STARKVILLE, Miss. -- Five landscape specialists will offer new ideas on permaculture at an Oct. 17 symposium at Mississippi State University.

The 63rd Edward C. Martin Landscape Design Symposium is focusing on permaculture, which is a creative design process based on whole-systems thinking informed by ethics and design principles.

The symposium is open to both professional and hobby gardeners. It will be held from 9 a.m. to noon at MSU’s Bost Auditorium. Bob Brzuszek, MSU Extension Service professor of landscape architecture, is the symposium program chair.

This year’s speakers include Jared Stanley, Sarah Brinker, Taze Fulford, Brandon Barton and Sam McLemore.

Stanley, owner of J & J Acres in Toomsuba, will discuss using permaculture principles in his family’s own backyard -- everything from general landscape design to raising livestock.

Brinker is a permaculture specialist in Asheville, North Carolina. Her firm, Shades of Green, specializes in sustainable landscape designs that provide organic food, habitats, herbal medicine, natural beauty, and healthy water and soils.

Fulford, associate MSU professor of landscape architecture; Barton, MSU assistant professor of biology; and McLemore, owner of Bountiful Harvest Farms in Starkville, will discuss designing gardens to control pests.

After the symposium, a special tree-planting ceremony will honor Edward C. Martin, a professor emeritus who died earlier this year, at the Landscape Architecture Facility at 12:30 p.m.

Register online for the symposium for $25 at https://www.lalc.msstate.edu/workshops/martin/index.php. Registration is $30 at the door. Contact Brzuszek for more information.

MSU is an equal opportunity institution. For disability accommodation, please contact Brzuszek, 662-325-7896 or rfb7@msstate.edu