Butler County Master Gardeners will welcome garden author and speaker Jan Coppola Bills at their fall workshop Oct. 22.

The event will be from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Herman Fire Hall.

The workshop, Garden for Life, features sessions on sustainability and low maintenance gardening, edible landscaping and growing garlic.

People garden for many reasons: to grow food, for exercise and stress relief, and to create pleasing outdoor environments.

Some live to garden, others garden to make a living. Whatever the motivation, gardeners find that digging, planting, enjoying our flowers and crops, and even weeding, provides the satisfaction of achievement.

At this workshop, you will learn how to garden smarter, not harder, and acquire methods that will help make the most of your gardening life.

Sustainable practices

Bills, a Michigan-based garden landscape designer and consultant, will discuss sustainable practices that contribute to easy maintenance and allow more time to enjoy the garden.

She explores using simple, efficient, affordable and practical principles to create a low-maintenance garden.

In addition to designing for sustainability and low maintenance, topics include:

Gardens with Winter Interest

The Cutting Edge on Pruning

Spring Forward Fall Backward

Dirty Little Secrets in the Gardens and

Plants for the Hell Strip.

Her presentation also covers must-have garden plants and ideas for using recycled items as garden art.

Bills owns and operates Two Women and a Hoe, a boutique landscape company in southeast Michigan specializing in indoor/outdoor sustainable garden design, installation and maintenance.

She wrote “Late Bloomer: How to Garden with Comfort, Ease and Simplicity in the Second Half of Life,” and will bring copies to the workshop.

She also is an advanced Master Gardener, a certified landscape designer and contributing writer for Michigan Gardening.

Landscape gardening

Joining Bills for the day's events is Katie Schuller, Phipps horticulturist.

Schuller will cover how to grow meaningful amounts of food within existing landscapes.

Rejecting traditional views that vegetables aren't beautiful and that fruit trees belong only in orchards, Schuller talks about incorporating vegetables, herbs, nuts and fruits into your landscape and tells how to maintain them.

Schuller's interest in growing organic vegetables and herbs began as a teenager.

After earning a degree in horticulture from Penn State, she set to work learning about sustainable agriculture, permaculture and edible landscaping. She works as a display horticulturist at Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, where she also teaches classes.

Gardening garlic

Also joining Bills is Ron Stidmon, self-proclaimed “Garlic Emprasario,” who will discuss garlic.

This pungent bulb is easy to grow and you'll learn how to get started this very fall.

Stidmon will present a short history of garlic, the types and many varieties, and why and how to grow and preserve it.

Stidmon founded Enon Valley Garlic, a 90-acre Western Pennsylvania garlic farm in 2003. Originally intended as a leisurely retirement from the rat race of New York City, the farm sells garlic products at farmers markets, festivals, and specialty stores in Western Pennsylvania, as well as online.

Before “retiring,” Stidmon was an economic analyst, international political consultant, management consultant and executive coach in Asia, Europe and the Americas.

Workshop details

Also at the workshop, spring-flowering bulbs and other gardening-related items will be sold during the lunch break and after the final session.

The $40 registration fee includes breakfast and baked potato bar, soup and salad for lunch. Parking is free.

For additional information and to register for the workshop online, go to http://extension.psu.edu/garden-for-life.

If you do not have Internet access, call 724-774-3003 between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., Monday to Friday, to register.

Penn State Extension Master Gardeners of Butler County are volunteers in the Penn State Master Gardener program. Their mission is to support Penn State Cooperative Extension by utilizing research-based information to educate the public on best practices in consumer horticulture and environmental stewardship.

For more information, visit their website at extension.psu.edu/plants/master-gardener/counties/butler or call 724-287-4761.

Susan Struthers is a Penn State Extension, Butler County Master Gardener.