Boston Flora

Tuesday, March 4, 5:00 am – 6:30 am Eastern (but recorded) – A History of Gardens: The Origins of the Arts and Crafts Garden

The Arts and Crafts Movement sought a return to vernacular traditions in the face of increasing industrialization. It thrived for two decades or so around the turn of the twentieth century, although its effect is still obvious today in many decorative arts. In the garden, the movement was most clearly articulated through the work of William Robinson (1838-1935) and Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932). Their example was followed by a plethora of British architects and designers into the middle of the 20th century and beyond, and their influence spread to Europe, the US and further afield. What we today identify as Arts and Crafts gardens are perhaps typified by a geometric layout of compartments in close relationship with the house, alongside the use of architectural features in local materials and abundant, color-themed planting.

In this series, we will examine the origins of the Arts and Crafts garden, consider the work of Robinson and Jekyll in detail, and survey some of the many other British garden-makers who were influenced by the movement. The series will end with an international flavor, exploring the work of an American designer who was a life-long admirer of Robinson and Jekyll.

This ticket is for this individual talk (Click HERE) costs £8, and you may purchase tickets for other individual sessions, or you may purchase a ticket for the entire fifth series of 5 talks in our History of Gardens Course at £35 via the link here. (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 5 for £26.25). Ticket holders can join each session live and/or view a recording for up to 2 weeks afterwards. Ticket sales close 4 hours before the talk.

Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk (If you do not receive this link, please contact us). A link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 2 weeks .

Talk 1 will take place March 4 with Richard Bisgrove. What eventually became the Arts and Crafts Movement had two strands: a rejection of ‘modern’ painters in favour of mediaeval art and a reaction to the perceived horrors of the Industrial Revolution. The leading proponents of these ideas were John Ruskin and William Morris. In his talk, Richard will outline very briefly the lives of these two men and discuss their interests in, and influences on, the gardens of their age.

Richard Bisgrove has degree in Horticultural Science and Landscape Architecture. As a lecturer in horticulture and landscape management at Reading University his main research interests were the management of species rich grasslands (the flowery mead!) and garden history, with particular emphasis on Gertrude Jekyll and William Robinson. He was for many years a member of the Council and Conservation Committee of the Garden History Society and of the Gardens Panel of the National Trust. His publications include The Gardens of Gertrude Jekyll (Frances Lincoln, 1992; University of California Press 2000) and William Robinson: the wild gardener (Frances Lincoln, 2008). Image: The Red House, William Morris’s house ‘planted’ in a Kentish orchard, photo Richard Guy Wilson Architecture Archive, 1983, under a CC BY 4.0 license

Wednesday, March 5, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm Eastern – Architecting Nature: Philip Johnson, David Whitney, and the Evolution of the Glass House Estate, 1946 – 2024, Live and Online

This is the second program in the 2025 Grand Homes and Gardens Speaker Series, The Quality of Doing: Mid-Century Modern Grand Homes & Gardens, featuring four scholars who will look at the work of Mid-Century Modern architects and designers through the lens of landmark homes and gardens across the United States. Learn more about the series and purchase series tickets.

“To me the whole experience of what’s been labeled now all over the world ‘the glass house’ is a misnomer. To me, the house is a park. To me, the whole experience is a park in which there are, indeed, monuments or occasions or accidents or things by nature and things that I’ve placed there that create a place.” Philip Johnson (1906-2005)

World-renowned architect Philip Johnson’s words convey the undeniable importance of the fifty-acre estate he assembled and tweaked over fifty years in partnership with curator and plantsman David Whitney. This talk will consider the social, architectural, and gardening history of the property, and its evolution from five untamed acres to a carefully contrived ideal landscape that is the setting – and the view — for The Glass House and its orbiting playground of Modernist follies constructed between 1946 and 2005.

All talks begin at 6:30 p.m. in Morven’s Stockton Education Center. Doors and the virtual waiting room open at 6:00 p.m. A Zoom link will be sent to all virtual participants upon registration. Light refreshments inspired by each site will be provided for in-person attendees.

Maureen Cassidy-Geiger is an internationally recognized curator, scholar and educator with special expertise in European decorative arts and the history of architecture, gardens and court culture. Formerly on the staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Frick Collection and Parsons School of Design, she has curated exhibitions in Europe and America and has published and lectured on a broad array of subjects, for amateurs and specialists alike. In 2021, she presented The Art of Architecture: Beaux-Arts Drawings from the Peter May Collection at New-York Historical Society, to accompany the publication of the two-volume catalogue Living with Architecture as Art: The Peter May Collection of Architectural Drawings, Models and Artefacts (Paul Holberton Press).

This program is sponsored by David Schure and Grant Wagner, mid century modern house specialists from Callaway Henderson Sotheby’s International Realty. The 2025 Grand Homes and Gardens series is sponsored by Bryn Mawr Trust.

Tuesday, February 25, 7:00 pm – 8:15 pm Eastern – Municipal Reforestation Bill, Online

Join the Massachusetts Pollinator Network online on February 25 for a free presentation on the Municipal Reforestation Bill: what it is and how you can help. Join members of the Massachusetts Community Tree Coalition to learn about the Municipal Reforestation Bill, how they are working to convince Governor Healey to fund it by including it in the upcoming Environmental Bond Bill, and simple ways people in the Commonwealth can help make that happen. Panelists include Marilyn Ray Smith, Steven Nutter, David Meshoulam, & Renée Scott. Register at www.grownativemass.org

Wednesday, March 5, 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm Eastern – Places to Play: Richmond Golf Club, of Dukes, Trees, and Golf

Designed landscapes are typically defined as places laid out for artistic effect or aesthetic purposes, somewhere to contemplate and admire. Yet many people have a much more active relationship with outdoor spaces, engaging with them for jogging, cycling, ball games, playgrounds and carnival rides. They are places to play.

This Gardens Trust series will examine the relationship between historic designed landscapes and organized recreation. We’ll be exploring children’s outdoor play, a world-famous theme park set among a Grade 1 Regency landscape, a Premier League football stadium that was once a Victorian pleasure ground, an early 18th-century estate that is now a golf course, and a Victorian public park which was opposed by local workers despite its claimed recreational and health-giving benefits.

This ticket (register HERE) is for this individual session and costs £8, and you may purchase tickets for other individual sessions, or you may purchase a ticket for the entire course of 5 sessions at a cost of £35 via the link here. (Gardens Trust members £6 or £26.25). Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk. A link to the recorded session (available for 2 weeks) will be sent shortly afterwards.

Week Four: Sudbrook Park, currently the home of the Richmond upon Thames Golf Club, has an interesting, if not chequered, history. Created in the early 18th century by John Campbell, 2nd Duke of Argyll; at its peak it totaled a hundred and thirty acres of freehold and copyhold land, with a fine mansion designed by James Gibbs at its center. The estate appears on John Rocque’s 1746 map of London, which records the owner as Argyll’s widow. In the early 19th century, the estate was owned by Member of Parliament and public servant Robert Wilmot Horton, who made extensive improvements, enlarging and remodeling the pleasure grounds in the fashionable gardenesque style. The estate almost succumbed to the Richmond building boom of the mid-19th century but was saved at the last minute to become a hydropathic establishment and eventually, in 1898, a golf club. This talk will give an overview of its changing fortunes and its colorful owners and tenants.

Sandra Pullen is a member of the Gardens Trust Education and Training Committee and has been active in their online and in-person events since 2020. She completed an MA in the history of landscape and garden history from the Institute of Historical Research in 2021. As well as lecturing regularly on various aspects of garden history, she has been a guide for several historic houses in the Twickenham area.

Image: G. Eyre Brooks, Sudbrook Park, Petersham, Surrey (c.1840), courtesy of Richmond upon Thames Art Collection

Wednesday, May 14, 12:00 noon – Party in the Park

Since 2003, thanks to friends and supporters like you, Party in the Park has facilitated care for more than 9,000 inventoried trees, significant restoration and improvements in the historic, 1,100-acre Emerald Necklace park system designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. This year’s event will take place May 14 in Pinebank in Jamaica Pond Park, Sponsors to date include Bartlett Tree Experts, Sarah Freeman, Georgia Lee, Joan Goldberg, Elizabeth Clark Libert, The Newbury Boston, Elizabeth Brookhiser, and Skanska USA Commercial Development. To join the growing list, visit https://www.emeraldnecklace.org/party-in-the-park/

Tuesday, February 25, 5:00 am – 6:30 am Eastern (but recorded) – Plantmania: Orchidmania

The desire to possess new, rare and thus expensive plants has been a feature of garden-making since it began and continues to be so; as recently as February 2022 bulbs of Galanthus plicatus ‘Golden Tears’ were changing hands for £1,850 each. But at least this obsession didn’t bankrupt a nation! This Gardens Trust mini-series tells the story of the mania that developed around three of the most sought-after plants: tulips, rhododendrons and orchids. Each lecture will delve into how, and when these the plants arrived and what happened when they did, explaining along the way just what it was about them that caused such a furor – and a hole in the pocket.

This ticket (register HERE) is for this February 25 individual session and costs £8, and you may purchase tickets for other individual sessions, or you may purchase a ticket for the entire course of 3 sessions at a cost of £21 via the link here. (Gardens Trust members £6 or £15.75). Ticket sales close 4 hours before the talk.

Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk. A link to the recorded session (available for 2 weeks) will be sent shortly afterwards.

This craze began in London in 1731 with a single plant of Bletia purpurea sent to plant collecting nut Peter Collinson from Providence Island, the Bahamas. But it was not until the nineteenth century that silly money was being spent and then only because glasshouse technology had evolved. Requiring collecting in regions challenging to travel, difficult to transport long distances by sea, tricky to cultivate and even more so to breed, orchids were the most expensive plant of that time. An extensive collection was the ultimate gardening statement of conspicuous consumption, but they were also very addictive and a number of aficionados bankrupted themselves through collecting. Still today there is a black market while, legally, specimens can cost tens of thousands.

Dr Toby Musgrave FSA FLS is a garden and plants historian, horticulturist and author. His books have covered a wide range of subjects from head gardeners to heritage fruit and vegetables, plant hunters to paradise gardens, and a biography of Sir Joseph Banks. He lives in Denmark where he gardens one of the historic de Runde Haver and when not gardening, teaching or writing he works as a submersible pilot. Image: S. Drake, Cycnoches egertonianum, detail, from James Bateman, The Orchidaceae of Mexico and Guatemala (1842), Wikimedia Commons, public domain

Wednesday – Sunday, February 19 – 23 – Northwest Flower & Garden Festival

Looking to get away from the snow (or rain, ice or fires?). Celebrate Spring Dreamin’ in Seattle with over 20 display gardens, more than 115 sessions and other learning activities, and thousands of treasures in the garden marketplace. The Northwest Flower & Garden Festival is the best annual event to gather ideas and inspiration for beautiful living spaces. Whether you’re a seasoned gardener or just starting to dig in the dirt, there’s something for everyone! Each year, different Garden Creators from around the Pacific Northwest put their blood, sweat and tears into our stunning display gardens. These incredible works of art, constructed in under 72 hours on the show floor, are central to what makes the Northwest Flower & Garden Festival a world-renowned experience of garden design and innovation. Blooms & Bubbles is an exciting floral design workshop at the Northwest Flower & Garden Festival. Every day at 2:30 PM, sip on a glass of champagne while creating a fabulous make-and-take project led by a local floral design expert. Special ticket ncludes show admission, all necessary workshop materials, a glass of champagne to sip on, and more. When you dig into the FREE seminars and demonstrations, you’ll be inspired to turn your garden dreams into reality. Whether you’re a novice gardener, or a well-seasoned veteran, expert Speakers show you how to create gracious outdoor living spaces and luscious, sustainable gardens perfect for your family. There is much more. Explore at https://www.gardenshow.com/show-features

Thursday, March 6, 6:445 pm – 8:15 pm Eastern – Wild Wings: Fascinating Pollinators and Their Stories, Online

What do an annoying house fly, the nearly endangered Mexican long-tongued bat, and a poop-eating butterfly have in common? Each creature, respectively, is the reason we can enjoy a bite of chocolate, a nip of a tequila, or the calming scent of lavender.

Liana Vitali, a naturalist and educator at Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary in Maryland, tells fascinating stories about pollinators around the world during an immersive audio-visual Smithsonian Zoom presentation on March 6. Surveying bees and bats and everything in between, Vitali’s vignettes offer an entertaining, informative glimpse into the lives of these pollinating winged marvels—and how our lives depend largely on their unique and wild ways. $25 Smithsonian members, $30 nonmembers. Register at https://smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/programs/wild-wings

Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage

In 2017, Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage, OLAUG, was formed. They have been cleaning up ponds on Cape Cod from Falmouth to Chatham ever since. Gathering small teams of swimmers, ages 64 to 85, they sweep along the shallows, diving down to pick up beer cans, golf balls, fishing lures, waterlogged dog toys, hats, jackets, shoes, and occasionally a tire, cell phone or box of spent fireworks.

Whatever they heave up from the bottom, they hand to the Garbage Collector who paddles a canoe or kayak. One swimmer goes ahead looking for snapping turtles and guides the swimmers around them. Their affection and respect for the fish, turtles, and plants that live in the ponds are what motivates them. Well, that and cookies. To learn more, to join, or to donate, visit https://olaug.ma.com

Saturday, February 22, 11:00 am – 12:30 pm Eastern – The Future is Nuts! Online

Is the future nuts? According to edible landscape and permaculture designer Michael Judd, it is, but in a good way! In this fun and informative presentation, the question of what nuts grow well in the mid-Atlantic region and beyond is cracked, while exploring how nuts help stabilize ecosystems and provide much-needed wildlife habitat. With personality and humor, permaculture designer and master grower and author of Edible Landscaping with a Permaculture Twist, Michael Judd translates the complexities of permaculture design into simple self-build projects, providing details on the evolving design process, materials identification, and costs.

This program takes place online on Saturday, February 22, 2025. $25. Register at https://mtcubacenter.org/event/the-future-is-nuts-online/