Propagation in Practice: Expert Panel Perspectives

Stephen Hornbeck is the Native Plant Nursery Manager at the High Plains Environmental Center. Always a lover of the biosphere, he found his niche in watershed ecology and habitat monitoring at a private ecological consultant company based out of Lexington, KY. Working throughout the Appalachians allowed him to see diversity and variations across a spectrum of environments, deepening his affinity for flora and fascination with evolutionary adaptations. After moving to Colorado, he found a wonderful pairing of his fascination with flora and passion for conservation at HPEC.

Emily McAuley is the Horticulturist of Greenhouse Production at the Denver Botanic Gardens where she grows thousands of native plants every year for both Chatfield Farms and York Street. She received her Bachelor of Science in Biology from Hope College in her home state of Michigan, and promptly began working in the horticulture field. Emily spent over two years working at Walter's Gardens in Zeeland, MI, where she sometimes took care of over a million plants a week in their first three to four weeks of life. Soon, she found herself wanting to hone her skills in more stages of a plant's life, so she moved to Denver, Colorado, and joined DBG in 2021. Now she works with many kinds of plants from annuals to perennials to vegetables, growing them from seed packet, cuttings, or going out and harvesting the seeds herself. If she isn't bent over a plant, inspecting leaves, you can find her petting and praising the greenhouse cat.

Eric Johnson is the founder of Widespread Malus, a Boulder County initiative to recover apples' genetic diversity through propagation, grafting, and education. He also propagates native plants, fruit trees, and other nursery stock at Benevolence Orchard & Gardens on Jay Road, near Boulder. Eric also teaches classes on a variety of horticultural topics and, with a neighbor, maintains the Widespread Malus apple orchard on Andrus Road.

Robert Greer is a tenant-defense nonprofit attorney by day and a native-plant advocate by night, including serving on PPAN's Board of Directors. His favorite native plants include western sand cherry, bee balm, and prickly pear, and he grows thousands of native plants each year for our local plant swaps and for Indigenous groups. Rob takes a special interest in the public health benefits of urban native plants: shade, water conservation, local food, storm runoff, and temperature moderation. He also values their benefits for native fauna, as well as for their sheer beauty. Rob is an alum of U.C.L.A. and the University of Chicago Law School, and lives in Denver with his wife and two young children.