Walker Young has worked at the Ruth Bancroft Botanical Garden since 2012. He has traveled extensively to visit plant habitats in South Africa and Mexico. This past August he spent two weeks in Ethiopia along with traveling companions (and frequent speakers for SDCSS) RBG curator Brian Kemble and Tom Cole. Rounding out the group was John Miller the well known Aloe enthusiast and the man behind the Institute for Aloe studies. They traversed some tremendously variable geogra

Thomas has spent more than 20 years in sustainable agriculture, livelihoods, community development and humanitarian response work. Presently based in Santa Barbara, he has many years field experience across Sub-Saharan Africa- with significant time in Mozambique, Uganda and Ethiopia. His focal areas are in urban agriculture, food production system design, post-conflict recovery, organic horticulture, agricultural extension, permaculture, natural resource management and liveli