Profile

Whitey Lueck teaches Trees Across Oregon (LA 337), Living Landscapes (also LA 337), and The Nature of Eugene (also LA 337).  Whitey also regularly leads campus tree tours.  He graduated summa cum laude from Pennsylvania State University with a degree in ornamental horticulture, then worked for three years as a horticulturist and landscape designer with municipal parks departments in Sweden, France, and Switzerland.  After his return to the U.S., he completed a Masters in botany and forest ecology at Oregon State University.

In Eugene, Whitey taught first in the landscape program at Lane Community College.  In 1986, he began to offer at LCC field classes in natural history—that took place from the Canadian Rockies to Mexico—and in 2004 opened his own nature-tour business called OUT-OF-DOORS.  He also worked for many years as a consulting horticulturist and landscape designer, specializing in plants native to the Willamette Valley.

In 1997, Whitey co-founded the Eugene Tree Foundation (now Friends of Trees) and was editor of ETF's quarterly newsletter through 2014.  He was also instrumental in having outdoor lighting standards included in Eugene's land use code.  His Trains-to-Trees proposal recommends placing the railroad tracks through downtown Eugene in a trench, then covering the trench with a park.

An advocate for "universal access"—as practiced in Scandinavia, where one is free to walk anywhere, including on privately owned land—Whitey has opened his own property to the public.  Visitors come and go as they please, and informative signs address interesting aspects of the design and maintenance of his house and garden.

Since 2006, Whitey has also organized and hosted every winter term a ten-week Nordic Film Series—free and open to the public—under the aegis of the Department of Landscape Architecture.  And since 2012, he's hosted a five-week summer Nordic Film Series, as well.

Whitey is also the author of five essay collections--see the website shown below--including The Trees of Eugene (due out in October 2019).

For more about Whitey, go to https://sites.google.com/site/whiteylueck