Goings On This Week At The Center For Urban Horticulture

Some interesting events are planned this week at the Center for Urban Horticulture (3501 NE 41st Street).

Tomorrow evening, the Northwest Horticultural Society is hosting a fund-raising book launch party for petal & twig: Seasonal Bouquets with Blossoms, Branches and Grasses from Your Garden by Valerie Easton, former Miller library manager and well-known garden writer .

"Val has been perfecting her floral design talents over the last years, and now in Petal and Twig: Seasonal Bouquets with Blossoms, Branches, and Grasses from Your Garden, she shows us how to make beautiful arrangements with what grows in our own backyards," the information says.

The party starts at 6:30pm and the cost is $18 and includes a talk and book signing (books available for purchase) by Easton, a dessert buffet and drawings for beautiful plants. Proceeds will benefit the Elisabeth C. Miller Library.

On Thursday evening, David George Gordon, author of " 'The Secret World of Slugs and Snails" will speak and sign copies of his book. 

Gordon has written about topics ranging from watching gray whales and bald eagles to appreciating cockroaches, coral reef fish and geoduck clams. Gordon also the Science Writer for Washington Sea Grant, a branch of NOAA located on the University of Washington campus.

Gordon has been featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not, National Geographic Kids and Time magazine and has appeared as a guest on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Nightline and The View.

And all of February an exhibit of original pen and ink drawings and oil paintings by Seattle artist Karen Luke Fildes, called "Art in the Slow Lane," will be on display.  The drawings are from Gordon's The Secret World of Slugs and Snails: Life in the Very Slow Lane, and the paintings depict an array of Northwest garden habitats and wilderness tableaus from the Nisqually and Thornton Creek watersheds. 

(picture courtesy of CUH)