Made possible by:

Julie Koppenheffer — Executive Director of Green Spaces Alliance of South Texas
Julie Koppenheffer is Executive Director of Green Spaces Alliance of South Texas. Since 2005 she has lent her diverse skills and experience to the cause of preservation of our natural environment in Bexar and the surrounding counties. During that time Green Spaces initiated the community gardens program, now 24 gardens strong, and increased preserved land by almost 20,000 acres.  She is an attorney with many years of experience in the practice of law as corporate counsel, general counsel, partner in a law firm, and owner. She has also been a business owner, and for 5 years produced, edited, and conducted a public radio show on KRTU, San Antonio, TX and TV program on public access in Williamstown, MA.

Calvin R. Finch, Ph.D. — Water Resources Director (SAWS), Horticulturist
Calvin Finch is Water Resources Director for SAWS and an avid Horticulturist. As Director, he is responsible for obtaining the water resources that the fast growing City requires to meet it‘s future needs. SAWS has an aggressive 50 year water plan. Dr. Finch received a Ph.D. degree in Horticulture from Texas A & M University and used his horticultural knowledge as County Extension Agent for Horticulture in Bexar County (San Antonio) and County Extension Director in Travis County (Austin). During that 10-year period, Dr. Finch received numerous awards for community development, environmental programming, volunteer organization, and youth education. He is well known in the South Texas area for the work he did and still does on TV, radio, in the newspaper, and as a public speaker on water resources, water conservation, and horticulture issues.

Malcolm Beck — CEO, Garden-Ville
Malcolm Beck is a leader in the areas of soil building and maintenance and of the recycling of organic wastes. He has spent almost a lifetime in the study, experiment and practice which equip an inventive spirit to create new systems solving both old and new problems with our soils and our refuse. Malcolm owned and ran Garden-Ville, a successful organic farm with its own marketing center, for decades. I enjoyed many delicious morsels from his fields. During all that time he conducted his own research on organic growing techniques, lectured widely on his discoveries in managing plants and soils, and published a book on insects in the organic garden. Gradually his interest focused on how to achieve and permanently maintain the finest soil quality.

Valerie Sponsel — Botanist, Associate Professor of Biology, UTSA

Valerie Sponsel has an undergraduate degree in botany and a PhD in plant physiology from the University of Wales, United Kingdom. She is currently an Associate Professor of Biology at UTSA, where she teaches a number of different lecture courses including Plant Sciences, Plants and Society, and Medicinal Plants. Her main research area is developmental plant physiology, and the importance of plant hormones in regulating growth and development.

Stacey K. “Rosina” Newton— "The Bug Lady"

Stacey K. “Rosina” Newton is a 1984 graduate of Texas A&M University in the field of Horticulture.  Right out of college, she was one of the first interns at the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Society.  For the five years after her DABS internship, Ms. Newton was the Farm & Garden teacher for over 400 students at The Lamplighter School in Dallas, then a Forest Restoration Technician in New York City, and finally the Supervisor of Volunteers in Central Park.  For the last eleven years, Rosina has enjoyed learning and teaching about organic gardening at the Natural Gardener.  Learning from John Dromgoole, Austin’s organic gardening expert and owner of The Natural Gardener, she is now the primary diagnostician and horticulturist at The Natural Gardener.