
- This event has passed.
Keystone Plants to Restore Insect Populations, presented by Carolyn Summers
February 12 @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm
Our human brains follow our eyes, and, like insect pollinators, we invariably focus our attention on bright showy floral displays. But our lively, colorful pollinator gardens will only be as successful as the food, primarily leaf matter, we provide for the pollinating insects’ early life stages. This presentation will highlight keystone plants, those trees, shrubs, and flowers that support the greatest diversity of insect life.

About the speaker: Carolyn Summers is the author of Designing Gardens with Flora of the American East (2010)and co-author of the revised edition published in 2024. Her photographs grace the pages of The Pollinator Victory Garden by friend and colleague Kim Eierman. After completing her BSLA in Landscape Architecture at CCNY, she began her career with the Trust for Public Land, producing an open space report for the Harbor Herons Project that has guided preservation efforts to create an urban wildlife refuge on Staten Island in New York City. Carolyn later moved to the city’s Department of Environmental Protection as the agency’s first Director of Natural Resources, where she implemented a native plants policy for all agency construction/restoration projects that continues today. Following this, she went to the Natural Resources Defense Council, where she led a regional project to preserve and restore wildlife habitat and public access in the New York-New Jersey Bight.
Ms. Summers is currently an adjunct professor at Westchester Community College with The Native Plant Center’s Go Native U certificate program. She and her husband have recently opened their country home, Flying Trillium Gardens and Preserve for public tours so that designers, gardeners, and homeowners can be inspired by the beauty of native plants in both garden and natural settings.