Board of Directors

The last election of the board was conducted at the HPSO Annual Meeting on November 09, 2025.

Karen Palmer, President (First Term)

Karen Palmer has been a WSU Master Gardener in Clark County for 25 years. She was part of a team to organize the 2010 and 2015 Washington State Master Gardener Conferences held in Vancouver, Washington. She was also on the Board of Directors, serving as Treasurer for two years and as Executive Administrative Assistant for several years. Karen has been a member of HPSO and the Clark County Interest Group since 2006. Karen joined the HPSO board in 2022 and has served as Treasurer for the last three years. She has also volunteered at Hortlandia for many years in the plant holding area, and was a member of the committee that organized the 2025 Study Weekend in Portland. Karen, now retired from a career as Director of Engineering for a small software company, gardens in Hockinson, Washington with her husband, three cats, and a herd of deer who regularly wander through to sample the “salad buffet”.

Vicki Green, First Vice President (Third Term)

Vicki is an active fused glass artist living in Vancouver, WA. She retired from the high-tech industry after nearly 30 years in Information Technology. She brings leadership and project management skills to the board. In 2010 she purchased a home with a shop for her glass work, one acre of grass, and absolutely no plants. She reached out to a friend she knew who gardened and asked her how to get started. Shortly after, she joined HPSO. Since becoming an HPSO board member in 2020, Vicki has chaired the Open Gardens Committee, served on the Hortlandia Committee, and acted as the moderator for the HPSO online Community Forum. Vicki was Co-chair for the HPSO Garden Study Weekend in 2025.

Ruth Clark, Vice President (First Term)

Ruth Clark recently retired from 30 plus years in the utility/natural gas industry.  A longtime member of HPSO, she has volunteered at Hortlandia, Plant Nerd Night, and Portland Study Weekend and joined the Board in 2022. She is Chair of the After Hours committee and a member of the Open Gardens committee and has opened her garden to visitors for many years. She is an active member of the Clark County Interest Group. A fan of the HPSO travel program, she has been on five overseas tours.  She also earned her fifteen-year pin with the Clark County Master Gardener program and volunteered at the Healing Garden at Legacy Salmon Creek.  Ruth gardens on three acres in North Vancouver, Washington.

Marcia Sparling, Vice President (Second Term)

Marcia Sparling comes from a long line of devoted and creative gardeners. After studying systems theory and the interface between human and biological systems, she worked for the BC Forest Service, helping establish work in forest genetics. Marcia then studied medicine and moved to SW Washington, where she worked as a physician. She has extensive board experience, with a focus on strategic planning and change management. Marcia joined HPSO in 1994. Over the years she has volunteered at Hortlandia and shared her garden, a part-native forest and part-restoration project, through the Open Gardens Program. Marcia is interested in science and how the changing climate is impacting plants. She gardens in La Center, WA.

 Pam Skalicky, Secretary (Second Term)

Pam Skalicky grew up in the wheat country of Eastern Washington.  After graduating from Washington State University, she worked in office administration for a medical society, a major snack food company and an international high tech company. Gardening in Northwest Vancouver and volunteering became her main focus after retirement. Pam has volunteered at the Legacy Healing Garden and worked as program co-chair and secretary/newsletter editor for HPSO's Clark County Interest Group for over 15 years. She currently serves on the Open Gardens and After Hours Committees for HPSO. She considers gardening, HPSO and the many garden friends she has made her personal lifeline.

Sally Travi, Treasurer (First Term)

Sally Travi has had a long career in financial management, working with both for-profit and non-profit entities. She is currently the part-time CFO for Partnerships for Purpose, a consulting group specializing in the non-profit sector, and is Treasurer for Cross-Movement Legacy Initiative, a non-profit working for social justice and transformative culture change. Sally joined the HPSO Board in 2024. She has been a member of the Finance and the Study Weekend Committees, and also a volunteer at Hortlandia. Gardening since she was in her twenties, she has always planted a garden of both vegetables and flowers but prefers the latter. She aims for the widest possible variety of blooms that go off nearly year round. She gardens in Southeast Portland.

Kim Campbell, Director-at-Large (Second Term)

A native Oregonian, Kim Campbell grew up in the forests of the Columbia Gorge, picking and pressing flowers with her biologist father and tending flower beds alongside her mother. This deep connection with nature has profoundly shaped her life and work. Today, Kim uses flowers and plants to create inspiring spaces around her home, which houses her real estate office and photo studio, blending personal enjoyment with professional creativity. As a lifelong entrepreneur she brings creative problem-solving to HPSO and embraces the benefits of technology to carve out more time for walks through her Sellwood-Moreland neighborhood. Kim’s urban garden contributes to the health of bees, birds, and insects, fostering a thriving ecosystem in her urban backyard.

Jeanne DeBenedetti-Keyes, Director-at-Large (Third Term)

Brenda M. Fitzgerald, Director-at-Large (First Term)

Brenda Fitzgerald has been gardening since she was a toddler working alongside her grandfather in his Virginia garden. She continued to garden everywhere she lived, in climates ranging from Hawaii to Oregon. Brenda raised all of her own vegetables throughout college and most of law school, while growing perennials and shrubs as space permitted. Her first formal perennial border was started from seed using grow lights in her living room. She now gardens on a small lot in Clackamas County where she is on a mission to eliminate the lawn. Brenda has over 25 years of experience as a Master Gardener and is certified in both Georgia and Oregon. In 2024, she retired from practicing law and hopes to use her legal and financial knowledge as well as her analytical and writing skills to benefit HPSO.

Madeline Forsyth, Director-at-Large (Fourth Term)

Madeline was a Registered Nurse for 23 years, mostly at Adventist Medical Center, until her retirement in 2005. Upon her retirement, she took the Master Gardener program and began volunteering at the International Rose Test Garden in Washington Park. She volunteers there weekly and serves as a tour guide as well as Vice-President of their Friends Board of Directors. While her children were growing up, she was very active in a variety of parents’ groups. She is an active participant in HPSO’s Open Garden Program. She is the Co-chair of the Garden Travel Committee and has been on many HPSO garden trips. Madeline gardens on a quarter-acre lot in Gresham, OR.

Hilliary Montero, Director-at-Large (First Term)

Hilliary Montero is a gardener at Leach Botanical Garden. She is passionate about ornamental gardening and the Willamette Valley, and loves sharing the wonder of the outdoors with others. She worked for the Oregon Department of Human Services for over a decade specializing in program policy. In the fall of 2022 she decided to follow her passion for plants and enrolled in the horticulture program at Clackamas Community College, studying horticulture, landscape management, and arboriculture. While at CCC, Hilliary served as the President of the Horticulture Club. She is the Chair of HPSO's PlantFest Committee and also serves on the Board of Directors at the Friends of the Rogerson Clematis Collection. Hilliary gardens in southeast Portland.

Alexa Patti, Director-at-Large (First Term)

Alexa Patti is the Nursery Manager and Head Grower at Little Prince of Oregon, where she leads a talented team in cultivating unique and beautiful plants that are shipped across North America to brighten gardens and homes. With the passing of her father, Alexa found herself looking for a new career. This not-quite-midlife crisis led her to pursuing her lifelong passion for plants. She enrolled in Clackamas Community College’s horticulture program in 2020 and graduated, quickly advancing in the industry. Her proudest professional accomplishment is carrying on the legacy of breeding The Winter Jewels Hellebores. Known for her unusual ability to detect plant diseases by smell, she combines science, intuition, and a deep love for horticulture in everything she does. Alexa gardens in Oregon City.

Linda Sellheim, Director-at-Large (Second Term)

Linda Sellheim has an MFA in illustration and visual storytelling and her career has spanned diverse industries, from fashion to toy design. For the last 20 years of her career Linda taught art and design with a focus on using real-time 3D visualization tools working for Autodesk, LinkedIn, and Epic Games building education programs. Now retired, her focus is on the ultimate time-based medium, gardening.  She loves the ever-evolving compositions of her 2.5 acre canvas. Linda became a Master Gardener in 2022, co-chairing the Perennial Propagation Group, and a Master Food Preserver in 2023, allowing her to fully utilize her garden. Linda has been a volunteer at Hortlandia and gardens in the Dundee Hills in Yamhill County.

Vivian Solomon, Director-at-Large (Second Term)

Vivian Solomon is a practicing attorney who spends her spare time gardening or skiing. Luckily, there is minimal overlap between her two passions. Vivian became a gardener when she and her husband bought their house in 1989 and realized they had a yard to care for. She became a Master Gardener in 2013 to learn about removing her lawns and planting new gardens. With that project, Vivian’s love for gardening took off, buoyed by a new vice: plant lust. Vivian has worked with the Washington County Master Gardeners on GardenFest since 2016, and her primary garden-related volunteer role is giving tours of the International Rose Test Garden in Washington Park. She is an editor for the HPSO Quarterly, serves on the After Hours committee, and has volunteered at Hortlandia and PlantFest.

Janet Tapper, Director-at-Large (Third Term)

Janet retired after 15 years as Dean of Library Services at University of Western States in November of 2019. She has twice served on the board of directors for the Oregon Association of College and Research Libraries and as Chair of the Chiropractic Libraries Consortia. She joined HPSO in 2020 and the pandemic allowed her time to study and enhance her suburban garden with the help of the HPSO resources and online courses. She is in the certification process for Backyard Habitat, she is planting natives for pollinators and to reduce water requirements. Janet gardens in the Rock Creek/Beaverton area. She chairs the Garden Literature Committee.

Thomas Van Hevelingen, Director-at-Large (First Term)

Thomas van Hevelingen is a co-owner of Van Hevelingen Nursery. He was exposed to the nursery trade from a very early age and has fond memories of ducking under tables to help his parents set up at plant sales. Thomas took a “short” 10-year break from the nursery industry while he got a bachelor's degree in environmental science from the University of Oregon. He went on to work as a fisheries scientist for various government agencies in Alaska and Oregon (specifically the Columbia River at Astoria and Bonneville Dam). COVID brought him back to the family nursery and he accidentally fell in love with horticulture.

Beth Winter, Director-at-Large (Fourth Term) 

Beth Winter is a photographer and book designer. She is Co-chair of HPSO's Botanical Exhibits Committee, and serves on the Nominating Committee as well as the Hortlandia Committee. She has also served as Chair of the HPSO/Garden Conservancy Open Garden Days in recent years. In 2020 she became the Board Liaison to the HPSO Special Interest Groups. Beth gardens in Beavercreek, OR.

Zoe Nielsen, Immediate Past President

After a career in law and international relations, Zoe returned to an early interest in plants and the natural world. Originally from Australia, Zoe's first degree is in landscape architecture. She has over 15 years experience in the nonprofit world and was a founding board member of two nonprofits. Zoe joined the HPSO board in 2020 and has chaired the Speaker Programs committee and the Climate Change committee among others. Zoe is interested in institutional development, strategic planning, and engaging with the best of local, national, and international knowledge and practice around plants and gardening. Zoe served as President from November 2022 until November 2025..