellbeing until 2024.
Sheila’s time at Wisley included the development of the hilltop landscape which features gardens for Wildlife, Wellbeing and Food as well as the reimagination of the Wisley orchard to demonstrate a more nature focused approach to fruit growing. Sheila is passionate about growing food in sustainable ways to support planetary and human health and interpreting the gardener's role as a participant in landscapes from past to present to future.
Sheila is well known for being committed to soil health and looks to develop thoughts around how systems connect and how people can rediscover and celebrate their role in that connection. Sheila is now Head of Gardens and Parks at the National Trust as the Trust embarks upon the delivery of its ‘People and Nature Thriving’ strategy.
With a firm commitment to horticultural training, Sheila has been a trustee for the Professional Gardeners’ Trust, a co-founder of the Gardener X exchange scheme and is now a Trustee for the Beth Chatto Education Trust.
Ben is a plantsman and gardener, formerly Head Gardener at York Gate, where he oversaw significant developments and changes to the garden in recent years including the creation of a new nursery. His long-standing passion for propagation and growing led him to become a nurseryman, and he now runs his own independent specialist plant nursery in North Yorkshire, Cliff Bank Nursery.
Ben took on the previously derelict nursery site in March 2022 and has spent the last four years bringing it back to life. The nursery specialises in unusual herbaceous perennials, ornamental grasses, and a small but growing range of woodland plants, with a particular focus on woodland anemones.
Part of a growing movement of young nurserymen and women in the north of England, Ben is a strong advocate for plants that are propagated and grown in the UK. He is continually working towards producing more future-proof plants that can tolerate our changing and increasingly unpredictable climate.
Ben believes that returning to traditional methods of growing—such as bare-root production—combined with a modern approach that embraces sand beds, traditional stock beds, and seed beds, is the direction UK horticulture must take.
Benny is a London-based community gardener who trained and worked as a marine biologist, before falling in love with plants.
He is the head gardener for Eden Nature Garden in London and has been gardening for wildlife here for 11 years, with the local community at the heart of everything. Benny believes access to greenspace is crucial to a cultural shift that will connect more people to plants, nature and food growing. He believes the future of climate resilience and recovery lies with people who work with their hands in the soil.
In the last couple of years Benny has been working as part of 'Green our Neighbourhood': a small group of people working with the council to dig up pavements in front of schools and to instead install pollution-absorbing plants as a barrier from the roads.
For the last four years Benny has been working with John Little and Fiona Crummay at their experimental garden, Hilldrop, in South Essex.
His plant passion takes the shape of combining wild, native plants with a sprinkling of more ornamental garden plants (a 'wildamental' approach). When he isn't working as a gardener, Benny is usually out somewhere trying to identify and record insects.
Photo credit: KT Watson (ktw-photography.co.uk)
Connor is an entomologist and environmental educator dedicated to helping people slow down and notice the overlooked details of the natural world.
His work champions invertebrate conservation in gardens and green spaces, from studying Buckingham Palace’s dung beetles to leading Chelsea Physic Garden’s first biodiversity audit.
Connor’s practice is rooted in Queer Ecology, challenging the societal biases that shape how we perceive insects, and what is considered 'natural' or 'unnatural'. He leads walks and workshops across the UK, welcoming thousands of participants to engage with plants, insects, and urban wildlife in thoughtful and unexpected ways.
Ella Uppala works an as industrial PhD-student at the Swedish University of Agricultural Science and as a landscape architect at Ramboll Sweden. She has almost ten years of design experience from Sweden, Finland and Germany.
Her licentiate thesis concerns the potential of designed plant communities to contribute to urban nature-based solutions. The focus of the research is on urban rain gardens, which exemplify many of today’s pressing societal challenges.
Henrietta began a career in horticulture working at a range of nurseries and gardens before embarking on the Beth Chatto Traineeship in 2020 which consolidated her love of propagation. She completed her traineeship and became a member of the Beth Chatto team for two years.
A propagation job at Newby Hall became available near her childhood home. Then in 2024 she decided to embark on her long held ambition; she would start her own small nursery, Freckles and Flora, selling unusual herbaceous perennials and choice annuals.
Henrietta does this both locally at plant fairs and via mail order. Two years on, she grows everything on the site of her family farm from stock beds using traditional propagation methods with roughly 350 different types of plants available in small batches. She is very passionate and conscious about conservation and ecology and has integrated this into the way she grows.
Humaira has been working as a professional Garden Designer at Studio Ikram for over 15 years and specialises in client focused landscapes which are pollinator friendly and as sustainable as possible.
She runs the Garden Design Diploma at the KLC School of Design, is a Gardens Advisor to RHS Hyde Hall, and RHS Judge and on various selection and advisory panels for the RHS. She is co-curator of the newly established thehub.earth highlighting sustainable, ethical and cross sector events, as well as an award winning broadcaster who has contributed to BBC Radio 4 Gardeners Question Time, been part of garden focused TV and media campaigns and programmes, and writes for various gardening magazines.
John is a plant ecophysiologist whose research examines how ecological strategies shape plant performance, evolution, and ecosystem function. As a Lecturer in the School of Life Sciences at the University of Essex, he investigates natural variation in traits such as stomatal behaviour, photosynthetic capacity, and water-use efficiency to understand how plants respond to environmental gradients and climatic stress.
A major focus of John’s recent work is the integration of ecological strategy frameworks with high-resolution phenotyping and genetic analysis. By developing new methods, including hyperspectral approaches for estimating ecological strategies in situ, he aims to reveal how strategic trait variation influences evolutionary trajectories, species’ climatic niches, and vegetation–climate feedbacks. His research spans wild taxa and crop relatives, linking individual physiological traits to broader patterns of adaptation, resilience, and ecosystem functioning.
John collaborates widely across ecology, evolution, and agricultural science, contributing to efforts to predict plant responses under future climates and to translate fundamental insights into practical tools for biodiversity conservation and crop improvement. He is also committed to mentoring early-career researchers and communicating plant science to wider audiences.
John argues against long standing protocol within public space and horticulture. He suggests structural complexity is overlooked in landscape design and is more important than plant choice.
Since starting the grassroofcompany.co.uk in 1998, he has designed and built over 400 small green roof buildings, combining deep biodiverse green roofs with walls of breeding and hibernation space.
After 18 years caring for the green space on Clapton Park estate, Hackney, he produced a sustainable grounds maintenance contract that puts people first.
In 2007 John’s company was awarded Silver Gilt at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show for a garden based on the work they pioneer for the green spaces within social housing. John worked closely with the residents of the Clapton Park Estate, Hackney – in fact it was the first time a council estate had entered the show.
He questions our obsession with specifying topsoil in all new projects, especially on highways and new developments. Habitat trials at his home include a garden designed with spoil from the local road widening scheme, industrial and construction waste.
In 2008 he launched a range of small green roof shelters based on shipping containers and designed portable structures including bike and bin storage. greenroofshelters.co.uk
In 2025 he started a not for profit to offer free training for gardeners in everything other than horticulture. The important stuff. carenotcapital.org
Jonny is a gardener and writer who has recently opened a perennial nursery in the heart of the Cotswolds. An Art History graduate, Jonny trained at Aberglasney and Great Dixter before spending four years at the renowned, organic nursery De Hessenhof with Hans and Miranda Kramer in the Netherlands.
He returned to the UK in 2020 to pursue his dream of setting up his own nursery while working alongside a range of designers. Since 2018, he has also been responsible for the garden at Prospect Cottage, Derek Jarman's windswept home on the shingle at Dungeness.
Kate is an award-winning writer specialising in wildlife gardening and the author of One Garden Against the World, The Bumblebee Flies Anyway, Wildlife Gardening for Everyone and Everything, How to Create a Wildlife Pond and The Tree in Your Garden.
She’s the Wildlife Editor of BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine and has regular columns in The Guardian and BBC Wildlife Magazine.
Her garden was featured as part of the BBC Springwatch Garden Watch campaign, and she and her garden have also appeared on Autumnwatch and Gardeners’ World.
Photo credit - Lisa Linder
Laura is a horticulturist, educator and consultant whose work bridges historic garden practices with contemporary, sustainable horticulture.
After a career change a decade ago, she trained at Capel Manor College, completing RHS Levels 2 and 3 alongside a Level 3 qualification in Garden Design and Construction. She is currently undertaking the RHS Master of Horticulture, supported by a scholarship from the Japanese Garden Society.
Laura rebuilt her career from the ground up, beginning at Clifton Nurseries in Maida Vale, before interning at Claude Monet’s garden in Giverny, Normandy.
Returning to the UK, she went on to work for a range of design, build and maintainance companies, progressing into managerial roles. Now based in the West Midlands, she is a horticultural lecturer at Pershore College, teaching both RHS qualifications and apprenticeship programmes.
Her interests centre on historic horticultural and agricultural practices, biodiversity-led sustainability, and working with landscapes rather than against them.
Laura sits on the RHS Bursaries Committee and is a Trustee of Herefordshire Growing Point. In 2025, her commitment to mentoring young people and career changers led to the launch of a new business focused on breaking down barriers into garden design through a monthly blog and one-to-one horticultural career coaching.
Starting from zero in 2013 with beginner gardening courses, Lina has built one of the most influential garden and landscape communication platforms in Lithuania. She is the founder of Geltonas Karutis, a multidisciplinary initiative combining education, editorial content, community of gardeners, and professional garden tours. Over the past decade, her work has reached tens of thousands of gardeners and professionals through live courses, online programs, and a growing members’ club.
Lina also represents a broader shift taking place in Central and Eastern Europe: a transition from purely utilitarian gardening—focused on food production for the family—toward contemporary, sustainable landscape design rooted in ecology, aesthetics, and cultural identity.
She is the founder and organizer of the annual Garden Style landscape design conference (Vilnius), attracting around 800 attendees and hosting internationally renowned speakers such as Nigel Dunnett, Cassian Schmidt, Annie Guilfoyle, James Hithmough, Noel Kingsbury, and others.
In parallel, Lina is the creator and host of a national television garden show on LRT, Lithuania’s public broadcaster, now in its 5th season.
With a professional background in marketing and communication, Lina brings a strategic, audience-focused perspective to landscape discourse. Her talks often explore new narratives around plants, the role of media and education in shaping greener cities, and how designers and communicators can bridge science, design, and everyday gardening culture.
Olivier has spent over 25 years studying native plant communities in some of the world’s driest regions, applying this knowledge through extensive plant trials and innovative cultivation techniques in his experimental garden in southern France.
He is the author of The Dry Gardening Handbook, a practical reference on sustainable, low-water gardening inspired by Mediterranean and arid-climate ecosystems.
Olivier is widely regarded as a leading voice in dry-climate horticulture and ecological garden design.
Stephan is a garden designer and horticulturist. After his apprenticeship as a horticulturist, he worked in various nurseries in Switzerland. He completed internships in England and South Africa, including at Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens.
After studying garden design at the Inchbald School of Design in London, he was in charge for two private garden projects in the South of Spain. In 2002, he and Ursula Yelin founded Gartenwerke GmbH, a design studio with an affiliated experimental and show garden on the edge of the Emmental region in Switzerland.
The question ‘What is nature, and what is the place of humans within it?’ is at the heart of his work. It is important for him to discover and study European vegetation wherever it appears in order to understand the processes at work in plant communities. Whether this is right on his doorstep, in cities, industrial wastelands or on remote mountain peaks.
Photo credit: Martin Friedrich