Daily Archives: January 20, 2017


Sunday, February 5, 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm – Late Bloomer: How to Garden with Comfort, Ease and Simplicity in the Second Half of Life

There are times in a gardener’s life when what we want to do and what we can do are at odds. Our knees and backs may be complaining, our energy isn’t what it was – yet our desire to get our hands in the dirt is as strong as ever. Or maybe we’ve downsized to a much smaller outdoor space that doesn’t look promising at all. What to do? In Late Bloomer, garden designer Jan Coppola Bills shows us how to successfully rethink our approach to gardening as we age. The author is a second-half-of-life gardener who helps her many friends and clients achieve easy care, low cost, eco-friendly, simple and beautiful gardens. It’s all about maintaining a joyful, healthful connection with the soil – but without the toil. Late Bloomer is part garden philosophy and part on-the-ground strategies and tips from the author and expert gardeners across the U.S. With color photos on almost every page, this inviting and practical book is organized around the four tenets of the Late Bloomer philosophy: Simplicity. Beauty and Harmony. Comfort and Ease. Relaxation and Letting Go.

The lecture and book signing will take place Sunday, February 5 from 1 – 2 at Tower Hill Botanic Garden, 11 French Drive in Boylston. Free with admission to the garden.

Jan Coppola Bills is a certified landscape designer, advanced master gardener, entrepreneur, and contributing writer for State-by-State Gardening magazine. She holds a masters degree in Organizational Management. After a successful career in the corporate world, she made a major life reassessment and followed her heart: She traded in her heels for Wellies and started the Detroit-area landscape design company Two Women and a Hoe® (twowomenandahoe.com). Jan shares her gardening philosophy of comfort, ease and simplicity with her clients, in her speaking engagements, and with her large online community on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest.


Tuesdays, February 7 – 28, 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm – Beekeeping Class

This Cape Cod Museum of Natural History four part course does not require any prior knowledge of beekeeping. It is designed to be of equal interest to the person who wants to get into beekeeping and to those who simply want to know more about the “busy bees” that provide us with the delicious treat of honey and many of our fruits and vegetables.

The course will cover the required hardware, the biology of the honeybee, beekeeping tasks throughout the seasons, as well as the honey harvest. The Museum’s four outdoor hives will give the participant an opportunity to get hands-on experience on how to assemble the hardware, how to start a new hive (the “hiving procedure”) and how to assess the health of a developing hive. We will also discuss some of the recent results of current bee research.

The course will be co-taught by George Muhlebach, a hobby beekeeper with over 30 years experience and has run the CCMNH bee program for the last 11 years and Nancy Hipp experienced Field Guide, Naturalist, and Bee docent volunteer.  The Museum is located at 869 Main Street in Brewster.

The cost is $60 at registration. Volunteer to assist with 4 summer hive openings during the 2017 season and get a $25 rebate. To register please call the Museum at 508-896-3867, ext. 133.