Speakers

Meet Chief Anthony Pesare as he shares a facinating insider's view of the RI State Poice and New England organized crime, drawn from a career on the front lines.  He'll also discuss his latest book, which explores the personal challenges and hidden costs faced by those touched by both worlds.

Water adds many enchanting qualities to the garden. Transparent as glass, yet reflective as a mirror, water can magnify a small space or add a visual focus to a large expanse. Depending upon how it is used, water may project many moods - still, gentle, playful, agitated, turbulent or cascading. Its voice ranges from silent pools to roaring cataracts. Warren Leach explores these magical characteristics as well as construction and installation of water features in a diversity of landscape settings and styles.

Warren Leach is a passionate plant collector, nurseryman, horticulturist and landscape designer with a depth of knowledge of all garden plants - both perennial and woody plants and tropical and temperate. Warren is also an admired speaker, writer and educator.

For more than thirty five years, Warren has been creating beautiful landscapes throughout New England as well as making captivating and educational display gardens at Tranquil Lake Nursery in Rehoboth. He is co-owner of this specialty nursery that is a prominent grower of daylilies, iris and distinctive perennials and woody plants.

Warren is an award winning landscape designer, twice receiving the National Landscape Association Regional Certificate of Merit for Residential Landscape Design. Images of his garden design at Brigham Hill Farm in North Grafton, Massachusetts are archived at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.


In 2009, the Rhode Island Nursery and Landscape Association presented him the 1st Place Award for Residential Design and Installation. In 2010, Roger Swain presented Warren and wife Debi Hogan with the Elisabeth and Roger Swain Award for Design and Execution at the Rhode Island Spring Flower and Garden Show. That same year the Massachusetts Horticultural Society honored Warren with a Gold Medal for his horticultural expertise, landscape design as well as years of forcing plants and creating exceptional displays in the New England Spring Flower Show. For six years between 1996 and 2013, Warren and his wife Debi Hogan Chaired the Miniature Gardens Competition in the Flower Show and also created award-winning miniature gardens.

Warren has taught horticulture and landscape design at numerous horticultural institutions throughout the Northeast including: The University of Rhode Island, the Brown University Learning Community, Rhode Island School of Design Continuing Education, the Scott Arboretum of Swarthmore College, the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, Horticulture Magazine and Radcliffe. He has also offered programs for numerous garden clubs, botanical gardens and professional organizations.

Warren’s book, published by Timber Press, Plants for the Winter Garden, was released on November 5, 2024.   In 2005, it received an Award from the American Horticultural Society.  Articles written by Warren, have been published in Fine Gardening, Horticulture, Green Scene, American Nurseryman and Boston magazines. 

John Kostrzewa worked for 42 years in the newspaper industry, including the last 29 at The Providence Journal as a business reporter, columnist, business editor, and assistant managing editor. He retired from the Journal in 2017 and spent three years as an adjunct professor at Bryant University. 

Since launching a hiking column called “Walking Rhode Island” in The Providence Journal in 2021, he has written more than 200 columns. He recently published a compilation of his hikes into a book, Walking Rhode Island 40 hikes for Nature and History Lovers With Pictures, GPS Coordinates and Trail Maps.

His talk and slide show will include where he has hiked and what he has learned. He’ll share his observations about the history, geological features, vegetation and wildlife he has found along the trails.

A College of the Holy Cross graduate, Kostrzewa resides in Cranston with his wife Carol.