We’ve just wrapped up the 2022 Southeastern Plant Symposium in Raleigh, and were thrilled to have nearly 200 attendees. It was great to be back in person after two years of remote Zooming. The symposium is co-sponsored by the JC Raulston Arboretum and Juniper Level Botanic Garden, with all proceeds split between the two institutions (JCRA operations and the JLBG endowment).
Attendees were entertained and enlightened by fourteen of the top horticultural authorities in the country/world. This years symposium was focused on perennials, 2023 will be focused on woody plants (trees/shrubs), and 2024 will focus on geophytes (bulbs, tubers, etc.) as part of our three year rotation.
We hope you’ll join us for 2023, and mark June 9, 10 on your calendar. Not only are the speakers excellent, but the symposium includes a rare plant auction, which this year, offered over 430 plants, most of which aren’t available anywhere else in the world.
What did folks get from the rare plant auction?
There were over 430 different plants in auction from bulbs to trees…almost all, extremely rare and otherwise unobtainable.
As one of the few people who paid the full amount to participate via a zoom I was annoyed at the inability to keep the program up and running for us. After more than two years of Zoom this was inexcusable. As president of a garden club with no prior technical skills we managed to run programs with speakers with few or no problems. It is inexcusable that a university affiliated program with scads of competent people available failed to do so. I will not repeat the mistake of wasting my time and money again.
We were disappointed as well, but it was certainly not because of a lack of competent staff. The staff running the program had done hundreds of Zoom programs prior to this, but when you are running Zoom from an offsite facility, there are an array of connectivity issues over which the staff had no control. We are meeting today to discuss symposium snafus, and will certainly be discussing this and will be in touch. Again, apologies for the unforseen technology glitches.