Native Plant and Sustainability Conference

Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens is bringing back its annual Native Plant and Sustainability Conference on Friday, January 29 and Saturday, January 30, 2027. It's a two-day forum on native plants, landscapes, and our role as environmental stewards, held in person at the Phipps Special Events Hall. If you're only free for one of the days, you can pick and choose—registration for each day is separate.

There's a professional side to this that goes beyond just a weekend of talks. The conference feeds into the Phipps Sustainable Landcare Accreditation, an intensive program modeled after the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA) Organic Land Care Program, which has offered organic landcare training for over 20 years. That course is run by Phipps Sustainable Landcare staff and taught by local landcare experts and regional professionals partnering with organizations like Tree Pittsburgh, UpStream, Penn State Extension, Allegheny Land Trust, and the Rodale Institute. Anyone who passes the exam and pledges to abide by the NOFA Standards for Organic Land Care earns the Phipps Sustainable Landcare Accredited Professional title.

For those already working through Phipps' certificate programs, the conference counts as a four-hour elective credit toward the Ecological Gardening and Landscape and Garden Design certificates. So if you're in the middle of one of those, this is a way to knock out some credit while hanging out with people who care about the same things.

As for the venue, Phipps was gifted to the City of Pittsburgh by Henry Phipps in 1893 and has been a source of beauty and enrichment for more than 125 years. The conference takes place in the Phipps Special Events Hall, inside the gardens. It runs Friday, January 29 and Saturday, January 30, 2027, with registration for each day handled separately.