Inspiring and educating San Francisco South Bay and Peninsula plant enthusiasts since 1963
UPCOMING SPEAKERS & EVENTS
Join us in person or on Zoom for monthly Western Hort programs designed to inform, educate and inspire the dedicated plant lover.
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Meetings are held 9 times a year (Sept-May) on the second Wednesday of the month and feature a lecture and slide presentation by a guest horticultural specialist. Each program also includes a member-led discussion and photos of unusual plants.
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Meetings often include a sale of diverse plant varieties donated by members and local nurseries as well as books, seeds, tools and other horticultural items on occasion. The meetings are free for members, non-member attendees are $10. All are welcome!
Meetings are held in the Garden House at Shoup Park, 400 University Ave., Los Altos.
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​​April 8th, 2026, 7:30pm
Pollinator Gardening and Dahlia Hybridizing at Sisterhood Gardens – A Community Garden Project
by Tim Wong
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Tim Wong, garden manager at Sisterhood Gardens, will speak about how the mixed use spaces at this San Francisco community garden have been successful in attracting native pollinators and have also supported the creation of new dahlias. Tim will share his experience in attracting California Pipevine swallowtail butterflies, and his initial findings in hybridizing dahlias, the flower of San Francisco.
Tim’s love for butterflies started in his youth, raising butterflies from caterpillars in his backyard in San Mateo County. Today, Tim is a Senior Biologist at the California Academy of Sciences, where he has worked with the museum’s living collection for the past 15 years. Tim works on horticulture in the Osher rainforest exhibit and coordinates the living butterfly display. When not in the rainforest, Tim may be diving in the Philippine coral reef aquarium or feeding the museum’s colony of African Penguins. Outside of the museum, Tim can be found tending a growing collection of Dahlias, many of his own hybrids, and tending the butterfly resource plants of Sisterhood Gardens.​
If you enjoy these talks and want to help the Western Horticultural Society sustain our program, you might like to sponsor one of our speakers! Your donation helps cover the costs of hosting a speaker and we will note your name as sponsor in our newsletter. You can choose the month or speaker of your choice or perhaps you have a speaker you would like to propose? Contact Leslie Dean at info@westernhort.org about donations or questions.
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​May 13th, 2026, 7:30pm
Vendor and movie night: Sexual Encounters of the Floral Kind
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Talks about pollinators, both their importance and how to offer them a top-notch habitat, have become popular in recent years. But what about how that pollination actually happens? Sexual Encounters of the Floral Kind takes us into the world of pollination, indeed, inside the flowers themselves. This film was commissioned by David Attenborough and produced by Oxford University for a TV series called “The World About Us”. It may date from 1981, but the story it tells (and shows!) about the unusual ways plants coerce insects, birds, mammals and spiders to engage in behavior that fulfills the act of pollination is still fresh, astonishing, delightful and at times, hilarious.​