Seeing Seeds: A Journey into the World of Seedheads, Pods, and Fruit

An engrossing, narrated hour-long talk based on her award-winning Timber Press title of the same name. “Every seed tells a story.” Though small and often not noticed or examined carefully, seeds are simply amazing—what they look like, what they do, how they do it, as they work towards their astounding goal of self-replication. Teri’s tour finds strangeness and fascination in the seeds of plants as familiar as oaks and dandelions, and as curious as figs and hellebores. View the gorgeous photographs by Robert Llewellyn (she will explain his “image-stacking” technique).

This event is a partnership sponsored by Haverford College Arboretum, the Hardy Plant Society, and Henry Botanic Garden. At 1:00 p.m. there will be a free campus tour given by Haverford College Arboretum horticulturists. This lecture will take place in Sharpless Hall at Haverford College Arboretum, and accompanied by light refreshments. Teri will have copies of her books available for purchase and autographing (cash, check, and credit card accepted).

Speaker Biography: Teri Chace is a writer, editor, and speaker exploring plants, landscapes, food, and community. With a broad range of expertise and interests, Teri has a taste for exploration and a talent for bringing back stories and information that resonate with insight and wonder—whether she’s examining flowers, pie, or small-town life.

She has over 35 books in publication, including the American Horticultural Society Book of the Year award-winner Seeing Seeds: A Journey Into the World of Seedheads, Pods, and Fruit (Timber Press). She’s also written and edited for major consumer gardening/outdoor-living publications (Horticulture, North American Gardener, Backyard Living, Birds and Blooms) and is presently the garden-and-nature columnist for the award-winning “Bottom Line Personal” newsletter. Her most-recent titles are Low-Water Landscaping for Dummies (2023) and Landscaping for Dummies (2022).

Also an experienced copywriter, she’s written up products ranging from pet supplies to roses to outdoor-living products/furnishings to scented candles and soaps. Her copy for Jackson & Perkins gained the industry’s highest award, The Catalog Age Gold Award.

She has written and edited for the leading roadside-travel magazine and website, Roadside, on topics ranging from “Why Greeks and Diners?” to urban-planning issues to comfort-food recipes to iconic on-the-road books.

Raised in Santa Barbara, California and educated at Bard College in New York, she currently resides in a small village in the heart of central New York’s farm country; she and her husband also have a second home on a small island off the southwest coast of Nova Scotia.

The most intriguing job she’s ever held? Monitoring rare turtles for The Nature Conservancy. Or. . . raising teenage boys.