In this free Boston Natural Areas Network cooking class, learn how to preserve your bountiful harvest throughout the winter months with sweet jams and savory chutneys. The class will be held on Saturday, October 4, from 9:30 – 11:30 at the Future Chefs Office and Teaching Kitchen, 560 Albany Street in the South End. Bring your own jar with a lid. Pre-registration required: contact BNAN at 617-542-7696 or email info@bostonnatural.org.
The Friends of the Public Garden will hold a members reception on Thursday, October 9 at 6:30 pm at the Revere Hotel, 200 Stuart Street, on Preparing for Climate Change in Boston: The Vital Role of Our Greenspaces. 2012 was the warmest year on record in the US by one full degree. By 2047, the coldest years will be warmer than today’s warmest. Brian Swett, Chief of Environment, Energy and Open Space for the City of Boston, will discuss what Boston is doing to prepare for climate change, and how parks help. The Friends will also be celebrating Hill Holliday for raising the visibility of the Friends through a generous marketing campaign. Reception to follow program.
Event is free for members, but space is limited. Please rsvp by Friday October 3 at info@friensofthepublicgarden.org, or call 617-723-8144. Your membership can be renewed at this event. Motor Mart Garage is lead sponsor for this reception.
The World of Gesneriads is very diverse. These African violet relatives are often brightly colored, long flowering, and fun to grow.
Explore this family of exotic houseplants with Lyman Estate Greenhouse Manager Lynn Ackerman, as she introduces you to Kohleria, Streptocarpus, Petrocosmea, Chirtia, and Columnea, at the Greenhouses at 185 Lyman Street in Waltham on Saturday, October 4 from 10 – 2. Image below of Kohleria ‘Longwood’ from www.garden-share.com.
Fee $20. Registration is required. Call 781-891-1985, or visit www.historicnewengland.org.
Harvest season is approaching and that means Tower Hill Botanic Garden, 11 French Drive in Boylston, will be buzzing with four weekends of family activities celebrating summer’s bounty of plants, arts, and food.
The special programming begins Sept. 20 and 21 with an appreciation of fall foliage and flowers. Activities will include fall crafts, an apple heirloom apple tasting tour, and a show and sale of stunning begonias and gesneriad flowers, such as the African violet.
Local foods and flavors are the focus on the weekend of Sept. 27 and 28 with food and farm vendors on site both days, along with a display of vegetables grown at Tower Hill. On Saturday a youth garden workout, fall crafts, and apple tasting tour are all free with admission. Sunday features a garden tour as well as a wild edibles talk and walk.
Oct. 4 and 5 is Artisan Weekend at Tower Hill with vendors selling handmade creations all weekend. Saturday’s highlights include an apple tasting tour, wreath making, a chamber group featuring baroque favorites, and the opening of internationally renowned designers Patch NYC’s latest show. On Sunday, join in with Russell Powell, author of Apples of New England, for a free talk and apple tasting, listen in with Susan Guagliumi, author of Handmade for the Garden, for creative do-it-yourself techniques, or sign up for a workshop to learn how to make a “Mountain High Apple Pie.â€
Tower Hill’s harvest weekend finale is Oct. 11 through 13. Activities include making leaf rubbings on a story walk, participating in a gardening book swap, creating fall crafts, joining a hay ride, sampling apples on a tasting tour, and learning about wild plants in the not-so-wild garden. Backyard chicken expert Terry Golson will host story time with her book Tillie Lays an Egg and Mass Audubon will conduct a Birds of Prey program.
Harvest season means enjoying autumn views of Tower Hill’s 132-acre landscape and Mt. Wachusett, exploring the sustainable – and exquisitely designed – vegetable garden before it yields to winter, and discovering Tower Hill’s rare collection of heirloom apples, including 238 trees and 119 pre-20th century varieties.
For more information on events presented by the nonprofit Tower Hill Botanical Garden at 11 French Drive in Boylston, Mass., please call 508-869-6111, visit towerhillbg.org, or email rburgess@towerhillbg.org.
Home of the Worcester County Horticultural Society, Tower Hill Botanic Garden is less than an hour’s drive from Boston, Providence, Springfield, and Hartford and is nationally recognized as one of the finest gardens in the Northeast with more than 80,000 annual visitors and 6,000 active members.
Join the Charles River Conservancy on Saturday, October 4 from 7:30 – 11 at the Weeks Footbridge in Cambridge for a free event, Tango by Moonlight. By the light of the full moon shimmering over the rippling waters of the Charles River, dance the Argentine Tango, or just watch and listen. The Weeks Pedestrian Bridge is near Harvard Square, at Memorial Drive just east of JFK Street, and across from DeWolfe Street. Raindate Sunday, October 5 if necessary. For more information visit http://www.bostontango.org.
The Upper Deck Gallery, 38 Main Street in Orleans, presents a photo exhibit by Japan Society Member Richard Leo Jacobs, In Praise of Garden Shadows: Photos of Japan. The Upper Deck Gallery is located inside Cape Cod Photo, Art & Framing. For more information call 508-255-0476.
Garden in the Woods, 180 Hemenway Road in Framingham, is the 45-acre botanical garden of New England Wild Flower Society, America’s oldest plant conservation organization, and boasts over 1,000 native plant species on display including 150 rare and endangered species.
Native plants are a riot of color in autumn and there is no better place to see them in a mature garden setting than at Garden in the Woods.
Join the Ecological Landscaping Alliance on Friday, October 3, from 5:30 – 8 for this unique opportunity to enjoy the fall foliage of native plants while reconnecting with native talent (colleagues) and sharing your favorite native brew. Bring a couple of your favorite native brews to this BYO & S (Bring Your Own and Swap) gathering for a twilight tour that is sure to sell out. $25 for NEWFS and ELA members, $30 for nonmembers.
Native brew soft-drinks will be provided. Image from www.nourishedkitchen.com.
Mark Richardson is the Horticulture Director at New England Wild Flower Society and oversees the Society’s botanic garden, Garden in the Woods, and its native plant nursery operation, Nasami Farm. Mark studied ornamental horticulture at University of Rhode Island while helping to run a mid-sized ornamental plant nursery before finding his true passion in public horticulture. He led undergraduate programs at Longwood Gardens, where he overhauled the curriculum of the Professional Gardener Program, and oversaw adult education at Brookside Gardens. He holds a master’s degree from the University of Delaware’s Longwood Graduate Program.
– See more at: http://www.ecolandscaping.org/event/native-plants-native-brews-native-talent/#sthash.hmZp64LC.dpuf.
From medieval bestiaries to Borges’s Book of Imaginary Beings, we’ve long been enchanted by extraordinary animals, be they terrifying three-headed dogs or asps impervious to a snake charmer’s song. But bestiaries are more than just zany zoology—they are artful attempts to convey broader beliefs about human beings and the natural order. Today, we no longer fear sea monsters or banshees. But from the infamous honey badger to the giant squid, animals continue to captivate us with the things they can do and the things they cannot, what we know about them and what we don’t.
With The Book of Barely Imagined Beings, Caspar Henderson offers readers a fascinating, beautifully produced modern-day menagerie. But whereas medieval bestiaries were often based on folklore and myth, the creatures that abound in Henderson’s book—from the axolotl to the zebrafish—are, with one exception, very much with us, albeit sometimes in depleted numbers. The Book of Barely Imagined Beings transports readers to a world of real creatures that seem as if they should be made up—that are somehow more astonishing than anything we might have imagined. The yeti crab, for example, uses its furry claws to farm the bacteria on which it feeds. The waterbear, meanwhile, is among nature’s “extreme survivors,†able to withstand a week unprotected in outer space. These and other strange and surprising species invite readers to reflect on what we value—or fail to value—and what we might change.
Caspar Henderson is a writer and journalist whose work has appeared in the Financial Times, the Independent, and New Scientist. He lives in Oxford, UK. He will appear at Porter Square Books, 25 White Street in Cambridge, on Tuesday, September 30 at 7 pm. For more information visit www.portersquarebooks.com.
From the woods to the meadows to our gardens, wild edibles are all around us. Join Dan Jaffe at Tower Hill Botanic Garden on Sunday, September 28 from 1 – 3 for a comprehensive look at the wild plants that can fill your belly. With a focus on tasty species, this course will cover finding edibles in the wild as well as growing them in your own garden. Questions on sustainability and conservation of rare edible species will also be addressed. Co-sponsored with the New England Wild Flower Society. $20 for members of one of the sponsoring organizations, $30 for nonmembers. Photo from www.nativeplantwildlifegarden.com. Register on line at www.towerhillbg.org.
Coordinated by Corona Tools, #plantchat is a weekly one-hour Twitter conversation about horticulture. Once a month, the American Horticultural Society if the guest host, rotating with Proven Winners, Rodale Institute, and Emergent (a group representing young horticulturists.) Type in the hashtag #plantchat on Mondays at 2 pm Eastern time to join the discussions about sustainable gardening, ornamental and edible plants, career paths for young horticulturists, and other hot topics of the day. Participants from all over the country will chime in with questions and advice. Weekly topic information is posted at www.coronatoolsusa.com/giln-schedule.
