Art in Bloom Speaker Profiles

Rosalind Creasy

Rosalind Creasy is a garden and food writer, photographer and landscape designer with a passion for beautiful vegetables and ecologically sensitive gardening. Her first book, The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping, became an instant classic, and added the term "edible landscaping," to the American vocabulary.


Rosalind Creasy is best known for her Edible Gardening series of books featuring beautiful photographs and delicious recipes. Through Edible Gardening and other publications, she has introduced the American public to a vast new palette of vegetables, bringing heirloom tomatoes and melons, mesclun salad greens, and blue potatoes into gardens around the country.


She continues to share her knowledge of gardening and cooking through writing, lecturing, media appearances, and consulting with restaurants, growers, and seed companies.


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Jack Farrell

John "Jack" Farrell is Chairman and CEO of Haskell's, Inc., one of the largest retailers of fine wines in the country. As Wine Buyer for Haskell's, Farrell travels each year to major wine-producing areas worldwide, visiting vineyards and tasting and evaluating their wines.


His love and knowledge of fine wines has made him a major figure in starting and leading wine groups in the United States and abroad. And for over 25 years he shared that know-how on two radio shows, "Entertaining Ideas" and "Dinner Tonight," broadcast daily on WCCO-AM, where he is still frequently a special guest during holiday broadcasts. He lectures at universities and colleges on the subject of food and wine, and is in great demand as a speaker throughout the region.


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Bill McKay

Seed enthusiast Bill McKay grew up on a farm owned by his grandparents, immigrants from Abruzzo, Italy. Years of watering and weed pulling eventually led to a love of growing things.


As an adult with a passion for fresh vegetables, McKay sought the kinds of vegetables his grandparents used in their traditional recipes. When friends traveled to Italy, they did so with a list of seeds Bill McKay hoped they could locate. After corresponding directly with Italian seed companies to procure seeds for his private garden, he was recruited by Italy’s largest family-owned seed company to be their first American sales representative.


What began as a one-man, mail-order business is now a flourishing company carrying over 400 varieties of Franchi’s vegetable, herb, and flower seeds. McKay sells to a loyal following of garden enthusiasts, a group that just keeps on growing.


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Barbara Ohrbach

Barbara Milo Ohrbach’s lifelong passion for learning about other countries and cultures started her education as a collector and connoisseur of art and antiques. After taking a break from the business world to travel, she and her husband opened a small Manhattan shop, Cherchez, to sell off years of accumulated collections. Unlike any other store at the time, Cherchez carried an eclectic and exquisitely edited mix of old and new; from American quilts and English silver to exquisite table and bed linens to a line of potpourris and other scented products for the home that became the Cherchez "signature."


Starting a new chapter in a richly creative life, in 1986 Barbara Ohrbach wrote her first book, The Scented Room, the first of her many best-selling lifestyle books.


Today, she regularly appears on television; speaks about gardening, decorating, and antiques; and is the Editor at Large of Art and Antiques magazine. She has been featured in many publications including People, House Beautiful, Gourmet, Country Living, Vogue, House & Garden, and Southern Accents.


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Cheryl S. Smith

Ask someone to tell you what they love most in life and their answer will often reveal what they are most passionate about. For Cheryl S. Smith, her answer would be dogs. It's a love that has led her to become an expert in the areas of dog behavior and play, dog training, veterinary research, nutrition, and dogs and gardens.


A prolific writer, Cheryl Smith's work has been featured in publications ranging from Dog Fancy and Dog World to the New York Times and the Washington Post. She has appeared on HGTV's "Gardening by the Yard" with Paul James, and began hosting her own radio show, PetSmith, on radio station KONP in Washington.


The unique experience of harmoniously blending dogs and gardens led Cheryl Smith to give demonstrations and talks internationally including at the Van Dusen Gardens in Canada, the Northwest Garden Show in Seattle, Boston's garden show, and Bainbridge Island's garden tour, among others.


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Judy Remington

Judy Remington, a Twin Cities landscape designer, recently received the 2007 Excellence in Landscape Design Award by the Minnesota Nursery & Landscape Association. Her company, Temenos Garden Services, LLC, provided comprehensive residential garden design, installation, maintenance, container planting and consulting services from 1998 through 2005. The years spent running her own company gave Judy invaluable experience with hundreds of local landscapes and gardens, as well as an understanding of the challenges and needs of area homeowners.


Now focused on offering residential landscape design and consulting services, Judy Remington enjoys and excels at creating beautiful and functional landscape plans, helping do-it-yourself gardeners improve their yards, and designing and installing container gardens. Fascinated with the endless possibilities and beauty of container gardening, she increasingly incorporates container gardens in her landscape plans for contemporary lifestyles.


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