Willene Buffett, Cook County Extension Director welcomes new educators to the Cook County Extension Horticulture team.

Nancy Kreith received her Master's Degree from University of Illinois in Natural Resources and Environmental Science. Her experience is in Sustainability of School Gardens, Native Plants for Landscapes, Plant Physiology, Forest Biology, Management of Trees in Urban Forest and more. She was a program coordinator for Horticulture, has worked with volunteers, and created blog posts, newsletters and more. Please help me next week welcome Nancy to Unit 6.

Kim Ellson received her Master's Degree from University of England with additional coursework from the Royal Botanic Gardens of Edinburgh, Scotland and Scottish Agricultural College of Ayr, Scotland. Kim is well traveled and her work experience has allowed her to train at Botanic Gardens around the world; Austria, South Africa, England just to name a few. Kim is fluent in written and spoken German. If you have recently visited the Greenhouse at the Friendship Park Conservatory, you would have seen her in management, instructional, and supervision settings. In addition, she volunteers at the North Branch Restoration Project for Lake and Cook County Forest Preserves.

I hired Nancy as an intern when she was a student at the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences. Friendship Park Conservatory where Kim previously worked was where I did my student teaching in 1976 when I was a student at the University of Illinois. In 1976 Friendship Park was a large piece of empty land with an old, huge greenhouse on it. School District 214 ran a Horticulture program at the site.