2024 Grant Program
Advisory Committee

 

Allison K. Bourke (Greenwich, CT)
Allison tackles her rocky Connecticut soil with a backhoe, a gift from her mother. She has a soft spot for peonies, dahlias, and Solomon’s seal. For many years, she was an avid student in classes at the New York Botanical Garden, earning her certification in commercial horticulture from the garden, and serves on its horticulture committee. She is a member of the Greenwich Garden Club and is co-chair of Horticulture. Most recently, she joined the board of the Land and Garden Preserve in Seal Harbor, MA, where she is both head of the facilities committee and co-chair of the Azalea Garden. She joined the Garden Conservancy board of directors in 2009. 

Elizabeth Everdell (San Francisco, CA)
Founding principle of Everdell Garden Design has spent 40 years designing unique personal gardens that thrive in the Bay Area.  As head of the Garden Conservancy’s West Coast Council for a decade, she focused on expanding awareness of our West Coast gardens and ecosystems. She joined the Garden Conservancy board of directors in 2009. Betsy has also served on boards of The Modern Art Council of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Environmental Design Archives at the University of California Berkeley.

Kona A. Gray, FASLA, PLA (Fort Lauderdale, FL)
Kona (Principal, EDSA) is a firm leader with 28 years of experience in 30+ countries, whose global design and management sense has positively shaped the outcomes of many environments. His portfolio includes large-scale planning and detailed site design, with emphasis on communities, parks, hospitality, and urban and campus environments that solve meaningful issues. Currently, he serves as ASLA Representative to the Landscape Architecture Accreditation Board and recently served as ASLA Vice President for Professional Practice. He is a Past President of the Landscape Architecture Foundation and an active member of the Urban Land Institute. Kona earned a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture degree from the University of Georgia.

Michelle Griffith (Indianapolis, IN)
Working as a designer for most of her professional career, Michelle was initially a jewelry designer and eventually her love of the natural world and green spaces led her to study landscape design and sustainable garden design through a certificate program at New York Botanical Garden. Since then, she has been working in garden design. Michelle has served on the boards of the Indianapolis Arts Council, Newfields Museum and Gardens (previously known as the Indianapolis Museum of Art), Eskenazi Health Foundation, and Pattern Magazine. Michelle currently serves as a Trustee for the board of Anderson Ranch Arts Center, an art center and school in Snowmass, Colorado.

Kaye Heafey (Oakland, CA)
Kaye Heafey founded Chalk Hill Clematis speciality cut flowery farm and nursery in 1995. It shipped clematis, olive oil and balsamic vinegar nationally. CHC won numerous awards for quality. Several publications, including House & Garden, Garden Design and Martha Stewart Living, featured the company and property. Kaye and Ron Morgan published their 2007 book, A Celebration of Clematis, to tell the story behind the creation of Chalk Hill Clematis and provide a useful clematis glossary with photos. Kaye has served as a trustee and board member for many nonprofit organizations in northern California, including the Oakland Museum, Quarry Hill Botanic Garden in Sonoma and the Garden Conservancy’s West Coast Counsel. Kaye continues to experiment with her English style garden at her Oakland home, where she and her husband, Richard, have lived since 1976.

Lawana Holland-Moore (Washington, D.C.)
Lawana is the Program Officer of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, the National Trust’s multi-year, $70 million dollar initiative to identify, elevate and support the voices, stories and places of African American activism, achievement, and community. She was the 2014 National Trust Colodny Scholar and holds a BA from The George Washington University in History and Journalism and a MA from Goucher College in Historic Preservation. Lawana was a Researcher for the White House Historical Association, where she served on the National Trust’s Diversity and Inclusion Group representing Decatur House. A DC native, Lawana also serves on the Landmarks Committee of the DC Preservation League.

Wambui Ippolito (Staten Island, NY)
Wambui is a graduate of the prestigious New York Botanical Garden’s School of Professional Horticulture, has trained and worked as a horticulturist at various high-end estates, and manages a roster of private clients, including business, media, music, and sports moguls. In her former career, Wambui was a Development & Democracy Consultant at international government organizations, including the Organization of American States in Washington, DC. Wambui is fluent in English, Spanish, French, and Swahili. While not designing and managing clients, Wambui works with international organizations, museums, botanical institutions, and both private and public parks to develop horticultural programming. She teaches at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden and Grounds for Sculpture (New Jersey), and lectures nationwide, including at her alma mater the New York Botanical Garden. She is a published author whose interests include immigrant gardeners and tropical modern design.

Jennifer Jewell (Chico, CA)
Jennifer Jewell is the host of the national award-winning weekly public radio program and podcast Cultivating Place: Conversations on Natural History and the Human Impulse to Garden. She is the author of The Earth in Her Hands, 75 Extraordinary Women Working in the World of Plants (Timber Press in 2020), and Under Western Skies, Visionary Gardens from the Rockies to the Pacific Coast (Timber Press, May 2021). In late 2023, her third book, focusing on the importance of Seed in our personal/cultural, garden, environmental and economic lives, will be published by Timber Press. Jewell’s greatest passion is elevating the way we think and talk about gardening, the empowerment of gardeners, and the possibility inherent in the intersection between places, environments, cultures, individuals, and the gardens that bring them together beautifully — for the better of all the lives on this generous planet.

Joseph Marek (Santa Monica, CA)
Joseph Marek was first introduced to the Garden Conservancy in 2003 while sharing his garden in Santa Monica, CA, through Garden Conservancy Open Days. He has been the regional ambassador for Open Days in Los Angeles since 2007, was elected to the Conservancy’s board of directors in 2015, has served on the board’s Development and Preservation Committees, and now chairs the Open Days Committee. Joseph is also a member of the board of trustees of Lotusland, the fantastical garden vision of Madame Ganna Walska in Montecito, CA. Joseph has an undergraduate degree in architecture from Yale University and a master’s degree in landscape architecture from the University of Virginia. His firm, Joseph Marek Landscape Architecture, has been designing and building gardens for nearly twenty years throughout California. Joseph is dedicated to celebrating diversity and all the good that it brings — from the plant habitats in the gardens he creates to our society and nation as a whole.

Jabari Taylor (Brooklyn, NY)
Jabari is a New York-based landscape architect — and frequent collaborator of the Garden Conservancy — with extensive experience working in the areas of commercial, institutional, residential, and park/playground design. Most recently serving as Assistant Landscape Architect for the Prospect Park Alliance, Jabari has been involved in all areas of the design process from concept development to construction observation and administration. His expertise lies in construction document and graphics production, detail design, and concept development.

Raun Thorp (Los Angeles, CA)
Raun Thorp has put her passions for design, landscape preservation, research, and innovation to work both professionally and personally. A licensed architect and co-founder of the award-winning multidisciplinary firm Tichenor & Thorp Architects, Inc., her firm is widely known for sensitive, highly informed restorations of historically significant buildings and landscapes. With more than 400 finely wrought environments nationwide, it has evolved into a go-to progenitor for designs that seamlessly integrate structure and surrounding landscape. A native Californian, Raun champions ecologically sound landscaping and progressive building technologies, parlaying the forms of the California Tradition in projects up and down the state. The firm’s work has been featured in numerous publications, in addition to their monograph, Outside In: The Gardens and Houses of Tichenor & Thorp (Vendome Press, 2017). A longtime Fellow, elected to the Garden Conservancy Board in 2023, Raun also currently sits on the Board of Big Sunday and several design review boards.

Nicole A. Thomas (Philadelphia, PA)
Nicole is an enthusiastic strategist, trainer, and entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience in the higher education, small business, and workforce development sectors. A Philadelphia native, she specializes in community-academic partnerships, strategic planning, organizational development, and high-impact communications. Nicole is the director of the Penn Medicine Center for Health Justice and the Urban Health Lab. She has committed the last two decades of her career to fostering and supporting impactful collaborations between hisorically disenfranchised communities, academic institutions, and other stakeholders to achieve sustainable community, family, and individual-level change. She is dedicated to employing and institutionalizing evidence-based yet imaginative strategies and tools to address the present and emerging health and socioeconomic challenges of Black, Brown, and other marginalized communities. 

Lynde B. Uihlein (Port Washington, WI)
Lynde is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where she received an MSW in social welfare. In 1990, she established the Brico Fund LLC, the mission of which is to empower people to improve their civic, cultural, and natural environments in the interest of sustainability. Lynde is the owner of Blakesville Creamery, a farmstead dairy and creamery in Port Washington, WI, where she is also engaged in the restoration of 150 acres of native landscape on the Lake Michigan shoreline. She serves on the board of the Layton Art Collection, Inc. Prior board service includes the Center for Plant Conservation and the League of Conservation Voters.