Tom Earnhardt to Speak at North Carolina Botanical Garden’s

Chapel Hill:  Naturalist-writer Tom Earnhardt will present the North Carolina Botanical Garden’s annual Evenly McNeill Sims Lecture on Sunday, April 29 at 2:30 pm.  The presentation --“Wildflowers & Wild Places: Finding Mentors & Muses for the Next Generation”--is free but advance registration is requested: laurende@unc.edu or 919-537-3819.
The Botanical Garden’s annual spring lecture, the Evelyn McNeill Sims Native Plant Lecture, focuses on native plants and their conservation and ecology. The series was initiated in 2000 with a gift from Botanical Garden Foundation Board member Nancy Preston in honor of her mother, Evelyn McNeill Sims of Chapel Hill, on the occasion of her 90th birthday.

Speaker Tom Earnhardt is a frequent visitor in North Carolina homes as writer/host of unc-tv’s “Exploring North Carolina.” A lawyer by training and law professor for two decades, Earnhardt has lived a rich “second life” as a naturalist, writer, and champion of wild places.

“Children learn best before their early teens. In those years it is easier to absorb new languages, ride a bicycle, hold a slippery salamander, and learn to swim,” says Earnhardt. “It is also the time when children are most awed by the natural world. Unfortunately, in our high-speed, digital world, the main contact many children have with the wonders of nature—wildflowers, forests, streams, birds, insects—is via the small flat screens of smart phones and computers. Young adults are far more likely to gravitate to wild places, and become stewards of the natural world, if they were taken outside as youngsters by ‘mentors and muses’.”
The North Carolina Botanical Garden is located off Fordham Boulevard at Old Mason Farm Road in Chapel Hill.  A unit of The University of North Carolina, it has been a leader in native plant conservation and education in the southeastern United States for more than 40 years. The Botanical Garden is open 7 days a week and admission is free. See http://ncbg.unc.edu  for details.