Instructors Bios

Sandra Anagnostakis, PhD, works in the Department of Plant Pathology and Ecology at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station where she continues the project on chestnut tree breeding to produce better timber and orchard trees. She now also works on canker diseases of butternut trees. She is a past-president and current Board Member of the Northern Nut Growers Association, and occasionally judges the nut exhibit at the Pennsylvania Farm show.

Jack Alexander is the plant propagator of the Arnold Arboretum, a position he has held since 1976. He was named a Fellow of the Eastern Region of the International Plant Propagators’ Society and in 2004 received their Award of Merit.

John DelRosso, head arborist at the Arnold Arboretum, is a graduate of the Consulting Academy of the American Society of Consulting Arborists. He is certified with the International Society of Arboriculture and the Massachusetts Arborists Association.

Aaron Ellison , PhD, is Senior Research Fellow in ecology at the Harvard Forest, where he studies food web dynamics and community ecology of wetlands and forests, evolutionary ecology of carnivorous plants, the response of plants and ants to global climate change, and the application of Bayesian statistical inference to ecological research and environmental decision-making. He is also an Adjunct Research Professor in the departments of Biology and Environmental Conservation at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He received his BA in East Asian philosophy from Yale University in 1982 and his PhD in evolutionary ecology from Brown University in 1986.

Elizabeth Farnsworth, PhD, is Senior Research Ecologist with the New England Wild Flower Society, and a biologist, educator, and scientific illustrator. She is also editor-in-chief of the botanical journal Rhodora. She is currently principal investigator on a National Science Foundation-funded project to develop an online guide to the regional flora for teaching botany, as well as a member of the graduate faculties of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and the University of Rhode Island, and a master teacher at the Conway School of Landscape Design. She obtained her doctorate in biology from Harvard University, Master of Science from the University of Vermont, and Bachelor of Arts with honors in environmental studies from Brown University.

Brian D. Farrell, PhD, is Professor of Biology, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology; and Curator of Entomology, Museum of Comparative Biology, at Harvard University. He earned his master doctorate degrees at the University of Maryland and was a Sloan Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University. Research in the Farrell Lab is broadly concerned with whether the diversity of species on earth is a cause or consequence of the diversity of roles different species play in ecosystems. The context of most work in the lab is the interaction between insects and plants, but this emphasis is now extended to other trophic levels through the Beetle Tree of Life project, based in the Farrell Lab. The aim of this collaborative, multi-year effort is to provide a comprehensive phylogenetic study of this most diverse group of animals and achieve an understanding of their many shifts among trophic levels. Learn more about this research.

William (Ned) Friedman, PhD, is Director of the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University and Arnold Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard. His research program focuses on the organismic interfaces between developmental, phylogenetic, and evolutionary biology. Armed with hypotheses of relationships among organisms, he explores how patterns of morphology, anatomy, and cell biology have evolved through the modification of developmental processes. His work is primarily focused on the origin and subsequent diversification of flowering plants, Darwin’s “abominable mystery.”

Kanchi Gandhi, PhD, earned his doctorate from Texas A&M University. He is the editor of the International Plant Name Index for the Harvard University Herbaria; nomenclature editor of the Flora of North America; and an associate editor for several other journals.

Erik Gehring is a professional and fine art photographer who lives in Roslindale. His favorite destination is the Arnold Arboretum, and for the last four years he has published a calendar of images taken in the Arboretum landscape entitled Trees of Boston. Erik has shown his work throughout New Hampshire and eastern Massachusetts, including a show at the Arboretum’s Hunnewell Building in 2008. He teaches digital photography and lectures about nature photography. Visit him online at www.erikgehring.com.

Jen Kettell, horticultural technologist at the Arnold Arboretum, is an International Society of Arboriculture-certified arborist, and serves on the board of the New England Chapter of the ISA. She began work at the Arboretum as an intern in 2003.

Marion Larson recently became the Chief of Information and Education for the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. She oversees the staff who produce many of the Division’s publications and who offer wildlife related education and outdoor skills classes. Marion began her career with the Commonwealth as an Environmental Police Officer, serving for six years before transferring to the Division as a Wildlife Education Specialist. More recently, she served as the agency’s Outreach Coordinator until 2012. Marion is an avid gardener and enjoys birding, hiking, kayaking, and the occasional bird or deer hunt. She earned a bachelor’s degree in environmental education from the University of Vermont.

Keith Morgan, PhD, is Director of Architectural Studies at Boston University and Professor of American and European Architecture. A scholar of nineteenth and twentieth century American and European architecture, Professor Morgan is interested in the relationships between architecture, urban planning, and landscape architecture. He has taught at Boston University since 1980 where he has also served as the Director of the Preservation Studies Program and of the American and New England Studies Program, and as the Chair of the Art History Department on two occasions. He is a former National President of the Society of Architectural Historians.

Kyle Port has a bachelor’s degree in environmental horticulture from Washington State University. He started working at the Arnold Arboretum as an intern in 1996 and is now manager of plant records.

Barbara Paul Robinson worked as a gardener for Rosemary Verey at Barnsley House, in the Cotswolds of England, during a sabbatical from the law firm Debevoise & Plimpton, where she was the first woman partner. Soon after this life-transforming experience, she became the first woman President of the New York City Bar. She has written the first and so far only biography of the renowned garden designer and writer, Rosemary Verey: The Life and Lessons of a Legendary Gardener, published by David R. Godine. A frequent speaker, Barbara has published articles in the New York Times, Horticulture, Fine Gardening, and Hortus, and contributed a chapter to Rosemary Verey’s The Secret Garden. Her own gardens at Brush Hill, created with her husband Charles in northwestern Connecticut, can be viewed at www.brushhillgardens.com.

Nancy Rose is the editor of Arnoldia, the quarterly magazine of the Arnold Arboretum, and was formerly a research horticulturist and extension educator with the University of Minnesota.

Kyle Stephens, a Massachusetts and International Society of Arboriculture certified arborist, has worked as an arborist at the Arnold Arboretum since 2005. Previously he worked in New York at Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Wave Hill, and with the Central Park Conservancy.

Stephanie Stuber is Curatorial Fellow at the Arnold Arboretum where she is working on field inventories, voucher collecting, nomenclature verifications, and curatorial reviews. She has been fostering her passion for public garden curation for the past few years at Mt. Cuba Center, Quaker Hill Native Plant Garden, Cornell Plantations, and Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. She recently graduated from the Cornell Plantations Graduate Program in Public Garden Leadership where her research culminated in a published book on how to integrate and curate living collections of mosses in a garden environment. The book, The Secret Lives of Mosses: A Comprehensive Guide for Gardens, is currently available in digital formats through various online retailers.

Judith B. Tankard is a landscape historian, author, and preservation consultant. She received an MA in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and taught at the Landscape Institute for over 20 years. In 2000, she was awarded a Gold Medal by the Massachusetts Horticultural Society for her role in the advancement of historic New England gardens. She is the author or co-author of eight illustrated books on landscape history, including her most recent publication, Gertrude Jekyll and the Country House Garden. Her book, Beatrix Farrand: Private Gardens, Public Landscapes was named an Honor Book for the 2010 Historic New England Book Prize. A Place of Beauty: The Artists and Gardens of the Cornish Colony won a Quill and Trowel Award from the Garden Writers Association in 2001 and The Gardens of Ellen Biddle Shipman was recipient of a 1998 book award from the American Horticultural Society. Her books have been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, and the Hubbard Educational Foundation.

Archana Vasanthakumar, PhD, is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Laboratory of Applied Microbiology at Harvard University’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. She earned her doctorate in plant pathology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a MS in plant biotechnology at Imperial College, University of London. Her projects in applied and environmental microbiology have examined the microbial ecology in Tutankhamen’s tomb, detection of microbial growth on historic materials, effects of micronutrients on rat intestinal microbiota, and mechanistic study of filamentous fungal biofilms.

Sam Watters is a historian who writes about American house and garden culture from Los Angeles and New York City. He attended Yale University, the University of Marseilles, Otis College of Art and Design, and the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. He has taught at the University of Southern California and speaks at libraries, museums, and institutions that have included the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Winterthur, Wilmington, Delaware; the Institute on California and the West, UCLA and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California. Over five years, he researched books, magazines, and landscape documents to identify and catalog photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston’s more than 1000 unlabeled garden slides, bringing them to light after 70 years. His book, Gardens for a Beautiful America, 1895-1935, Photographs by Frances Benjamin Johnston, was published by Acanthus Press in 2012.

Merry White, PhD, returns to Japan often to continue research in contemporary social and cultural topics. She presently is engaged in research on urban social spaces and social change in Japan, particularly on the history of the cafe. Her teaching includes courses on Japanese society, women in Asia, food and culture, and the anthropology of travel and tourism. In 2012, Dr. White’s latest book, Coffee Life in Japan, was published by University of California Press. She subsequently received the Japan Society’s John E. Thayer Award, which annually recognizes significant achievements by an individual or institution in the field of U.S.-Japan relations. Dr. White’s past work includes books on Japanese education (The Japanese Educational Challenge, Free Press), internationalization (The Japanese Overseas, Free Press and Princeton UP), adolescence and popular culture (The Material Child, Free Press and University of California Press), and family and social policy (Perfectly Japanese, University of California Press).

Michael Wojtech is the author of Bark: A Field Guide to the Trees of the Northeast. He edited the journal Whole Terrain and now researches, writes, and teaches about trees and other aspects of natural history. He lives with his family in the woods of western Massachusetts.