PRESENTER FOR JULY: Ernesto Sandoval “30+ years of Growing Succulents Professionally and Learning from Others and the Wild”

Ernesto wants to share with us some of the important takeaways he’s learned over his many years working at the UC Davis Botanical Conservatory as well as observations and tips he’s learned from other growers, large and small, public and private.  By learning from the experiences of others,  Ernesto will share some of his experiences to help us grow our succulents more successfully and be entertained by his explanations of explorations in succulent plant cultivation!

Biography:

Ernesto Sandoval has been wondering and seeking questions and answers to why plants grow and look the way they do for nearly 40 years.  Now he explains and interprets the world of plants to a variety of ages and from amateur to professional gardeners. He regularly lectures to various Western Garden Clubs throughout the year, particularly to succulent clubs throughout California.  Desert plants are his particular passion within his general passion for plants.  He describes himself as a “Jose of All Plants, Master of None” and loves learning from the experiences and passions of others and his own.  Ernesto thoroughly enjoys helping others, particularly gardeners, understand why and how plants do what they do.

When he was about 13 he asked his dad why one tree was pruned a particular way and another tree another way. His dad answered bluntly “Because that’s how you do it.” Since then he’s been learning and teaching himself the answers to those and many other questions by getting a degree at UC Davis in Botany and working from student weeder/waterer to Director over the last 30 years at the UC Davis Botanical Conservatory, and now as a Graduate Student getting his Masters (maybe a PhD??) in Horticulture and Agronomy at UC Davis.