The Garden Club Federation of Massachusetts, Ruth A. Wallack Fund, presents Nature Takes Over: Creations are Collaborations with Nature, featuring Bill Harper, AIFD & AAF, International Floral Artist, Lecturer, Author, and Educator, on Tuesday, May 22, beginning at 10 am at Regis College Fine Arts Center in Weston. Tickets are $20, and may be obtained by calling Helga Frazzette at 508-255-6664, or Diane Bullock at 207-361-1818.
The Northeast’s most talked about annual garden event, Trade Secrets, a benefit for Women’s Support Services, a domestic violence program, is celebrating its 12th annual garden weekend in May. Trade Secrets begins on Saturday, May 19th at LionRock Farm in Sharon, CT with the antique and rare plant sale from 10am to 3pm, and, of course, for the early birds there are the early-buying tickets available that include admittance at 8am with an early-buyers breakfast available. On Sunday, May 20th you can tour four gardens including the tours signature garden of Trade Secrets’ founder Bunny Williams.
From young to old, famous to not-so-famous, Trade Secrets is certainly the place where you find those rare garden plants and antiques for your home. For the past 12 years, Trade Secrets has brought garden-lovers from around the world to the Litchfield Hills of Connecticut to discover new plants, topiary, and antiques for their gardens. 2012 will be no exception with nearly 60 vendors and garden antiques dealers from around the northeast region readying their wares for the trip to the picturesque LionRock Farm (pictured below)Â for this annual event.
With their truckloads of rare garden plants and unusual accessories – those kind of unique treasures that you might search a lifetime for – vendors will descend upon LionRock to offer garden lovers a day of pure treasure hunting! Shoppers can find rare plant specimens from specialized growers and from some of the nation’s best known small nurseries, as well as furniture, antiques, cloches and garden statuary from the choicest purveyors of garden antiques, wrought-iron fencing, textiles from select antiques dealers, and so much more.
A special treat this year will be a presentation by renowned owner, Marina Marchese of Red Bee Honey. Featured in Martha Stewart Living, this boutique honey bee farm is changing the way consumers taste and use honey! Committed to a sustainable lifestyle, Red Bee Honey boasts a spectacular edible garden, chickens and honeybees!
Sunday’s garden tour will feature an opportunity to eavesdrop on Bunny Williams’ and John Rosselli’s affair with their house, as their garden is back for the 12th year by popular demand. Also back for a second time on the tour is Jack Hyland’s and Larry Wente’s eco-friendly, forty-one acre futuristic estate that is both outward-looking and inwardly conscientious. Two new gardens added this year are the Linden Hill Farm owned by Richard deBart and Debra Blair, owner of Debra Blair Associates in New York City, and Hawk Hill Farm owned by Robert & Jane Keiter.
Tickets for the rare plant and garden antique sale on Saturday are $35 for regular admission from 10am to 3pm and $100 for “early buying” tickets. Ticekts for Sunday’s garden tours are $70 ($60 in advance). Tickets may be purchased on line at www.tradesecretsct.com.
Join Mayor Thomas M. Menino for Boston Shines 2012, the 10th annual citywide neighborhood cleanup, on Friday, April 27 and Saturday, April 28 from 8:30 am – 2:00 pm. To volunteer, or for more information, contact the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services at 617-635-3485. For information after working hours, call 617-635-4500, or visit www.cityofboston.gov to register online.
In Back Bay specifically, The Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay sponsors Alley Rally 2012. Spring is definitely here, and Alley Rally 2012 will sweep through the neighborhood on Saturday, April 28, 2012, from 9:00 a.m. through noon. Coordinating with Mayor Menino’s Citywide Cleanup, come and join your neighbors, including groups from local fraternities and some of our Back Bay schools, in sweeping the alleys and side streets. Thanks to donations from our local businesses, we provide coffee, juice and doughnuts at the Clarendon Street Playground starting at 8:30 a.m. At 9:00 a.m., we will divide in groups and head off to clean. After we finish, there will be a picnic lunch (also donated by Back Bay businesses) for the volunteers at the playground. This is a great way to get to know your neighbors and spruce up the neighborhood at the same time. NABB has been conducting the Alley Rally since 1967! For further information, please contact Ellen Rooney at parnell3@verizon.net.
The visual experience of flowering fruit trees in the home landscape is surpassed only by the delicious variety of summer and fall fruits which they produce. Growing apples successfully can be a horticultural challenge, but it can be done! Dr. Wes Autio will present a program at Elm Bank on Thursday, May 3 beginning at 7 pm on how to grow apples in the home landscape. Varieties, root stocks, young-tree care, nutrition, pruning, training, and pest control will be covered.
Wes Autio grew up in a rural/tourist part of western Maine and received his B.S. degree in Horticulture from Virginia Tech and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Pomology from UMass. In 1985, he joined the faculty at the University of Massachusetts. He currently serves as the UMass Fruit Program Leader and Coordinator of the Stockbridge School of Agriculture’s Fruit & Vegetable Crops Program. He regularly interacts with tree-fruit farmers and the many individuals interested in tree fruit in the landscape. His research focuses on apple and peach rootstocks and controlling growth of apple trees with mechanical and hormonal approaches. Photo from Through a Glass, Darkly. Free, but registration recommended at www.masshort.org.
Learn the basics of garden photography with this Massachusetts Horticultural Society hands-on photography workshop on Sunday, May 6 at Elm Bank, from 8 – 4, that will teach you how to effectively use ‘magic light’ and apply the rule of thirds when composing your images. Plan to spend most of the day shooting, with a designated period to download imagery and review your work. Garden Club of the Back Bay speaker Rich Pomerantz’s critique is one of the most popular parts of the workshop!
Bring your camera, charged battery, storage cards, lenses, and enthusiasm. The cost of this workshop is $95 for members and $125 for non-members. There is also an option for a $10 lunch. You may register at www.masshort.org.The workshop is limited to 12 participants. Learn more about Rich Pomerantz at his website, richpomerantz.com.
In conjunction with the new exhibition, Mollusks, the Harvard Museum of Natural History, 24 Oxford Street in Cambridge, will screen Shellshocked, a new documentary by Emily Driscoll, on Saturday, May 12 beginning at 2 pm. The film follows efforts to prevent the extinction of wild oyster reefs, which keep oceans healthy by filtering water and engineering ecosystems. Due to overfishing and pollution, much of the world’s wild oyster reefs have been declared “functionally extinct.†Followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker and George Buckley, of the Sustainability and Environmental Management Program at Harvard Extension School. Regular admission rates apply. For more information, visit www.hmnh.harvard.edu.
Boston University Professor of Anthropology Merry White explores the fascinating role that coffee and cafe society have played in Japanese culture in a lecture on Wednesday, May 9, from 6 – 8 at 808 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. White’s book, Coffee Life in Japan – part ethnography, part memoir – traces the cafe craze from 1888, when Japan helped to launch the Brazilian coffee industry, up to the present. Her work examines themes as diverse as gender, privacy, perfectionism, and urbanism. Learn how coffee and coffee spaces have played essential roles in the formation of Japanese beliefs about public space, social change, modernity, and pleasure. Hear how the cafe has been a place to encounter new ideas and experiments in thought, behavior, sexuality, dress and taste. Each person attending this event will receive a copy of White’s book. Refreshments will be served. $25. Register online at www.bu.edu/foodandwine.
As part of the celebration to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the gift of flowering cherry trees from Japan to the US, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston will be the recipient of a tree grafted from the original Japanese trees in Washington’s Tidal Basin. On Wednesday, April 25 at 9:00 am, when the Museum’s renowned Tenshin-en Japanese garden opens for the season, the cherry tree will be presented to Museum of Fine Arts Boston Director Malcolm Rogers by Consul General of Japan in Boston Takeshi Hikihara.
The more than 3000 trees which were planted in Washington in 1912 were a gift from Tokyo Mayor Yukio Ozaki to express Japan’s appreciation to the U.S. for its role in brokering the Treaty of Portsmouth which ended the Russo-Japanese War. The cherry trees have become a symbol of the close relations between Japan and the United States.
The Greater Boston-Japan Cherry Blossom Festival 2012, marking the centennial of the trees, began in March and will continue through May. Upcoming events include Haru Matsuri, a Japanese-style festival in Copley Square, a Kioi Sinfonietta Tokyo concert at Harvard University as well as other performances, lectures and exhibits. For further information visit:
Consulate General of Japan in Boston: www.boston.us.emb-japan.go.jp/
Japan Society of Boston: www.japansocietyboston.org/sakura/eng
For national information, see:
Embassy of Japan in Washington DC: www.us.emb-japan.go.jp/sakura100
For questions regarding this event, contact: Richard Winslow, r.winslow@cgjbos.org or 617 973-9772 x137
The world of plant propagation is cloaked in mystery. What really is a cultivar, a hybrid, or a straight species plant? How are nursery crops typically grown and new plants introduced to the market? Come to the Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway, on Wednesday, May 2 at 7 pm to hear an expert nurseryman’s point of view, how plants are selected and bred for new characteristics, and what it really takes to successfully propagate both native and non-native trees, shrubs, and plants for the consumer market. Author Wayne Mezitt is Chairman of Weston Nurseries, and has over 50 years experience in his family’s business. Free admission.
Join the Polly Hill Arboretum for this visit to our island neighbor to explore the Nantucket landscape. While Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket share similar ecosystems, we will also discover some diffferences in the landscapes. With the help of colleagues at the Nantucket Land Council, we will visit a few conservation properties and learn about land preservation on Nantucket. Downtown Nantucket is also home to some majestic street trees, including several American elms. The trip will include a walking tour with Nantucket’s tree warden, to learn about the legacy of these historic trees. Two private garden visits, arranged by the Nantucket Garden Club, are also included in the tour. The tour price includes round trip airfare from Martha’s Vineyard to Nantucket via Cape Air, two nights at the Jared Coffin House, all ground transportation on Nantucket, and a $100 tax deductible contribution to the Polly Hill Arboretum. $694 per person for queen sized bed (based on double occupancy), $660 per person for full sized bed (based on double occupancy), and $510 per person for room with one twin bed. Tour is limited to 18 people, so sign up early by calling 508-693-9426, visiting www.pollyhillarboretum.org, or emailing karin@pollyhillarboretum.org.
