Eisenstein
Ms. Eisenstein graduated from Oberlin College with a degree in geology and from Rutgers University with a master’s degree in science education. She has been a consultant for non-profit organizations developing environmental outreach materials for the public. Her horticulture background derives from course work at Mount San Antonio College, volunteer work in the Cultivar Garden at Rancho, and her own native plant garden in South Pasadena. She is currently serving on the Natural Resources Commission in South Pasadena.
Debbie Evans was born and raised in southern California. At a very early age, (birth) she was immersed into a life where she would get to know the big outdoor natural world. She developed a love for nature and in particular, native plants as part of her upbringing. She has always lived around them.
Debbie is Marketing Coordinator at Tree of Life Nursery. She shares the nursery’s passion for all things California and conveys the message about native plants to landscape architects, planners, land managers and restoration specialists. Debbie holds a Bachelor of Science degree in linguistics from the University of California at San Diego.
Tree of Life Nursery was established in 1976 and is now the largest native plant supplier in California. The 40-acre nursery produces a high quality line of California natives on the historic Rancho Mission Viejo in San Juan Capistrano. More than 500 species and varieties of native plants are grown in various container sizes. Tree of Life provides plants for landscaping and ecological restoration at the wholesale level. In addition, natives are made available to the general public through Casa ‘La Paz’ where plants and books are on display for retail sales. The nursery website, www.CaliforniaNaivePlants.com provides information on the use of native plants in the garden. The Tree of Life Nursery catalog, entitled “Plants of El Camino Real,” is used as a planning tool for horticultural professionals and garden enthusiasts working with native plants.
Golding
Arthur is an architect and urban designer with over 35 years of experience, a member of the American Institute of Architects and a LEED-accredited design professional. Arthur has designed buildings at Caltech and Loyola Marymount University, and he prepared the master plan for the expansion of Loyola Marymount’s campus. In addition to his practice, Arthur is an adjunct faculty member at the USC School of Architecture, where he teaches architectural design and urban design.
He was a principal consultant for the Common Ground plan, an overview open space plan for the double watershed of the San Gabriel and Los Angeles Rivers, prepared for the California Resources Agency and adopted by Los Angeles County and 55 cities. He was a member of multidisciplinary design teams that prepared a master plan and stream restoration feasibility study for the Arroyo Seco watershed and a watershed management plan for the Ballona Creek watershed.
Arthur studied at Yale, where he received BA and MArch degrees. Prior to founding his own firm, he was the design principal of Pereira Associates in Los Angeles. At Pereira, he designed the American Airlines headquarters near the Dallas/Ft. Worth airport and the 41-story Citicorp tower in San Francisco.
Mackey
Ms. Mackey is Past Vice-President then President of the Board of Directors of the Theodore Payne Foundation for Wildflowers and Native Plants and the Eco-Home Network, a non-profit organization promoting sustainable urban living in Southern California. Her home has been open to the public as a demonstration conservation home as part of the National Tour of Solar Homes in October for ten years.
O'Brien
He is co-author of two new books: California Native Plants for the Garden (with Carol Bornstein of Santa Barbara Botanic Garden and Dave Fross of Native Sons Nursery) published by Cachuma Press in late 2005; and Care & Maintenance of Southern California Native Plant Gardens (with Betsey Landis of California Native Plant Society and Ellen Mackey of Theodore Payne Foundation) published by Metropolitan Water District of Southern California in early 2006. He was named Horticulturist of the Year in 2005 by the Southern California Horticultural Society. He was also recently named one of the top 100 influential people in Southern California by the Los Angeles Times Magazine, West.
Perry
Since retiring from teaching, Bob has been designing native landscapes in in a variety of public settings, including Harvey Mudd and Pitzer Colleges in Claremont. He was among the first group of consultants to prepare the initial planting palettes and guidelines for the Los Angeles River. He is currently working with Amigos de los Rios and the City of El Monte as the project landscape architect for Rio Vista and Lashbrook parks that incorporates the Los Angeles River Planting Guidelines. He combines his design work with photography and is currently writing another reference book of landscape plants for Mediterranean climates.
Ready
Drew Ready has recently returned to Los Angeles after a hiatus on the Central Coast of California. For the past seven years Drew worked as project manager for the Return of the Natives Restoration Project, the education and outreach arm of CSU, Monterey Bay's Watershed Institute.
His watershed related experience involved managing a native plant nursery, coordinating regional watershed symposia and K-College teacher training events. Along with planning and implementing riparian cleanup and revegetation projects with under-represented communities in the city of Salinas, he was instrumental in organizing an annual series community based habitat restoration events with the Fort Ord Public Lands Bureau of Land Management.
Drew graduated from CSU, Monterey Bay's Visual and Public Arts Institute and was presented the CSUMB Community Service Learning Award.
Marushia
Robin has also worked for several state and federal agencies as an ecologist and wildlife biologist, including the Bureau of Land Management, US Forest Service, and the California department of Food and Agriculture. Her research interests generally focus on plant invasion processes in coastal sage scrub and desert ecosystems, but have also addressed habitat restoration for endangered species, seed dispersal, and weed biology. Robin is an active member and volunteer for the California Invasive Plant Council and seeks to educate others about invasion as a critical environmental issue.
Pieter Severynen is a California licensed Landscape Architect and an International Society of Arboriculture Certified Arborist. After studying Subtropical Agriculture in Deventer, the Netherlands, he continued in Landscape Architecture at UC Berkeley, California. During a 20+ year career with the US Dept. of Housing and Urban Development he worked as a land planner for the western states, landscape architect, project and environmental manager, grant administrator and community planning and development representative. Currently he is the Director of Planning and Design for North East Trees, a design-build non-profit environmental organization that restores nature’s services in resource challenged communities. He also heads up his own landscape architectural firm, consults on trees, teaches pruning classes and speaks on a variety of issues, including global warming.
Simpson
Building on a foundation of an undergraduate degree in ornamental horticulture, Frank Simpson operated a landscape management and consulting business before making a transition to landscape architecture in 1996.
Since completing a master’s degree in landscape architecture (Cal Poly Pomona) with a focus on sustainable design, he has worked with the San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy as a project manager overseeing a variety of grant funded projects in the Los Angeles basin.
