2025 Conference Speakers
Jennifer Jewell
Jennifer Jewell is the Landscaping with Colorado Native Plants Conference’s 2025 keynote speaker. She 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.
The author of The Earth in Her Hands, 75 Extraordinary Women Working in the World of Plants (Timber Press, 2020), and Under Western Skies, Visionary Gardens from the Rockies to the Pacific Coast (Timber Press, May 2021), What We Sow: On the Personal, Ecological, and Cultural Significance of Seeds (Timber Press, 2023).
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.
Cultivating Place has several times been recognized by Garden Communicators International as Best On-Air Talent and Best Overall Broadcast Media. In 2023, Jewell was honored with the American Horticultural Society’s Great American Gardener B.Y. Morrison award for horticultural communication.
In 2021, The Earth in Her Hands was honored by the Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries with their Award for Excellence in Biography, and Under Western Skies received a Golden Poppy winner for the Glenn Goldman award from the California Alliance of Independent Booksellers.
Jewell regularly serves as a keynote speaker for horticultural organizations large and small across the country, including The Garden Conservancy, The American Public Gardens Association, The American Horticultural Society, The Thomas Jefferson Foundation/Monticello, and The California Native Plant Society.
She lives and cultivates her place in interior Northern California with her partner, plantsman, John Whittlesey.
Jim Tolstrup
Jim Tolstrup is a founding member of the Landscaping with Colorado Native Plants Conference committee. He will be presenting the first New to Natives session entitled “Creating a Culture of Native Plant Restoration” and will also be part of the closing panel at this year’s conference.
Jim is the Executive Director of the High Plains Environmental Center in Loveland, CO, a unique model for preserving native biodiversity in the midst of development.
Tommy Roth
Tommy Roth will be presenting the first Knows the Natives session entitled, “Breeding Native Cultivars: Is Artificial Selection Impacting Insect Visitation?”
Tommy is the Home Horticulture Extension Coordinator for Boulder County with Colorado State University. He is trained in plant breeding and plant disease management and worked on breeding native cultivars of several species in the Southeastern US prior to joining Colorado State University.
Maggie Gaddis
Maggie Gaddis will be presenting the second New to Natives session entitled, “A Seasonal Perspective on Community Engagement and Native Plant Availability”.
Maggie is a restoration ecologist who likes to work with citizen scientists. Through the years, she has worked for several Colorado-based nonprofits, run ecology-focused landscaping businesses in Denver, Chaffee, and El Paso Counties, and taught biology, botany, and sustainability courses, first at the Colorado Mountain College and then at the University of Colorado - Colorado Springs. Maggie became the CoNPS SE Chapter Chair to bring more botanists to her research, but she has found so much more! Maggie is the first Executive Director of the Colorado Native Plant Society.
Kristine Johnson
Kristine Johnson will be presenting the second New to Natives session with Maggie Gaddis.
Kristine consults on soil, water, fire, biodiversity, climate, equity, and community building. She is a Colorado Native Plant Master and Master Gardener, Boulder Pollinator Advocate, and is certified in water harvesting design. Kristine’s formal training is in plant ecology and soil microbiology ecology. She focuses on climate resilient landscapes, with an intersection of habitat and species diversity, wildfire, carbon sequestration, urban heat, water, and people.
Kristine has a Bachelor’s Degree in English and environmental biology with an emphasis on plant ecology. Kristine has a Master’s Degree in cultural and linguistic diversity/equity, bilingualism, and biliteracy. Kristine is a member of the Board of Directors for the Wild Ones Front Range Chapter. She is co-coordinator for the Boulder Region and is active on the Propagation Committee. She has co-organized seed swaps, plant swaps, and propagation efforts in her area. Kristine is also a member of CoNPS and is active on the horticulture and education committees. She has worked as a propagator at a nursery near you.
Suzanne O’Neill
Suzanne O'Neill will be one of the panelists presenting our second Knows the Natives session entitled, “How Colorado State and Local Policies Can Boost Native Plant Landscaping”.
Suzanne serves as the Executive Director of Colorado Wildlife Federation. She leads CWF's advocacy to promote sound policy in Colorado to manage and protect important wildlife habitats on public lands and directs its day to day work. She holds a law degree from University of Texas School of Law and Master of Science in Legal Administration from University of Denver. In addition to effective advocacy, CWF offers the popular Becoming an Outdoors Woman program and on-the-ground projects.
Deryn Davidson
Deryn Davidson is a founding member of the Landscaping with Colorado Native Plants Conference committee and will present as part of the panel for the second Knows the Natives session. She will also be on the closing panel for this year’s conference.
Deryn serves as the Sustainable Landscape State Specialist for CSU Extension, where she develops and delivers educational programs and provides expert consultation to public and private sectors on creating sustainable, resilient landscapes. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Horticulture from Colorado State University and a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Arizona. A former horticulturist at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, TX, Deryn is deeply committed to native plant horticulture and pollinator conservation. She champions the use of thoughtful design and sustainable horticultural practices to foster biodiversity and implement nature-based solutions that enhance urban resilience and livability.
Joyce Kennedy
Joyce Kennedy will present on the panel for the second Knows the Natives session.
Joyce is the Director of the People & Pollinators Action Network (PPAN). She leads PPAN’s advocacy work, helps build grassroots constituency, and develops community outreach and municipally based programs. She has worked for consulting firms, nonprofits, and the National Park Service. Before her work as a pollinator advocate, Joyce’s environmental work focused on rivers in New England. She was also involved in establishing Connecticut’s statewide ban on pesticides on K-8 school grounds.
Danna Liebert
Danna Liebert will be a panelist on the second Knows the Natives session.
Danna is the owner of Grounded Growth Landscapes; an Englewood CO based restorative landscaping company https://www.groundedgrowthld.com/. She also serves on the Board of Directors for Wild Ones Front Range Chapter and chairs their Advocacy Committee. Danna worked with the City of Englewood Parks Department to establish a pollinator habitat demonstration garden at Depot Park. Danna envisions, installs, and advocates for landscapes that nourish life from the soil on up to wildlife and humans.
Dave Sutherland
Dave Sutherland will be presenting the third and final New to Natives session entitled, “Your Native Plant Garden, All Grown Up!”
From Dave: I am a retired park ranger naturalist for City of Boulder Open Space, where I managed the Ranger Cottage Ann Armstrong Native Plant garden for 20 years; also I have a native Colorado xeriscape at my Boulder home that is over 27 years old. I have been speaking about native plant gardens, sharing live plants and seeds with the community, and training garden volunteers for almost 3 decades. I got started on native plant gardening in the early 1990s, when I worked at the Charles Darwin Station in the Galápagos Islands. The Islands are being taken over by non-native plants, many introduced as ornamentals. I wondered if I could create a Galapagos native plant landscape at my little rental home on Santa Cruz Island....and I did it! See more bio stuff at https://www.davesutherland.co .
Nicki Bailey
Nicki Bailey will present the third and final Knows the Natives session entitled, “Parks Pollinators and People: How landscape and local factors drive differences in pollinator biodiversity in Denver, Colorado parks”.
Nicki recently completed her MS in Ecology at CSU in Dr. John Mola's lab. She has over 5 years of experience studying pollinators and their interactions with native plants from Michigan to California, but focused on Denver city parks for her thesis work. Her research aims to discover how neighborhood income and surrounding greenspace may impact a park's habitat quality for pollinators and native plants. Nicki is beginning a PhD in the fall of 2025 to continue this work and expand her knowledge of urban ecology. In her free time, Nicki loves to read, see live music, and spend time outside.
Jennifer Bousselot
Jennifer Bousselot is a founding member of the Landscaping with Colorado Native Plants Conference committee and will be on our closing panel this year.
Jennifer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture at Colorado State University. She completed her doctorate research studying green roof species selection, including Colorado native plants, at Colorado State University in 2010. Jen was the CoNPS Marketing and Events Coordinator 2015-2019. She is a co-author of the CoNPS published 3rd edition of Common Southwestern Native Plants.
Susan J. Tweit
Susan is this year’s Master of Ceremonies and was the conference’s inaugural keynote speaker. She currently serves on the conference planning committee
Award-winning writer Susan J. Tweit is a plant biologist who began her career studying wildfires, grizzly bear habitat and sagebrush communities in Yellowstone National Park. She has written thirteen books about the nature of life, including The Rocky Mountain Garden Survival Guide, hailed as “the instruction book that should have come with your yard,” and her latest, Bless the Birds: Living with Love in a Time of Dying, which won the Sarton Award and was a finalist for the Colorado Book Awards. Her popular Substack newsletter, Practicing Terraphilia, aims to “re-story” the human-nature bond, reawakening our innate connection to Earth and the lives we share this planet with. Tweit’s landscape designs and habitat restoration projects have won recognition from The Nature Conservancy, Audubon Rockies, and the North American Rock Garden Society. Tweit spent 20 years restoring a blighted industrial property and its adjacent block of urban creek in Salida, Colorado, and now lives in sagebrush country in western Colorado.
