All climate models point to a warmer world with more violent extremes. Finding, evaluating and promoting climate resilient plant materials for the urban landscape is now an international concern. With climate stressors and globalization, there are new disease and insect pressures that must be considered. Many countries are taking a proactive stance to increase forest cover and strengthen urban communities for the stresses of climate challenges yet to come. Common sense horticulture can lead the way.

Dr. Dave Creech, Professor Emeritus, has been at Stephen F. Austin State University (SFA) in Nacogdoches, Texas since 1978. He received a BS in Horticulture from Texas A&M University (TAMU) in 1970, MS in Horticulture from Colorado State University in 1972, and PhD from TAMU in 1978. After a long career in teaching, Dr. Creech was named Director of SFA Gardens, a 128-acre on-campus horticultural resource, in 2007. His research arena is varied and includes fruit and vegetable research, ornamentals evaluation, endangered plants, and woody tree and shrub studies.

He has authored numerous scholarly and trade articles and lectures widely. Since 1981, Dr. Creech has worked internationally in Pakistan, Guatemala, Mexico, Nepal, Israel, New Zealand, Chile, and has undertaken over 25 short term consultancies in China working with the Blueberry Improvement Program and Taxodium Improvement Program at the Nanjing Botanical Garden.

In 2022, he received the national award for International Horticulture Contributions by the American Society of Horticultural Science. Dr. Creech has served as president at various times of the Native Plant Society of Texas, the Southern Region American Society of Horticulture Science, the Texas Association of Botanical Gardens and Arboreta, and the International Plant Propagation Society Southern Region. He signs all his correspondence “Let’s keep planting.”