Our annual native plant symposiums are a wonderful opportunity to broaden your knowledge of native plants and landscaping. Our speakers bring a wide range of experience and expertise to share.
2026 Symposium
“From Pollinators to Plate: How Native Plants Support Productive Gardens”
October 1, 2026
5:00pm – 9:00pm
Spirit, 242 51st St, Pittsburgh, PA, 15201
This event will bring together local experts to explore how native plants can help create healthier, more resilient, and more productive gardens and growing spaces. From supporting the bees, butterflies, and other beneficial insects that make pollination possible to building greater biodiversity around our food systems, we’ll look at the many ways native plants can work alongside the plants we grow and eat.
Through engaging conversation and practical perspectives, attendees will discover how gardeners, growers, and communities can create spaces that nourish both people and the ecosystems around them.
Enjoy an evening of expert panel discussion, food, drinks, and opportunities to connect with fellow gardeners, growers, native plant enthusiasts, and community members at Spirit in Pittsburgh’s Lawrenceville neighborhood.
Whether you grow vegetables in a backyard garden, tend a community plot, work in urban agriculture, or simply want to better understand the connection between native plants and our food system, this event will offer ideas and inspiration you can bring home.
Come hungry for food, conversation, and new ideas—and discover how planting for pollinators can help put food on our plates.
Our Panelists for this year:
Andrew Moore
Andrew Moore is the author of Pawpaw: In Search of America’s Forgotten Fruit, which was a James Beard Foundation Book Award finalist in Writing and Literature. Pawpaw was featured on PBS News Hour and in The Atlantic, The New York Times, Saveur, The Washington Post, and more. His writing has appeared in The Washington Post, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and The Daily Yonder. His new book, The Beasts of the East: The Fall and Rise of America’s Eastern Wilderness (Mariner Books/HarperCollins) published on June 2 of this year.
Kimberly Bracken
Kimberly Bracken is the Giving Grove Manager at Tree Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she works with community groups to plant fruits, nuts and berries in publicly-accessible spaces throughout Allegheny County. She has been involved in urban agriculture work since starting the edible teaching gardens at the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh in 2010, and received her Permaculture Design Certificate from Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in 2013. She recently completed a Landscape Design with Woody Plants Certificate from Cornell University in February 2026, and is currently collaborating with the Director of Conservation at the Pittsburgh Zoo and Aquarium to add natives into the orchards. In her free time, she loves reading, biking, cooking, gardening, traveling, and spending time with friends and family.
Christina Joy Neumann
Christina Joy Neumann has been enamored with the diverse world of bees (superfamily Apoidea) since the early 2000s. As a licensed architect trained at Carnegie Mellon University with a focus in sustainable design, she is biomimetically inspired by the instinctual nest-building and food-making skills of Apis mellifera, the western honey bee. After working as an organic beekeeper on Hawaii’s Big Island from 2008 to 2009 with Volcano Island Honey Company (now Rare Hawaiian), Christina established Apoidea Apiary LLC, a Good Food Award winning urban honey company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. As a Cornell University Master Beekeeper, she is a one-woman apiary managing 70-90 Certified Naturally Grown colonies within a 6-mile radius of Downtown Pittsburgh. Since 2023, Christina has been a member of The Italian National Register of Experts in the Sensory Analysis of Honey and participates in honey product review panels with the American Honey Tasting Society in the US. She believes the elemental honey crafting process, from bee colony to beekeeper, is an art form producing unique sensory experiences. Her latest endeavor is CoNectar Flora to Table Education (co-nectar.org), a pollinator-focused gallery and tasting space in Millvale Borough within the Greater Pittsburgh Area that highlights the importance of pollinators through food experiences.
Indira Ortiz
Indira Ortiz has been at Eden Hall Farm as a Chatham Employee since 2019. Originally from Honduras, she holds a bachelor’s in environmental and socioeconomic development and a master’s degree in Agroforestry and Sustainable Agriculture from CATIE in Costa Rica. Her experience includes project management, organic crop production, integrated pest management, student training and supervision, experiential learning, and maple syrup production.
Raynise Kelly
Raynise Kelly is a Pittsburgh-based urban agriculturist, community educator, and co-founder of Soil Sisters Plant Nursery alongside her sister, TaRay Kelly. They run the first Black- and women-owned plant nursery in Pittsburgh, Soil Sisters, focused on fighting food apartheid and providing accessible organic seedlings, community and education around growing your own food.
Raynise is an Oliver High School and Bidwell Training Center alumni. Completing the Horticulture and Technology program she began her agriculture career as a staff at Brenckle’s Greenhouse. Upon landing a position with Grow Pittsburgh as the School Garden’s assistant she stuck with the organization for two years and is now a full time Learning Garden Educator. During that time she continued to build on her passion, and completed an herbal course certified by the Herbalist of Stonefruit Community. Raynise is also a board member of the Hilltop Urban Farm. A member of the Black Urban Gardeners, PA Farmers Union, Western PA Young Farmers Coalition, and recently taken a seat on the working committee of Pittsburgh Food Policy Council.