Meet the Panelists
Margaret Roach is a longtime garden writer—first for Newsday newspaper, then for Martha Stewart Living (where she became the company’s EVP/Editorial Director) and the last five seasons for The New York Times, where she began her journalism career as a copy girl decades ago. She also creates a website, podcast, and weekly newsletter called A Way to Garden, the title of her 1989 book that was reissued in 2019 in an all-new edition. She has been honored for her contributions to horticulture with the Scott Medal from Scott Arboretum at Swarthmore and the George Robert White Medal of Honor from the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, among other awards.
Dr. Doug Tallamy is an entomologist, conservationist, and professor at the University of Delaware, whose work has transformed our understanding of the relationship between native plants and wildlife. His research and books, including Bringing Nature Home and Nature's Best Hope, have inspired millions to see their own yards as part of the solution to the biodiversity crisis. Driven by the belief that everyone can play a role, Doug co-founded Homegrown National Park to encourage people to plant natives in the spaces they care for. As Tallamy explains, caterpillars are essential to the food web: a single chickadee nest requires six to nine thousand caterpillars to survive their first two weeks of life. Even grizzly bears rely on caterpillars to fatten up for winter.
Sam Jaffe is the founder and Executive Director of The Caterpillar Lab. Sam studied ecology and evolutionary biology at Brown University, earned a master’s degree in environmental education from Antioch University New England, and is an Associate in Entomology at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. His work combines close observation, scientific inquiry, and visual storytelling to reveal caterpillars not only as beautiful or bizarre creatures, but as participants in an extraordinary web of relationships unfolding in our own backyards and fundamental to local ecosystems. A lifelong naturalist, photographer, and educator, Sam has spent decades studying and documenting the lives of caterpillars. He founded The Caterpillar Lab to bring these dynamic animals directly to the public through immersive educational programs, photography, film, and natural-history research. Today, the Lab works throughout New England and beyond, sharing thousands of live caterpillars with audiences while uncovering the life histories of hundreds of species, many of which remain poorly known to science.
Laura Reeves is a botanist and naturalist who regularly shares her passion for wild plants through hands-on workshops, presentations, and private land consultations. She has over 20 years of experience and received her BSc. (Botany) from the University of Manitoba in 1997. She is the founder of Prairie Shore Botanicals and author of "Laura Reeves' Guide to Useful Plants — From Acorns to Zoom Sticks." In the film, she helps the audience understand the secret world of caterpillars and their ecosystems.