HILLSDALE WORKSHOP ALLIANCE
The HWA is an alliance of individual producers of creative workshops on a variety of topics. Once a year we gather to present a carefully vetted festival of classes and open gardens that offer locals and visitors informative and fun learning experiences that celebrate the season and our beautiful region. Follow us on Instagram.
Margaret Roach has been a leading garden writer for 30 years, at “Martha Stewart Living,” “Newsday,” and since April 2020 for “The New York Times,” where she began her journalism career. She is the author of “A Way to Garden” and two other books. Margaret hosts a public-radio podcast, lectures, and holds tours at her 2.3-acre Copake Falls garden, which she likes to think of as a giant birdfeeder, welcoming a diversity of insect, bird and other animal life.
Matthew White
Matthew White is a long-time interior designer and antiquarian. As many do, he left the city for what he thought would be a quiet country life, only to restore two historic antique buildings in the Hamlet of Hillsdale. There he oversees popular local businesses as proprietor of Hillsdale General Store, a country lifestyle shop, and HGS Home Chef, a kitchen store with two teaching kitchens, where he produces cooking classes led by acclaimed chefs and cookbook authors.
Jenny Elliot and Luke Franco
Jenny Elliott and Luke Franco of Tiny Hearts Farm in Copake are farmers, not florists, first. They are also classically trained musicians. The Tiny Hearts team is committed to growing an ever-wider palette of high-quality, healthy-for-the-land, healthy-for-people flowers. Their popular flower shop in Hillsdale has a workroom, where they create flowers for weddings and other events, provide customers with weekly CSA bouquets, and teach workshops on all aspects of practical and creative floristry.
Paul Ricciardi is co-director of the Ancram Center for the Arts, where he, along with husband and co-director Jeff Mousseau, has created and/or produced 8 years of ground-breaking performance, including Taylor Mac's HOLIDAY SAUCE, THE PLEIN AIR PLAYS, and YOU DON'T KNOW THE LONELY ONE with David Cale, Dael Orlandersmith, and directed by Robert Falls. Paul is the creator and Director of AOH’s Real People Real Stories (RPRS), a program that utilizes a unique approach to support community members in sharing compelling, personal narratives, which is now being utilized by the Taconic Hills Central School District as part of the Elementary School writing curriculum.
Aubrey Lynch, recently named Dean of Faculty and Student Affairs at American Ballet Theatre Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School, looks forward to his regular weekend getaways in the Hillsdale area. A former principal with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and original cast member and former associate producer of “The Lion King,” Aubrey has been Chief Education and Creative Programs Officer at the prestigious Harlem School of the Arts. His philosophy: “The arts aren’t extracurricular; they’re extra-essential.”
Aubrey Lynch
Lewis Cleale
Is the proprietor of the Hudson Valley’s newest artisan fiber-processing mill, Nobletown Fiber Works, producing yarn and fiber products for farmers in the greater tri-state fibershed. For more than 30 years, he has worked on and off Broadway as a professional actor and singer. A country boy from Maine, Lewis has called Hillsdale home since 1998 when he purchased and restored his 1825 Federal home in the hamlet. Presently, Nobletown Fiber Works provides woolgrowers custom processing capabilities but looks forward to opening a retail shop, offering classes in the fiber arts, as well as raising a small flock of the world’s tiniest sheep breed, Ouessant.
Jim & Pam Carden
Jim and Pam Carden own and operate Taconic Ridge Farm and Forgather, event and hospitality properties in Hillsdale. Jim also owns The Bell House, Union Hall and Floyd in Brooklyn, and Pam manages the business affairs department for the NYC ad agency Merkley + Partners. Natives of Kentucky and Iowa, they feel so at home in Hillsdale and are inspired by all the beauty and creativity in the area.
Mark Holthusen
Mark Holthusen, an award winning photographer and designer, best known for creating images that push boundaries in a career spanning photography, film, and projection design for both theater and concerts. In 2017, Mark began revitalizing Springhill Farm a historic 1920’s music school and theater camp and was a preciser to Tanglewood. Deep within a valley in Hillsdale, He has been transforming it back into its original usage as a theater, workspace and vacation rental. The site has a long local history, including an 1760s Dutch home.