Henry Mitchell Lectures
Since 1995, the Friends of Tenley Library has sponsored annual lectures on topics of interest to local gardeners in memory of Henry Mitchell, who lived in Tenleytown/American University Park and was until his death in 1993 one of America’s great garden writers. For over two decades Mr. Mitchell was the Washington Post garden columnist. His books include The Essential Earthman (1982), One Man’s Garden (1992), and Henry Mitchell on Gardening (1999).
Our most recent Henry Mitchell lectures have been entitled “Twenty Plants That Work So Hard You Won’t Have To” (2015) and “Making Our Gardens Resilient, Beautiful, and Good for the Potomac Watershed” (2016).
Recent Henry Mitchell lecturers have included:
- Janet Draper, horticulturist for the Smithsonian, who has tended the Mary Livingston Garden on the National Mall;
- Lucinda Fleeson, author of Waking Up in Eden: In Pursuit of an Impassioned Life on an Imperiled Island;
- Neal Gregory, retired journalist and friend of Henry Mitchell;
- Carole Ottesen, local garden writer and photographer;
- Carla Ellern, LEED-certified landscape architect with Montgomery County’s Department of Environmental Protection (2016).
In addition, members of the Friends of Tenley Library Garden Committee help to maintain the planting spaces surrounding the Library.