A nationally known horticulturist and plant propagator is scheduled to spend two days among kindred souls in Durango this weekend to headline the Durango Botanical Society’s annual fundraiser.
Scott Skogerboe, the head propagator at Fort Collins Wholesale Nursery, is scheduled to lunch privately with horticulturists and nursery people and later speak publicly Friday. On Saturday, he will emcee a plant stampede, a scramble for coveted plant specimens.
In a telephone interview Wednesday, Skogerboe said he speaks a dozen times a year, mostly in the West, about propagation and native and adaptable botanical species.
Skogerboe is probably best known for going to great lengths to track down and take cuttings from apple trees associated with Sir Isaac Newton and John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed.
Skogerboe will relate this weekend how in the early 1990s he found an Ohio orchardist who had taken cuttings from a tree, which in 1961 had been authenticated as the last known Johnny Appleseed tree.
Mike Smedley – chief deposit officer at the Bank of the San Juans, columnist for The Durango Herald and amateur horticulturist – will give a free lecture a 9:30 a.m. Saturday at La Plata County Fairgrounds about flowering bulbs.
He will compare various bulbs in the context of pageant categories: Miss Congeniality, Miss Photogenic, the Swimsuit Competition and even Little Miss Sunshine.
A bulb sale will be held from 9 to 11 a.m. Saturday.
A botanical photography hike with photographer Kit Frost is scheduled Sunday.
Information is available and reservations can be made at www.durangobotanicalsociety.com, or by calling Executive Director Cindy Smart at 749-5642.
Skogerboe, as a nursery propagator, is responsible for grafting to save forgotten or dying botanical species, said Smart, who founded the Durango Botanical Society. He specializes in small-fruit trees, she said.
Skogerboe also is well known in viticultural circles, Smart said. Viticulture is the cultivation of grapes.
The plant stampede will be held at 11:30 a.m. Saturday at the fairgrounds where hundreds of rare botanical species will be spread over a wide area. The blast of a horn will send plant lovers rushing to find a choice specimen.
Species such as the Baldwin apple, Dornfelter red wine grape and the Rio Grande River prickly pear can be snatched up by the fleet afoot, Smart said.
Several rounds of stampedes will be held, and participants will have the opportunity to take home more than 20 plants.
The registration fee for the stampede is $75, and advanced registration is necessary.
The Durango Botanical Society has won recognition since it formed in 2010, Smart said. Among its accomplishments are creating a demonstration garden at the Durango Public Library and establishing a relationship with the Denver Botanic Society to support the Plant Select program at Colorado State University.
When the Denver Botanic Society chief horticulturist brings back rare plants from his world travels, some may be sent to Durango as a test center for a year because of the area’s particular mini-climate, Smart said..
daler@durangoherald.com
