The February meeting of The Garden Club of the Back Bay will take place Thursday, February 16, beginning at 10:00 am at The College Club, 44 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. Lee Schneller Sligh will present an illustrated lecture entitled Historic Gardens of Japan. Lee Schneller Sligh is a Master Gardener volunteer and has designed and built more than 200 gardens in Maine since 1995 as owner of Lee Schneller Fine Gardens. Her revolutionary perennial garden design system is the subject of her new book, The Ever-Blooming Flower Garden: A Blueprint for Continuous Color (Storey Publishing, March 2009), which has been a continuous bestseller in independent bookstores and on Amazon.com. She lectures frequently and offers four-hour workshops teaching her design method. In addition to continuously blooming gardens, Lee specializes in Japanese-inspired and naturalistic gardens. She lived in Japan for four years, earned degrees in Chinese language and literature and in Asian history and worked for ten years as a Japanese technical translator before starting her gardening business.
Illustrated with striking photos from her travels throughout Japan over thirty years, this talk and slide show introduces very old gardens, some brought to light only recently through the efforts of archaeologists. The oldest Japanese garden discovered so far is a little-known stream garden in rural Mie Prefecture dating from the 4th century A.D., which was just discovered and excavated in the 1990s. Japanese gardens are widely admired for the sense of intimacy and inner stillness they convey to the viewer, an effect achieved through the sensitive and simple arrangement of elements. These qualities seem ever more precious, both to the Japanese and to foreigner visitors, and make the Japanese garden a timeless refuge from our complicated and fast-paced modern lives. Lee specializes in creating Japanese-inspired gardens with native New England plants, and travels frequently to Japan to tour and research gardens. Examples of her work can be seen at www.LeeSchneller.com.
Garden Club members will receive written notice of this meeting in the mail. Non-members are cordially invited to attend ($10 meeting only, $25 with lunch following the meeting) with reservations. Email info@gardenclubbackbay.org, or telephone 617-859-8865.
