HGA Board
Tom Karasek
President
Tom has 35 years as an electronic engineer and manager for the US Navy, took the Master Gardener training and was asked to work at a local large retail garden center which he then managed for five years. Since then, he taught greenhouse use for his city adult recreation program and built his own home, including a 7 X 28’ greenhouse. He has been married to Sherron for 59 years and they raised three successful daughters, have eight grandkids and four great-grandkids. Tom enjoys growing using hydroponics techniques and the many container and in-ground plantings. He is a 2000 hour instrument-rated private pilot but now he and Sherron enjoy travel by car and airline and have cruised 25 times so far.
email: tomsherron@msn.com
Tammy Wylie
Vice President
I have been a lifelong gardener, having started at my Dad's side when I was 2. I still plant 4 raised beds that are 4' x 60'. It is truly something that I enjoy. My love of gardening progressed into a love of greenhouses at one point along the way. My husband and I sold and installed greenhouses in the 90's. Most of them were kits, but we even designed and built a few ourselves. As we progressed in age (making daily installation tough) and as the internet became more available, we started Advance Greenhouses online in 2002.
I blog at www.growyourownfoodanywhere.com.
I just finished my first book on Raised Bed Gardening for Beginners. I believe it will be published in June or July. I write articles for Garden and Greenhouse magazine regularly. And, I still participate daily in Advance Greenhouses. I really enjoy talking to so many different people about their greenhouses and how they are using them. I learn something new just about every time I talk to someone different.
emai: tammywylie@gmail.com
Tom Eckert
Treasurer/Publishing Director
Retired in 2011. Technical degree in electrical / electronics.
Working career spanned 44 years working for Westinghouse Defense Division, secret security clearance; to working 13 years for a defense contractor before joining API in 1980. During twenty-one years at API, I enjoyed learning and working on robotic equipment. In retirement I love working in our three greenhouses where we grow annual plants for springtime sales.
email: tjghg@verizon.net
Donna Bocox
Secretary
I am retired and moved from the midwest to southern Arizona 4 years ago. What a difference it is to raise cactus in Arizona vs. Illinois! I have a 10x20 greenhouse structure that I raise cactus and succulents that cannot be out in the direct desert sun.
email: cactuslover51@yahoo.com
Richard Schreiber
Director of Membership &
Past President
Dick lives in Norwalk, Iowa with a Lord and Burnham greenhouse built in 1992. He is a Master Gardener and is also involved in the Cactus and Succulent Society of America as a director. Obviously cactus and succulents are his favorite plants. He and his wife Cynde have been retired for several years.
email:
HGAMembershipDirector@outlook.com
HGA Directors
Director of Finance
OPEN
Director of Programs and Activities
OPEN
- Cyberspace Connections
- Round Robin Flight Chairman
- OPEN
- Chapter Coordinator
- Tom Eckert
Director of Publications and HG Editor
Copy Editor
I've been a garden writer most of my 82 years and have worked with some phenomenal copyeditors, notably a Miss Prink (dangerously close to "misprint") at Macmillan, Miss Dorothy Chamberlain, retired from Good Housekeeping and copy editor for the 18-volume Good Housekeeping Encyclopedia of Gardening (for which I served as editor in chief) and finally my favorite, Cynthia Mitchell, who had a wicked sense of humor and was not above writing heads with double meaning that sometimes flirted with being naughty. Now these dear women are all gone and in their place we have software that auto corrects most writing sins or at least questions the syntax. When in doubt I now check the Associated Press Style Book. I dug and built a sun-heated pit greenhouse when I was about 10 years old and later owned several Lord and Burnham greenhouses. Now I volunteer in the Gardeners Show House at Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden, which is how I became friends with Richard and Cynde Schreiber.
Director of Public Relations
OPEN
- Publicity Chairman
-
- OPEN
Weber Baker
I am a retired school teacher. I taught 25 years, almost all of it with middle school students. Fortunately I had lost most of my hair before I entered the classroom and so had almost nothing to pull out over the years. I spent 5 years as a high school librarian but went back into the classroom because I missed direct teaching. I was, among other things, the first school webmaster in our district, back in the days when public access to the internet was fairly new and webpages were coded by hand. Before teaching I spent several years as a computer operator (think tape drives and massive rooms full of equipment).
Admittedly I am a greenhouse novice. The story of the building of our greenhouse is one that my wife and I hope to write up and get in an HGA publication.
I tinker with Bonsai and am a member of the American Bonsai Society. But this too is new to me.
As far as the HGA website my primary mission to to see it is as useful to members and prospective members as can be. I want to see that the website continues to be a good gathering spot for seasoned indoor growers and is welcoming enough a place that newbies such a myself want to join. Please feel free to send concerns, problems, and ideas you have to me. You can send me email at webmaster@hobbygreenhouse.org.