Stony Brook Garden Club

September 10, 2019
Paul Cowie and “Reflecting Absence”; developing and implementing a tree-related design aspect to the 9/11 Memorial Park and Museum in NYC.

Paul Cowie received his B.S. in Natural Resource Management focusing on forestry from Rutgers University and has over 33 years of experience in arboriculture and urban forestry. He is a New Jersey Licensed Tree Expert, International Society of Arboriculture Certified Arborist, and Past President of the NJ Arborists, Chapter of the International Society of Arboriculture.

Paul Cowie + Associates give professional consulting advice in the preservation, enhancement and long-term management of shade trees and urban forest resources. Paul’s personal areas of expertise include development of innovative and sustainable urban planting designs, site-appropriate species selection, tree inventories, and community forest management planning.
His firm’s recent projects include: assisting in the design, installation of tree plantings at Hudson Yards plaza, NYC; overseeing preservation of historic trees during the restoration of Ellis Island; assisting in the design and implementation of $50 million restoration projects and development of a volunteer-based maintenance program for Branch Brook Park, Newark; contributing to the winning design in a global design competition to re-imagine and restore Constitution Gardens on the National Mall in Washington D.C; completing tree inventories and assisting in developing landscape master plans for the United Nations Headquarters, Princeton University, Cadwalader Park, and others.


October 08, 2019
Tracy Boychuk: The Roof Crop, her rooftop urban farming business in Chicago

Tracy Boychuk is currently the founding Creative Director and Business Director of The Roof Crop, an urban farming company; Founding Director of Vikki Booth, an open air photo booth business; the Creative Director and Founder of Runner Collective, a firm that provides business structure and support for creative professionals and the Design Director for Stop Smiling Media, an artist-friendly, artist-run bimonthly magazine.

Tracy began her career in the art department at Sony Music in New York. From there she served as Design Director for MTV’s Off-Air Creative Department and next as Co-Creative Director at RCA Records, sharing the responsibility with longtime design collaborator, Brett Kilroy. After her years in the music industry Tracy left to become a founding partner for NYC award-winning design firm, Trooper.

During her tenure in New York City Tracy taught undergraduate courses in design and portfolio development at the School of Visual Arts for 15 years. In Chicago she volunteers as a consultant to the design interns at Street-Level Youth Media, a non-profit media arts literacy organization.


November 13, 2018
Emily Vickers: Fastenators

Emily will speak with us about the art of creating Fastenators, so named because they appear to defy gravity, as if fastened to the side of the wearer’s head. More precisely, Emily designs FASTENATURALS, because each of her unique creations is fashioned from all-natural flora such as bark and berries; mosses and mushrooms; feathers and fronds; grasses, reeds, seeds, pods, lichens, leaves, twigs, vines. Do not miss her astounding creations!

In 1979 Emily Vickers left her native Athens, Georgia to pursue a Master’s degree in Art History at NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts in Manhattan. Feeling right at home immediately, she became the co-owner and Creative Director of the successful venture Gladys Shrimp Leather Company, the sale of which financed her new life in New York. She later became immersed in the fascinating, fast-paced, lucrative world of commercial photography production, working as a studio manager and production coordinator for 10 years at Jay Kaiser’s studio in the Bowery. After marrying Tom Mason, a professional photographer, at the studio, Vickers moved to his farm in Hopewell NJ and plunged into restoration work on the Van Dyke Farm. Together they also started Mason Vickers Productions, LLC. Their company offered their combined experience of casting, scouting, and coordinating complex still photo shoots to an A-List of talented photographers. For the next 25 years, they produced hundreds of assignments for high-end clients such as American Express, Tiffany, NYC Ballet, “Got Milk”, Audi, Porsche, and Mercedes, traveling the globe.
After 2014, she decided to ‘retire’ and fill her time and life with her creative art again, working in gardening, cooking, leather, fabrics, needlework, poetry and of course, Fascinators. She’s also working as a ‘pro-age’ model for Cindy Joseph’s Boom! Cosmetics line, and signed with a New York talent agency.


December 10, 2019
Happiest Holidays!

Always a highlight, our December business meeting will be followed by a delicious brunch!


January 14, 2020
Douglas Dubler

Douglas Dubler is a fashion and beauty photographer who seamlessly joins craft and creativity to produce some of the most memorable images in editorial, advertising and fine art photography. Early mentors in his creative life were Ansel Adams, Isamu Noguchi and Neal Barr. His career stretches five decades in California, Virgin Islands, NYC and Italy and has spanned industries such as motion pictures, cosmetics, global news and media, global fashion magazines and luxury branded products.

Douglas’ teaching venues include New York Botanical Gardens, The School of Visual Arts where he is a graduate instructor, Brooks Institute, International Center of Photography, Hallmark Institute of Photography, the University of Miami and Palm Beach Photographic Center. Through his in-depth understanding of light, exposure and color, he is acknowledged as one of the industry’s leading color management experts. He has numerous
global industry awards. He volunteers his time at many places including SALT, a photography program for young people in NYC. Douglas is soon to film a TED talk on the creative process titled, “ Seeing the Unseen”.


February 11, 2020
Andrea Sarubbi Fereshteh

Author of “In the Company of Trees”, Andrea Fereshteh is a native of the mountains of Asheville, North Carolina, where she grew up climbing trees in her yard and hiking the Blue Ridge Mountains. She has been practicing yoga and meditation for nearly a decade, and leads weekly meditation sessions in the tradition of John Main, OSB. She writes for educational institutions, non-profits and freelance publications, and her work has been featured on the blog for The Association of Nature and Forest Therapy Guides. Her interest in blending mindful and contemplative practices led her into the woods of her current home in central New Jersey, where she has practiced forest bathing for the past two years. Her husband and three lively sons provide a constant source of joy and inspiration.


March 03, 2020
Riviera Holiday

The 2020 Philadelphia International Flower Show is inspired by the world’s exotic Mediterranean gardens. As you enter the Show, groves of Citrus trees lead the way providing a lush dramatic promenade to the sunshine drenched landscape ahead. Breathe in fragrant waves of lavender inspired by the terraced gardens of Monaco. Drifts of purple and white spiked salvia, specimen succulents and an intoxicating variety of scented geraniums, roses, rosemary and sage create a stunning mosaic that is at once picturesque and charming. Walk the esplanade of flowering arches. Become enraptured by the delightful dimension of Show gardens and dramatic accents that rise in soft meadows of horticultural perfection. Explore the allure and extraordinary plant palette of some of the world’s captivating coastal regions. After enjoying the world’s largest indoor flower show, lunch will be provided on the bus ride back to New Jersey.


April 14, 2020
Caroline Seebohm will speak to us about her most recently published book on the Untermyer Estate entitled, “Paradise on the Hudson”

Caroline Seebohm was born and brought up in England, and graduated from Oxford University. After several career moves in London, from TV researcher to waitress to advertising copywriter, her real writing career started at House and Garden in New York, where she covered the major trends in interior design, interviewing some of the most famous names in the business, including Sister Parish, Mark Hampton, Mario Buatta,
Michael Graves and Robert Stern. Her first illustrated book was English Country, with photographs by Christopher Simon Sykes.
Her first novel, The Last Romantics, did particularly well in England, not surprisingly since it chronicles the lives of four women who went to Oxford and what happened to them afterwards. Her first biography was The Man who was Vogue, The Life and Times of Condé Nast, published in 1987. She also wrote on the life of Marietta Tree entitled No Regrets, 1997; Boca Rococo - How Addison Mizner Invented Florida’s Gold Coast, 2001; the biography of legendary tennis player, Pancho Segura, was published in 2009. She is currently working on a biography of Ann Weaver Norton, the sculptor who created the Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens in West Palm Beach, Florida.

After moving to the country, she discovered gardening and immediately made a lot of mistakes putting the wrong plants in the wrong place. After many years of hard lessons, she began publishing articles on gardens as well as a book, also with Christopher Sykes, entitled Private Landscapes. A more recent illustrated book, with Estelle Ellis and again Sykes, is At Home with Books. Its sequel, At Home with Art, came out in 1999.
Caroline’s most recent illustrated books involve historic houses and gardens. Under Live Oaks: The Last Great Houses of the Old South, 2002; Great Houses and Gardens of New Jersey, 2003; a sequel, Cottages and Mansions of the Jersey Shore, 2007. Her second novel, The Innocents, which takes place during World War I, was published in April 2007. Caroline Seebohm lives on the banks of the Delaware River in New Jersey. The river sometimes floods, but like the Nile, is very good for the garden.


May 12, 2020
It's a Wrap!

Join fellow club members as the busy and productive year comes to a close! A fabulous hort show, Annual Meeting, club awards, group photo and a delicious lunch will comprise the May meeting. Enjoy this opportunity to socialize with dear friends before the summer break!