Director at Large
Toshi Yano is the Director of Horticulture at Wethersfield Estate and Gardens, a bucolic 1,000-acre landscape in New York’s Hudson Valley. He is a co-founder of BIPOC Hort, an advocacy group for people of color working in designed landscapes, and is currently serving a two-year term as a member of the American Public Gardens Association’s IDEA
Committee.
Before embarking on his gardening career at Stonecrop Gardens in Cold Spring, NY and receiving his degree in Ornamental Horticulture from City University of New York, Toshi studied philosophy at the undergraduate and graduate level at The New School for Social Research, whereafter he became a Dabbler in Many Things, working in various capacities in music, film, retail, and supply chain management.
Toshi enjoys spending what spare time he has searching the woods around his home in Putnam County, NY, for the smallest, most secret plants, and is the proud father of a 12-year old girl who helps him find the especially small, especially secret plants that elude his aging eyes. Big shouts out to his grandmothers for the deeply etched memories of dappled light, dirt under foot, and the dizzying perfume of Rosaceae in the air.