Garden Holiday

Clinton Claussen

Clinton Claussen is the garden supervisor at Mohonk Mountain House. In 2017 he started with the Rustic carpenters and transitioned to the garden staff that winter. He is an avid outdoorsman who has an enormous wealth of knowledge on the region’s flora and fauna. He majored in Philosophy and Literature at the University of Iowa.

Circle Creative Collective

Circle Creative Collective is a local community organization of artists and makers that aims to connect and inspire diverse groups by sharing and preserving traditional crafts and skills. With a specific focus on promoting crafts, skills, events, and transformative ideas to honor unique heritages and shared exeriences, this collective pursues a more inclusive, creative, and joyous world. Their repertoire includes hands-on social multigenerational workshops drawing on traditional, multi-cultural, and sustainably-sourced crafts including papermaking, weaving, soap-making, felting, gardening, beekeeping, foraging, and more! For more information, visit www.circlecreativecollective.org.

Poliana Danila

Poliana Danila has harbored a love for gardening since she was a young girl growing up in Romania. She graduated from the University of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture in Romania and, after graduation, moved to the United States. While taking the landscape design program at the New York Botanical Garden, Poliana designed roof top gardens in Manhattan and later taught “how to design gardens” in Wilton, CT at a Continuing Education program. In 2013 she started to work with different fibers such as hemp, nettle, linen, cotton, and ramie. Her first fiber inspiration was her grandmother, Ioana, an avid weaver who used a big floor loom to make unique tapestries such as blankets, wall hangings, rugs, and floors rugs. Poliana joined Circle Creative team in March 2019, after a solo career in fibers with plant dyed fibers exhibitions and workshops. She currently works with Circle Creative teaching group and private workshops in weaving, knotting, plant dyeing, book binding, cooking and gardening consulting.

Paul Huth

Paul Huth brings nearly 50 years of natural and cultural history research on the Shawangunk ridge, mostly concentrated at Mohonk and the surrounding Mohonk Preserve. He worked for 15 years with the Preserve’s 1st Director of Research, Daniel Smiley, and with his brother Keith, founders of the Mohonk Trust in 1963. Paul followed Dan as the Preserve’s 2nd Director of Research and served for over 20 years. Paul authored and coauthored over a hundred Research Reports and published papers on a diversity of subjects, including the century old Mohonk Lake Cooperative Weather Station, where Dan and Paul both served as long-term Cooperative Observers for the National Weather Service. Paul’s decades of service insured the future of Dan’s science legacy, now being digitized, for future generations.

Nina Smiley, Ph.D.

Nina Smiley, Ph.D., graduated from Vassar College and earned a doctoral degree in psychology from Princeton University. She is co-author of The Three Minute Meditator, now in its fifth edition and translated into seven languages, and Mindfulness in Nature, along with the CD Mini-Meditations That Will Enhance Your Life. Nina taught psychology at the University of Maryland and worked at the American Psychological Association. She has studied mindfulness with Jack Kornfield (founder of Spirit Rock Meditation Center), Sharon Salzberg (co-founder of Insight Meditation Society), and others. Nina’s work has been featured in The New York Times, O, the Oprah Magazine, Real Simple, Shape and Prevention. She delights in sharing insights about mindfulness meditation and well-being.

Greg Budney

Greg Budney is a former Audio Curator of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds, the world’s largest collection of wildlife sound recordings. He is also a leading bird sound recordist and has produced numerous audio guides to sounds of North American birds. He has trained hundreds of biologists and citizen scientists in techniques for capturing the sounds of wildlife for research, conservation, and education.

Wired Gallery

Wired Gallery was established in May 2012 with the mission to show works by Mid-Hudson Valley artists. Located at 11 Mohonk Road in High Falls, New York, and open Saturdays and Sundays 11am – 4pm, Wired Gallery was named “one of Ulster County’s most high-profile, prolific sources of quality art exhibitions” by Almanac Weekly.

Mariachi Citlalli

Mariachi Citlalli is the culmination of four generations of mariachi musicians from the country of Mexico. Being family owned, Mariachi Ciltalli can carry original mariachi sounds while incorporating a modern flair. Francisco Navarrete, its founder, began playing with mariachis in Mexico from the age of 9 years. Guided by his father, he learned various instruments, arrived in New York City at the age of 24, and joined several mariachisen groups in the New York area before creating his own group that is now known as Mariachi Citlalli.