Daily Archives: July 3, 2011

Saturday, September 17 – Sunday, September 18 – What’s Out There Weekend in San Francisco

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On September 17th and 18th in San Francisco, The Cultural Landscape Foundation will host What’s Out There Weekend, a series of interpretive tours that highlight San Francisco’s rich and diverse heritage of Modernist designed landscapes. Dubbed “Mostly Modern”, during the weekend members of the public will be able to visit any or all of a network of 25 publicly accessible sites around the City, to participate in free tours from expert guides.

From Ted Osmundson’s Kaiser Center Roof Garden (below) in Oakland, to San Francisco’s Levi’s Plaza designed by Lawrence Halprin, to Robert Royston’s Santa Clara Central Park, San Francisco and the Bay Area has the broadest and most diverse Modernist landscape legacy in the country. Yet while local residents pass through these important Modernist landscapes on a daily basis, they often do not know their stories. The goal of “Mostly Modern” is to raise awareness about these valuable places and educate the public about the individuals who designed and created them.

The What’s Out There Weekend initiative dovetails with the web-based What’s Out There, the first searchable database of the nation’s designed landscapes. While the database offers a broad and interconnected way to learn about a region’s historic designed landscapes, the What’s Out There Weekend gets people out into their communities, to actively experience the landscapes that they see every day but often overlook.  Tour and event details will be available beginning soon at www.tclf.org.

Wednesday, August 3, 7:00 am – 8:30 pm – Native Ferns of New England

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Learn about the life cycle of ferns and their evolutionary history, spanning 400 million years, from noted fern expert, collector and educator Don Lubin. From among New England’s 68 native species, we will examine twenty of those most commonly found. This survey will include detailed photographs, techniques for field identification, and a look at the adaptive niche that each species occupies. Don Lubin has been teaching about ferns for over a decade and he grows 44 species in his small yard in Allston. He has collected more than 50 herbarium specimens and has identified previously unrecorded taxa at several locales in Massachusetts.  Location : Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway, Cambridge, Massachusetts. For more information, visit  http://www.grownativemass.org/programs/eveningswithexperts.