All About Filoli Historic House & Garden – our Venue for the 2020 Slow Flowers Summit
For 2020, the SUMMIT returns to the West Coast with a strategic partnership with Filoli Historic House and Garden in Woodside, Calif., outside San Francisco.
We are so excited for the opportunity to immerse ourselves in the beauty and legacy of this Bay Area cultural institution. Summit attendees, speakers, sponsors and guests will spend two full days experiencing the historic residence, as well as Filoli’s legendary landscape and cutting gardens. We also will have unprecedented access to design a ‘floral takeover’ in ‘The House,’ California’s most triumphant example of the Georgian Revival tradition and one of the finest remaining country estates of the early 20th century.
We are thrilled to introduce two Filoli voices to share more about what you can expect at this amazing venue. First, please meet Kara Newport, CEO and Executive Director. Next, I will speak with Emily Saeger, lead horticulturist and the go-to cut flower expert at Filoli.
Kara Newport became the Executive Director of Filoli Center in August 2016. Previously, she served as Executive Director for Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden, a developing public garden, from 2006 to August 2016. Before serving in this capacity, Kara’s career was focused on fundraising at organizations including Winterthur, Philadelphia Zoo, and Outward Bound. Kara has a BS in Botany and a graduate degree from the Longwood Program.
Emily Saegar’s eight years of horticultural experience blend production agriculture, landscape maintenance, garden and floral design. She has worked for several notable Bay Area farms including, Fifth Crow Farm, Bluma Farm and Hidden Villa; and as Lead Horticulturist at Filoli she looks after the rose garden, cutting garden and orchard. Her design aesthetic is a blending of her work experience – foraged and cultivated, wild and formal – always designed with seasonality and senescence in mind. A strong believer in the healing powers of nature, through her gardens and floral design she hopes to facilitate this connection for all.
As you will hear in our conversation, Emily was the instigator behind Filoli’s invitation to me to bring the Slow Flowers Summit to the Bay Area. We wanted to return to the West Coast and little did we know that she was working her influence and stirring up enthusiasm with Filoli’s leadership behind the scenes.
