The Trustees of Reservations will sponsor a free class on Water-Wise Gardening at El Jardin de la Amistad, 403 Dudley Street in Roxbury, on Wednesday, June 7 from 6 – 7:30. Learn to modify your gardening practices to cope with our increasingly common droughts. We’ll cover when and how to water, building your soil for water retention, and mulching. Spanish translation included. For more information call 617-542-7696, x 2115.
The Esplanade Association is pleased to announce that water is once again flowing in the Lotta Fountain thanks to their supporters, and to partners at the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation.
To celebrate the $358,000 revitalization, they will be hosting a ribbon cutting on Thursday, June 15th at 3:30 pm. It will be a family and dog-friendly free event, featuring a performance by Lotta Crabtree and her banjo player, vendor giveaways, and refreshments for you and our four-legged friends.
WHERE: The Lotta Fountain (midway between the Arlington Street footbridge and the Dartmouth Street footbridge). For more information visit www.esplanadeassociation.org.
Heritage Museums & Gardens is a premiere public garden featuring a 100-acre property located in historic Sandwich Village, Massachusetts. Heritage boasts beautifully landscaped gardens, an extensive network of nature trails, and special exhibits in the museum galleries.
The entrance to this historic property has recently been redesigned to create a green parking area, offering a more beautiful entrance for visitors and much-needed stormwater infrastructure.
There is a growing interest in green parking lots that reduce environmental impact, improve safety, while being designed with appealing aesthetics in the process. The Heritage Museum & Gardens project is an excellent example of this multi-functional approach.
To the Heritage visitor, it looks like a more colorful entrance with better pick-up and drop-off access. But beyond the lovely view, there is a highly functioning stormwater management system where rainwater is directed to the landscaped bioretention system. The series of bioretention basins collect and treat the runoff but are viewed simply as lovely gardens to visitors. The parking lot project boasts over 8,000 perennials, 350 flowering shrubs, and 50 specimen trees. The project also incorporated permeable hardscape features including decorative pavers, native boulder walls, and a wave-model sidewalk grate.
From the beginning, the project has maintained a strong focus on landscape design, enhancing the visitor’s experience with a beautiful first impression of the gardens. Final touches will complete the project this spring, in time to celebrate the 2017 garden season.
Join Ecological Landscape Alliance and Horsley-Witten, project lead, on Tuesday, June 20 at 1 pm to learn more about the entrance gardens and parking lot project and be treated to a guided walking tour through the Heritage Gardens to experience the beauty and learn about the many sustainable initiatives underway at the gardens.
Brian Laverriere is a landscape designer at the Horsley Witten Group. He is a recent graduate of the University of Rhode Island where he earned his bachelor’s degree in landscape architecture with a minor in community planning; during Brian’s last year at URI, he was nominated as the 2015 University Select Olmsted Scholar. Brian offered technical and creative support generating construction level site and landscape plans for the most recent parking gardens development project at Heritage. Brian has experience with LID stormwater management, site planning and design. His professional interests include climate adaptation, green infrastructure and community resiliency.
Leslie Lutz is the Director of Horticulture and Facilities Management for Heritage Museums and Gardens, Sandwich, MA. Les manages all aspects of the 100 acre Garden including design, care, and maintenance of display gardens, trails and natural woodlands. He also responsible for operational maintenance, security, and capital projects. Les has extensive experience in botanical gardens having spent much of his career at Longwood Gardens as the Curator of Bonsai; New York Botanical Garden as the Conservatory Manager; Salisbury University as the Director of Horticulture; and Omaha Botanical Garden as the Chief Operating Officer.
$23 for ELA members, $33 for nonmembers – See more at: http://www.ecolandscaping.org/event/eco-tour-heritage-museums-garden/#sthash.fQdynYDY.dpuf
Join New England Wild Flower Society’s Dan Jaffe for a free pollinator-themed walk at Minton Stable Community Garden and Park at 110 Williams Street in Jamaica Plain. Learn which plants offer the most for beneficial pollinators from caterpillars, to bees, to butterflies, to birds. Emphasis will be placed on all stages of the pollinators’ life cycles. We will discuss already existing plants as well as brainstorm additional species that could fit in this garden or in your own.
Email mdelima@thetrustees.org or call 617.542.7696 x2115 to sign up. Image from www.ecobeneficial.com.
Join Russ Cohen, expert forager and author, on Tuesday, June 13 at 1 pm for a slide show featuring at least two dozen species of native edible wild plants suitable for adding to your own landscape, or nibbling on as you encounter them in other locales. The slideshow will be followed by a short outdoor excursion at Elm Bank, 900 Washington Street in Wellesley, to encounter some native edible plant growing there. You may register (Mass Hort members $12, nonmembers $20) online at www.masshort.org, or call 617-933-4973.
A Description of the New York Central Park by Clarence C. Cook, issued in 1869, is recognized as the most important book about the park to appear during its early years. This work has been republished with a new Introduction by Maureen Meister that reveals the roles of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in the creation of the book, which served in part to champion their vision for a major public park–a park that would become a model for the nation. For more information, see https://nyupress.org/books/9781479877461/
Maureen will speak at The Gibson House Museum on Monday, June 12, with a reception at 6 and talk beginning at 6:30. $10 for Gibson House members, $12 for nonmembers. Please pre-register at info@thegibsonhouse.org or 617-267-6338.
Maureen Meister is an art historian who has taught for many years at Boston-area universities including Tufts, Lesley, and Northeastern. She is the author of Arts and Crafts Architecture: History and Heritage in New England and Architecture and the Arts and Crafts Movement in Boston: Harvard’s H. Langford Warren and is the editor of H. H. Richardson: The Architect, His Peers, and Their Era.
The Opening Reception for a new photographic exhibition, Franklin Park: An Enduring and Ephemeral Landscape, will take place Wednesday, June 14 from 6 – 8 at the Shattuck Visitor Center, 125 The Fenway in Boston. For over 35 years, artist Robin Radin has been capturing the Emerald Necklace on film. Now, you can see her work on Franklin Park. The exhibit will run through December, 2017, and Radin’s photographs are also available for purchase. Exhibit hours are Saturday and Sunday, 11 – 4, and weekdays, 9 – 5. For weekday visits, call ahead as the gallery is a multipurpose room and may be closed for meetings. To rsvp for the free reception visit http://www.emeraldnecklace.org/about-us/shattuck-visitor-center/current-exhibit/
Join The New England Botanical Club and explore interesting places with great plants, led by local expert botanists. Trips for June, July and August, 2017, are planned, and participants must contact the trip leader 1 week in advance. The first summer trip will take place Saturday, June 17 to Arcadia Wildlife Management Area in West Greenwich, Rhode Island.
Arcadia WMA is one of the largest natural areas in the state. It includes a diverse array of habitats such as sandy pitch pine, oak/hickory/white pine forest, some forested wetlands, rivers, and Rhode Island’s only black spruce bog. We will focus on the Pine Top section, in the vicinity of Escoheag Hill in West Greenwich. There are some rich mesic forested areas with sugar maple; some early successional forest periodically cut; an old gravel parking lot being maintained as early successional habitat with some sandy, bog-like areas. We’ll also visit some forested seeps near the base of the hill, along the Wood River. Level of Difficulty -Moderate. We’ll be off-trail in a variety of habitats. Trip Leader: Tim Whitfeld (Timothy_Whitfeld@brown.edu) and Doug McGrady. Tim will send meeting time, location, and directions to those who register for the trip. Bring lunch, water, insect repellent, and if you wish, plant field guides, hand lens, etc. Photo by Davis Hunter.
