FROM THE CHAPTER PRESIDENT
Francesca Corra, APLD

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Greetings!

Welcome to the Summer 2018 "Focus on Flora" edition of California Landscape Design. Our love of plants might very well be the strongest tie that binds us all together. We wouldn’t be plant lovers, though, if we didn’t share other intrinsic qualities, such as generosity of spirit. Whenever I relate my story of how I came to be a landscape designer, I cannot leave this part out of my tale. My previous career as a corporate flight attendant was absolutely cutthroat. When I started designing, I joined APLD right away and was blown away by my fellow designers’ willingness to share and help in any way I needed and beyond.

It is with this spirit of generosity that I would like all of you to join me in congratulating the designers from California who have been chosen this year as winners of the APLD International Landscape Design Awards. The top award, Designer of the Year, was bestowed upon Margie Grace for her “Sycamore Canyon” garden. Margie also swept up gold for two other gardens and one in the silver category. A few years ago, a group of us in Southern California had the pleasure of visiting six of Margie’s gardens as part of our Santa Barbara garden tour. I see another tour in our future!

A big applause for the other California designers who received a silver award: John Beaudry, Debbie Gliksman, Mario Herrada, Brian Klein and Laura Morton. You can see pictures of all these gardens at apld.org.

I hope to see all of our California winners in attendance at the APLD International Design Conference in Toronto this September to accept their awards, and I encourage everyone to come and cheer them on! Conference details can be found at apld.org. If any California designer is thinking that they couldn’t relate to gardens in Toronto, I would encourage you to think otherwise. I have attended conferences so far in Boston, Washington DC and Santa Fe, and there is always an abbondanza of inspiration and takeaways from the gardens, the speakers, and social connections with designers from all over the world.  

I would like to take care of one other matter of business before I leave you to explore everything about plants. Please do us a favor, and yourselves as well, by renewing your membership in a timely manner. When there is a time lapse, a lot of tedious work is involved to get you back up and running. This is done by both paid staff and by volunteers whose time and energy could be much better spent elsewhere…like shopping for plants!

Cheers!
Francesca Corra, APLD
APLD California Chapter President