Monthly Meeting

Bill McKnight (aka The Mad Botanist) is a professionally trained botanist, experienced gardener and educator. A native of Illinois, he attended EIU, U of Mich and the U of Ill. He is comfortable dealing with flowering plants and cryptogams (i.e., fungi, lichens, bryophytes and ferns) as well as ornamental and food plant issues. He has an extensive ethnobotanical background and understands the peculiarities presented by the bistate climate and soil, both in natural and human influenced environs. He wrote, illustrated and self-published (2016) Rantings of a Mad Botanist, a book intended to help gardeners and property managers make fewer mistakes. The book emphasizes stewardship and central Indiana, but is more broadly applicable. He lives at and gardens a three-acre property on the NE side of Indianapolis.