Lindsay

Garden Club

Lindsay & District Horticultural Society

Richard Dickinson has over 35 years field biology and environmental

consulting. He has taught plant taxonomy, ecology and the history and

effects of plants on human civilization at several colleges and universities.

He has co-authored 9 books including Weeds of North America, Plants of

Southern Ontario, and the ROM field guide to Wildflowers of Ontario.

Weeds of North America was awarded “Book of the Year 2014” by the

American Horticultural Society in Washington DC.

Bob Bowles is an award-winning writer, artist, photographer and naturalist, founder, and co-ordinator of the Ontario master naturalist certificate program at Lakehead University.


Bob Bowles had a 32 career in Engineering Technology with Ontario Hydro up to his retirement in 2000. He has led ecotours around the world for many years to places like the Amazon River and the Galapagos Islands. He has founded several nature clubs and organizations like the Muskoka Field Naturalists, the Carden Field Naturalist and Kids For Turtles Environmental Education. He has won many awards for his environmental work over the years and has served as an expert witness on many OMB and LPAT hearings. Bob teaches at Lakehead University where he set up the Ontario Master Naturalist Program and the Ontario Youth Program and recently in a private school in Barrie with the Junior Master Naturalist Program.


He has won several awards from Ontario Nature, Lake Simcoe Regional Conservation Authority, Ministry of Natural Resources and Severn Sound Environmental Association. He lives in Orillia with his wife Connie, and until recently, their two sons who are now working and living on their own. Bob has won the Orillia of Orillia Citizen of the Year Award in 2005, the Order of Orillia Award in 2006 and the Orillia Hall of Fame Award in 2023.


He teaches on many nature subjects like birds, plants, lichens, mosses, liverworts, insects, mammals, reptiles and amphibians, alvars, moraines and many other subjects in nature. Tonight, he will be talking about mushrooms.