Boston Flora

Month: February 2020

  • Tuesday, March 3, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm – Dr. Vandana Shiva

    Please join The Harvard Graduate School of Design on March 3 at 6:30 pm in Gund Hall in Cambridge for the 2020 International Womxn’s Day Lecture delivered by Dr. Vandana Shiva. The lecture is free and open to the public.

    Dr. Vandana Shiva is trained as a Physicist and did her Ph.D. on the subject “Hidden Variables and Non-locality in Quantum Theory” from the University of Western Ontario in Canada. She later shifted to inter-disciplinary research in science, technology and environmental policy, which she carried out at the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore. In 1982, she founded an independent institute, the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology in Dehra Dun dedicated to high quality and independent research to address the most significant ecological and social issues of our times, in close partnership with local communities and social movements. In 1991, she founded Navdanya, a national movement to protect the diversity and integrity of living resources, especially native seed, the promotion of organic farming and fair trade. In 2004 she started Bija Vidyapeeth, an international college for sustainable living in Doon Valley in collaboration with Schumacher College, U.K.Dr. Shiva combines the sharp intellectual enquiry with courageous activism. Time Magazine identified Dr. Shiva as an environmental “hero” in 2003 and Asia Week has called her one of the five most powerful communicators of Asia. Forbes magazine in November 2010 has identified Dr. Vandana Shiva as one of the top Seven most Powerful Women on the Globe. Dr. Shiva has received honorary Doctorates from University of Paris, University of Western Ontario, University of Oslo and Connecticut College, University of Guelph.Among her many awards are the Alternative Nobel Prize (Right Livelihood Award, 1993), Order of the Golden Ark, Global 500 Award of UN and Earth Day International Award. Lennon ONO grant for peace award by Yoko Ono in 2009, Sydney Peace Prize in 2010, Doshi Bridgebuilder Award, Calgary Peace Prize and Thomas Merton Award in the year 2011,the Fukuoka Award and The Prism of Reason Award in 2012, the Grifone d’Argento prize 2016 and The MIDORI Prize for Biodiversity 2016, Veerangana Award 2018, The Sanctuary Wildlife Award 2018 and International Environment Summit & Award 2018.

    This event is co-sponsored by Womxn in Design and is organized as part of the 2020 International Womxn’s Day activities taking place from March 2 – 6, 2020 at the GSD.

    Anyone requiring accessibility accommodations should contact the events office at (617) 496-2414 or events@gsd.harvard.edu.

  • Monday, March 2, 12:00 noon – 1:30 pm – Seed Sovereignty and ‘Our Living Relatives’ in Native American Community Farming and Gardening

    Native heirloom seed varieties, many of which have been passed down through generations of Indigenous gardeners or re-acquired from seed banks or ally seed savers, are often discussed by Indigenous farmers as the foundation of the food sovereignty movement, and as helpful tools for education and reclaiming health. This March 2 free presentation at the Harvard Graduate School of Design explores how Native American community-based farming and gardening projects are defining heirloom or heritage seeds; why maintaining and growing out these seeds is seen as so important, and how terms like seed sovereignty should be defined and enacted. Many of the definitions seed keepers provided highlight the importance of heritage seeds for connecting them to previous generations of seed keepers; as a symbol of how tribal governments and citizens needed to better protect their cultural property; and as a token of the “relationality” that many Indigenous people feel towards aspects of their food systems. Seeds are described almost as intergenerational relatives– both as children that need nurturing and protecting, and as grandparents who contain cultural wisdom that needs guarding.  For these reasons, a growing network of Indigenous seed keepers is coalescing to not only provide education to tribal people around seed planting and saving, but also to push for the “rematriation” of Indigenous seeds from institutions who have collected or inherited them, back to their communities of origin. 

    Elizabeth Hoover is Associate Professor of American Studies at Brown University where she also serves as the Faculty Chair of Brown’s Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative steering committee. Her first book The River is In Us: Fighting Toxics in a Mohawk Community, (University of Minnesota Press, 2107) is an ethnographic exploration of Akwesasne Mohawks’ response to Superfund contamination and environmental health research.  Her second book project-in-progress From Garden Warriors to Good Seeds; Indigenizing the Local Food Movement explores Native American community based farming and gardening projects; the ways in which people are defining and enacting concepts like food sovereignty and seed sovereignty; the role of Native chefs in the food movement; and the fight against the fossil fuel industry to protect heritage foods. She also recently co-edited a book Indigenous Food Sovereignty in the United States with Devon Mihesuah (2019 University of Oklahoma Press). Elizabeth has published articles about Native American food sovereignty and seed rematriation; environmental reproductive justice in Native American communities; the cultural impact of fish advisories on Native communities; and tribal citizen science.  Outside of academia, Elizabeth serves on the executive committee of the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance (NAFSA) and the board of North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems (NATIFS).

    Anyone requiring accessibility accommodations should contact the events office at (617) 496-2414 or events@gsd.harvard.edu.

  • Saturday, March 7, 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm – Expert Honey Tasting

    Every taste of honey is an opportunity to learn something about its floral source, region and even the beekeeper’s practices. Tasting and evaluating honey is a skill learned through formal sensory training along with experience. Join honey connoisseur and beekeeper, Carla Marina Marchese, on Saturday, March 7 from 1 – 4 at Berkshire Botanical Garden to learn the methods of sensory analysis used by sommeliers to taste and evaluate honey like an expert. The art of honey tasting is as complex as skills used by a wine or olive oil sommelier. If you are looking to improve your knowledge of honey and your tasting skills you should attend this workshop, which is appropriate for those who appreciate honey and beekeepers alike. Copies of The Honey Connoisseur will be available for purchase and signing by Marina. $55 for BBG members, $65 for nonmembers. Register at www.berkshirebotanical.org

    Carla Marina Marchese is a member of the Italian National Register of Experts in the Sensory Analysis of Honey, where she received her formal training. Her book, The Honey Connoisseur, co-authored with Kim Flottum (editor of Bee Culture Magazine), parallels the concept of terroir to single-origin honey, directly matching floral sources to flavors, and conceived the first U.S. honey aroma and flavor wheel. In 2011, Marina established The American Honey Tasting Society as the leading resource for honey sensory education in the United States. An accomplished apiculturist, Marina has also successfully completed the Charles Mraz Apitherapy Course, deepening her understanding of products of the beehive and their applications to health and healing. Marchese is also the founder of the beloved brand of Red Bee honey.

  • Thursday, March 5, 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm – Landscape Design: Why I Like What I Like!

    Thursday, March 5, 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm – Landscape Design: Why I Like What I Like!

    On March 5 at Tower Hill Botanic Garden, enjoy a fast-paced interactive discussion focused upon the underlying basics of landscape design. Once known, the reasons under-pinning our often-shared design preferences, can be replicated, improved and extended. Problems can be more quickly articulated, and remedies identified.

    As an artist and landscape architect, lecturer Walter Cudnahufsky will share insight and principles that use the visual landscapes as a starting point but dig to discern why and how those landscapes serve and please. In his recent book, Cultivating the Designer’s Mind, Walter outlines the design process essential actions to more regularly assure high quality design decisions and landscapes. We can and must be more discerning consumers of designed consulting work and become better more efficient designers! At minimum, from this workshop, we can more fully explain why we like what we like. There is real potential and intention that you will not again see designed landscape in precisely the same way.

    Walter Cudnohufsky is a registered Landscape Architect with over forty-four years experience ranging from the plaza design for the Toronto City Hall to regional planning studies for the North Atlantic Regions to private residences in the Berkshires. He received his M.L.A. from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and B.S.L.A. from Michigan State University. Walt’s interest in analysis, concept development and design process led him to found the nationally recognized graduate program at the Conway School of Landscape Design in 1972. In 1992, after 20 years as CSLD director, he returned full-time to his ongoing private practice.

    Walt is quick to identify attributes and constraints, offer compelling ideas, and define simple, innovative concepts that lead to uniquely appropriate design solutions. He is a regular speaker and workshop leader at regional and national forums, and frequently facilitates energizing and productive meetings for a wide variety of organizations and institutions.

    The session begins at 6 pm. $32 for Tower Hill members, $46 for nonmembers. Register at www.towerhillbg.org.

  • Tuesday, March 3, 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm – Floral Morphology

    This Native Plant Trust introductory webinar on March 3 from 1 – 2 pm familiarizes you with a working vocabulary of floral parts and with the skills to accurately describe their position, fusion, numbers, absence, and other features used in taxonomy to identify and classify plants. Take the first step to correctly interpreting structures we see on plants and understanding how they allow for plant classification. Class is led by Arthur Haines. $12 for NPT members, $15 for nonmembers. Register at http://www.nativeplanttrust.org/events/floral-morphology/

  • Tuesday, March 3, 6:00 pm – Who Discovered Evolution?

    Charles Darwin is commonly cited as the person who “discovered” evolution. But, the historical record shows that roughly seventy different individuals published work on the topic of evolution between 1748 and 1859, the year that Darwin published On the Origin of Species. These early thinkers, now almost entirely forgotten, included biologists, geologists, horticulturists, physicians, clergymen, atheists, philosophers, teachers, and poets. On March 3 at 6 pm in the Geological Lecture Hall of the Harvard Museum of Natural History, 24 Oxford Street in Cambridge, William Friedman, Arnold Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Director of the Arnold Arboretum, Harvard University, will discuss the ideas of these pre-Darwinian evolutionists, place Darwin in a broader historical context, and examine the nature of scientific discovery and attribution.

    Presented by the Harvard Museum of Natural History and the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, as part of the Evolution Matters Lecture Series . Free and open to the public. Series supported by a generous gift from Drs. Herman and Joan Suit. This event will be livestreamed on the Harvard Museums of Science & Culture (HMSC) Facebook page. A recording of this program will be available on the HMSC Lecture Videos page approximately three weeks after the lecture.

  • Wednesday, March 4, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – Climate Change, Conservation, and the Role of Native Plant Horticulture

    Grow Native Massachusetts is proud to present our 2020 Evenings with Experts lecture series. These talks are free at The Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway in Cambridge, and open to all.

    Join us at 7 pm on March 4 for this talk with Jesse Bellemare, Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at Smith College.

    As our world warms, the distributions of many native plant species are shifting with the climate. But not all species will keep pace with modern climate change, and some could face extinction.

    This poses a dilemma: what role should we take in helping native plant populations migrate? How do we balance our instinct for preservation with the risk of a relocated plant species disrupting the ecology of its new region?

    Jesse Bellemare will explore these questions in the context of the constant evolution of plant ranges over time, and the current insights we can gain from native plant horticulture.

    Jesse Bellemare’s research focuses on the ecology and biogeography of forest plants in the eastern United States. He has authored numerous scientific articles about the impacts of climate change, invasive insects, and land-use history on plant populations. He is currently the president of the New England Botanical Club.

    Thank you to our community partners: the Cambridge Public Library, Mount Auburn Cemetery and the Boston Society of Landscape Architects — for their support of this series.

  • Monday, March 2, 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm – Botany’s Beauties: Restoring Wellesley’s Flower Models

    The collection of antique botanical models purchased for Wellesley College by Henry Durant is being restored, and will be on display in the corridor linking the Visitor Center to Global Flora. These botanically accurate and visually stunning papier mâché models were used for many years by botany students learning about the structure of fruits and flowers. The Wellesley College Botanic Garden Assistant Director Gail Kahn will lead you on a journey through their history, their conservation, and the intriguing mysteries about their origins that are slowly being revealed. The talk will take place March 2 at 1 pm at the Wellesley College Club, and is free for Friends of Wellesley College Botanic Garden, $10 for nonmembers. Register by calling 781-283-3094, or email wcbgfriends@wellesley.edu.

    papier mâché pea flower

  • Tuesday, February 25, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm – Plants in the Design Imagination

    Please join The Harvard Graduate School of Design on February 25 at 6:30 pm in the Piper Auditorium in Gund Hall in Cambridge for the Sylvester Baxter Lecture featuring a discussion by landscape architects Ron Henderson, Julian Raxworthy, and Douglas Reed, and moderated by Danielle Choi. Free and open to the public

    Participants:

    Ron Henderson is Professor and Director of the Landscape Architecture + Urbanism Program at Illinois Institute of Technology and has held prior appointments at Harvard, Penn State, Tsinghua, and RISD. As founding principal of L+A Landscape Architecture, he has designed the Lynch Courtyard at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston), City Walk (Providence), Grounds of the Elizabethan Theater at Chateau d’Hardelot (France), Landfill Garden (Providence), and Jiuzhou Qingyan garden at the China Pavilion of the 2010 Shanghai Expo (Shanghai), among many projects. He writes and lectures frequently on Asian gardens and cities, including The Gardens of Suzhou published in 2013 by University of Pennsylvania Press.  An exhibition of fifteen of his Japanese cherry tree sketchbooks is currently exhibited at the US National Arboretum where he is also collaborating with master gardener, Fujimoto Kurato, on the restoration of the arboretum’s venerable Japanese cherry trees.

    Julian Raxworthy PhD is a landscape architect based in Dubai. He is an Honorary Associate Professor with the ATCH Research Centre (Architecture, Theory, Criticism and History) at the University of Queensland, where he completed his doctorate entitled “Novelty in the Entropic Landscape: landscape architecture, gardening and change”. He has been a Registered Landscape Architect in Australia, where he was Design Manager for Aspect Studios, and Principal Landscape Architect for Donovan Hill Architects (now part of Bligh Voller Nield) and was also a Registered Landscape Architect in South Africa, where he was Convenor of the Master of Landscape Architecture & Master of Urban Design programs at the University of Cape Town, and Principal Landscape Architect for Wolff Architects. A graduate of RMIT University, Melbourne, he was a founder of Kerb: journal of landscape architecture, and has been a visiting professor at the University of Virginia, and at the École Nationale Supérieure de Paysage (ENSP) Versailles. His most recent book is Overgrown: practices between landscape architecture and gardening, published in Fall 2018 by The MIT Press, which was supported by a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

    Douglas Reed , MLA ’81, is recognized nationally for design leadership and for his tireless advocacy of culturally significant landscapes. Through his diverse projects and non-profit work, he passionately promotes the wise and creative treatment of our cultural patrimony. Known for his cultivated eye and relentless focus on contemporary design expression, Reed garnered broad critical acclaim two decades ago for the innovative Therapeutic Garden at the Institute for Child and Adolescent Development. That project received the President’s Award of Excellence from the American Society of Landscape Architects.

    Reed is a fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects. In 2011 he was recognized as a Resident of the American Academy in Rome. He was selected in 2005, with Gary Hilderbrand, for the Emerging Voices program of the Architectural League of New York City, and for the Thaler Memorial Lectureship at the University of Virginia in 2013. He lectures widely and participates as a critic on reviews for design schools nationwide. He co-authored the firm’s 2012 monograph, Visible | Invisible, which received the ASLA’s Award of Excellence in Communication.

    Danielle Choi, MLA ’08, is an Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. She teaches in the MLA-I core studio sequence and leads design research seminars.

    Choi’s research concerns infrastructure, technology, and the synthetic role of landscape architecture in American urbanization. Current research projects concern the environmental history of 20th century interior landscapes, and also water infrastructure and the invention of public nature. Archival work is used as a critical component of design research methodology as the cultural legacy of these projects is maintained through present-day projects of preservation, conservation, and restoration.

    Choi’s research has been published in Journal of Architectural Education, Harvard Design Magazine, and Landscape Architecture. Prior to joining the GSD, Choi taught studio in urban design at Columbia University. She is a licensed landscape architect, and has practiced with Topotek in Berlin and Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA) in New York; as a senior associate at MVVA, she led strategy and design of complex urban landscapes and managed large, multi-disciplinary teams. She holds a degree in art history from the University of Chicago and a Masters in Landscape Architecture from the GSD, receiving the Jacob Weidenmann award for excellence in design.

    Anyone requiring accessibility accommodations should contact the events office at (617) 496-2414 or events@gsd.harvard.edu.

  • Wednesday, February 26, 6:00 pm – Olfaction in Science and Society

    The sense of smell plays a critical role in human behavior, from warning us of potential dangers to attracting us to certain foods, places, and people. Harvard scientists Catherine Dulac, Higgins Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology; Lee and Ezpeleta Professor of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, and Venkatesh Murthy, Raymond Leo Erikson Life Sciences Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard, study the molecules, cells, and brain circuits that underlie olfaction and the social behaviors that aromas can elicit. In this Wednesday, February 26 program, they will engage in a conversation with internationally recognized olfactive expert Dawn Goldworm to discuss how neurobiological research on olfaction relates to our everyday experiences.

    Advance registration is recommended. Program begins at 6 in the Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street in Cambridge. Presented by the Harvard Museum of Natural History in collaboration with the Harvard Brain Science Initiative

    Free event parking at the 52 Oxford Street Garage