Harvard University

Saturday, March 23, 10:00 am – 12:00 noon – Pruning Project: Hydrangeas

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Confused about how to prune your hydrangeas to maximize flowering and increase health? You are not alone! Join Jen Kettell on March 23 at 10 am at the Arnold Arboretum for a lively discussion on the species behind the hot trade names (Hydrangea ‘Pistachio’ reblooming shown below) and how to prune them. In addition, Jen will focus on how to match appropriate plants to your site conditions. She’ll suggest which species are drought-tolerant or benefit pollinators and other essential growing tips. Jen will focus on hydrangeas that are hardy in Zones 5-7. Class includes an indoor lecture and walk to a demonstration in the Leventritt Shrub and Vine Garden. Fee $25 Arboretum member, $35 nonmember. Register at my.arboretum.harvard.edu or call 617-384-5277.

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Saturday, March 16, 9:00 am – 11:00 am – Planning and Creating a Compact Orchard

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Become a backyard orchardist and grow your own fruit! Even with a small yard, you can enjoy fruit from your own trees with minimal effort and cost. This step-by-step Arnold Arboretum workshop at the Wakefield Estate in Milton on March 16 from 9 – 11 will teach you all you need to know to plan and create a compact orchard for years of enjoyment. Participants will spend part of the workshop outside in the orchard for a pruning demonstration, so dress accordingly. Space is limited; pre-registration required. Fee $20 Arboretum member, $30 nonmember. Offered with the Mary M. B. Wakefield Charitable Trust. Register at my.arboretum.harvard.edu or call 617-384-5277.

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Saturday, March 9, 9:30 am – 1:00 pm – Cultivating Legacies: New England Women in Horticulture and Landscape Design

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Women are often overlooked when we discuss individuals who had great impact on botany and landscape design of the 20th century. The Arnold Arboretum was one of the few institutions in America that encouraged women to study with and be mentored by established botanical and landscape design professionals.

Mary (Polly) Wakefield, Eleanor Cabot Bradley, Martha Brooks Hutcheson, Marian Roby Case (below), and Marjorie Russell Sedgwick developed exceptional personal garden spaces and designed outstanding professional landscapes, and were also very active in the conservation and preservation of appreciable New England open space. This March 9 seminar highlights these women’s personal legacies: significant plant collections and garden design within beloved public spaces. Presentations illuminate these women and their roles in creating and protecting New England landscapes, the discernible role that the Arnold Arboretum played in these endeavors, and how we can continue to raise the visibility of these special places. Program includes an associated exhibition in the Arnold Arboretum’s historic Library Reading Room and light refreshments. Fee $50

Co-sponsored by The Trustees of Reservations, the Mary M.B. Wakefield Charitable Trust, and the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University

Register at my.arboretum.harvard.edu or call 617-384-5277.

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Friday, March 1, 6:45 pm – Floristic and Climate Change on Mount Desert Island, Maine

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Dr. Nancy M. Eyster-Smith, Associate Professor Emerita, Bentley University, Waltham, Massachusetts, will address the New England Botanical Club on Friday, March 1 at 6:45 pm in the Haller Lecture Hall (Room 102) of the Geological Museum, 24 Oxford Street in Cambridge, on Celebrating Edward Lothrop Rand, NEBC Corresponding Secretary for 25 Years. Additionally, Dr. Caitlin McDonough MacKenzie, Postdoc, Climate Change Institute, University of Maine, Orono, Maine will address Floristic and Climate Change on Mount Desert Island, Maine, from the Champlain Society to Acadia National Park’s Centennial. Free and open to the public. For more information visit http://rhodora.org.

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Tuesday, February 26, 5:15 pm – 7:30 pm – Our Own Orient: Mecca, California, and Dates

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The Massachusetts Historical Society will hold a free Modern American Society and Culture Seminar on February 26 at 5:15 at its headquarters on Boylston Street, with Eleanor Daly Finnegan of Harvard University and comment by Laura Barraclough of Yale University on the topic of dates. Residents changed the name of Walters, California to Mecca in 1904. They were trying to use the exoticism of the Middle East to sell dates. This paper will focus on Mecca, California and the Indio Date Festival, looking at the complicated ways in which Orientalism has changed in the United States, its relationship to consumerism, and the economic connections made to the Middle East.

To RSVP: email seminars@masshist.org or call (617) 646-0579.

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Sundays, March 3, 10, 31, and April 7, 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm – Get Rooted in Urban Gardening

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Catherine Chamberlain, MSc, Biodiversity and Conservation, Trinity College Dublin and PhD student, Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, and Wayne Daily, MSc, Biodiversity and Conservation, Trinity College Dublin, Assistant Property Manager, Habitat Sanctuary, will conduct a class entitled Get Rooted in Urban Gardening in four sessions: Sunday, March 3, 10, 31, and April 7, 2:00–4:00pm at the Arnold Arboretum in Boston. Cat and Wayne will introduce basic gardening concepts and satisfy your desire to get growing. The class will include:

• Basic Botany and Gardening

• Site Analysis, Soil Preparation, and Irrigation

• Growing Goals and Identifying Your Plant Palette

• Horticultural Care and Maintenance

Whether you want to grow perennials or vegetables, Cat and Wayne will proffer basic principles essential to good gardening.

Fee $120 Arboretum member, $150 nonmember

Register at my.arboretum.harvard.edu or call 617-384-5277.

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Thursday, February 28, 7:00 pm – 8:15 pm – Do Your Garden Plants Have a Backstory?

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Michael Dosmann, PhD, Keeper of the Living Collections, Arnold Arboretum, will speak at the Arboretum on February 28 beginning at 7 pm on a subject worthy of prime time television: Do Your Garden Plants Have a Backstory? Museums assign value to their collections by understanding each piece’s backstory – for instance, where did it come from (and please note, we don’t recommend stealing plants – see below), who created/collected it, what does it represent, what feeling does it elicit from a visitor? The plants in our own gardens can and should do the same, but too often have become generic and mundane because we have forgotten their backstories. Perhaps even worse, we may be losing our own personal connections to what we grow. Michael Dosmann will provide his own perspective on how to re-engage with our garden plants in ways that make it personal.

Fee Free for Arboretum member, $10 nonmember.  Register at my.arboretum.harvard.edu or call 617-384-5277.

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Sunday, February 24, 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm – Build a Better Birdhouse

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On Sunday, February 24 from 2 – 4 pm at the Hunnewell Building of the Arnold Arboretum, 125 The Arborway, learn how to build safe homes for native birds. This class, taught by Brendan Keegan, covers best practices for general bird house design using the Arboretum’s own nest boxes (for tree swallows, eastern bluebirds, black capped chickadees, and screech owls) as examples. You will learn tips for deterring predators and non-native competitors, as well as how to safely monitor young nestlings. Finally, you will build and take home your own “Chickadee Tube,” a design suitable for many Boston yards.

Fee $28 Arboretum member, $35 nonmember. Register at my.arboretum.harvard.edu or call 617-384-5277.

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Sunday, February 24, 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm – Build a Better Birdhouse

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Learn how to build safe homes for native birds with Brendan Keegan at the Arnold Arboretum on Sunday, February 24 from 2 – 4. This class covers best practices for general bird house design using the Arboretum’s own nest boxes (for tree swallows, eastern bluebirds, black capped chickadees, and screech owls) as examples. You will learn tips for deterring predators and non-native competitors, as well as how to safely monitor young nestlings. Finally, you will build and take home your own “Chickadee Tube,” a design suitable for many Boston yards. Fee $28 Arboretum member, $35 nonmember. Register at http://my.arboretum.harvard.edu or call 617-384-5277.

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Tuesday, February 19, 6:30 pm – The Invention of Rivers

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Separating land and water is not just an act of division; it is also an act of creation. It creates land and water from ubiquitous wetness, defining them on either side of a line. It is one of the first acts of design, setting out a ground of habitation with a line that has largely been naturalized in features such as the coastline, the riverbank, and the water’s edge. These features are subjected to artistic representations, scientific inquiry, infrastructural engineering, and landscape design with little awareness of the act that brought them into being. Today, however, with the increasing frequency of flood and, not unrelatedly, sea-level rise attributed to climate change, the line of separation has come into sharp focus with proposals for walls, levees, natural defenses, and land retirement schemes. These responses raise questions on where the line is drawn, but they also raise questions on the separation that this line facilitates. Is this separation found in nature or does nature follow from its assertion? Are there other beginnings to design and consequently, other possible natures and grounds of habitation?

Join the Harvard Graduate School of Design on February 19 at 6:30 pm at Gund Hall Piper Auditorium, Quincy Street, Cambridge, for a free public lecture on The Invention of Rivers by Dilip da Cunha.

Dilip da Cunha is an architect and planner based in Philadelphia and Bangalore. He is co-director of the Risk and Resilience program at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, and Adjunct Professor at the GSAPP, Columbia University. He is author with Anuradha Mathur of Mississippi Floods: Designing a Shifting Landscape (2001); Deccan Traverses: The Making of Bangalore’s Terrain (2006); Soak: Mumbai in an Estuary (2009); and Design in the Terrain of Water (2014). His new book, The Invention of Rivers: Alexander’s Eye and Ganga’s Descent, was just published by the University of Pennsylvania Press (http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15913.html). In 2017, da Cunha along with Anuradha Mathur received a Pew Fellowship Grant in recognition of their collaborative work. They are currently working on a multimedia exhibition titled The Ocean of Rain. http://www.mathurdacunha.com

Anyone requiring accessibility accommodations should contact the events office at (617) 496-2414 or events@gsd.harvard.edu.

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