Boston Flora

Month: July 2020

  • Rockport in Bloom 2020 Canceled but Garden Tour 2019 Released Online

    Regrettably Covid-19 has preempted  the Rockport in Bloom Tour 2020. The Rockport Garden Club members are optimistic for a 2021 re-do.

    What it would have been: 

    The 2020 tour discovers the hidden gardens in downtown Rockport. It’s designed  as a walking tour assisted by a detailed map and the option of riding the town trolley.  More than a dozen private gardens will showcase the diverse geography of Rockport, which includes: ocean vistas, manicured boutique gardens, as well as sculptures and artwork. 

    The Rockport In Bloom Garden Tour has been a tradition, since 1995. It came about when club members were invited to visit a selection of other club members’ gardens. The tour was very popular and, in 2008, the decision was made to make it available to the public.  Since then it has evolved into a showcase of specific gardens graciously presented by residents of Rockport. 

    The recent July 2019 Rockport In Bloom Garden Tour was the most attended in its history.  Garden Tour proceeds go to many philanthropic, local endeavors; such as Rockport High School scholarships, Open Door community service, and beautification projects. 

    The local Mill Pond Meadow with its evocative “Millie the Whale” granite sculpture is an example of contributions. The surrounding flower beds are designed, planted, and tended by our Garden Club members. It is a labor of love, which enhances everyone’s enjoyment of Rockport’s seaside landscape.   

    Enjoy the complete video of the Garden Tour 2019 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VP04gJEQ8zI 

  • A Glorious Fourth

    Such a strange year. We are socially distancing in the middle of a pandemic, and facing a reckoning for centuries of racial inequities. More than 120,000 of our fellow citizens have died. We see millions of people unemployed or underemployed. More trivially, but perhaps not so trivially in terms of mental health, we miss sports, Olympics, concerts, plays, and fireworks. But we persist. The increased online availability of classes, lectures, tours, and seminars is a bit of a silver lining. The Garden Club of the Back Bay wishes you all a happy, and healthy, Independence Day. Please keep those masks on, people!

  • US Postal Service Introduces American Gardens Stamps

    The love of gardening stretches back to the earliest years of our country, inspiring George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and other founding fathers to plant some of America’s most iconic colonial-era gardens. From the 19th century to today, landscape designers have continues that tradition. With these stamps the Postal Service celebrates the beauty of American gardens. This pane of 20 stamps features 10 different photographs of botanic, country estate and municipal gardens taken between 1996 and 2014. The gardens include: Biltmore Estate Gardens (North Carolina); Brooklyn Botanic Garden (New York); Chicago Botanic Garden (Illinois); Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens (Maine); Dumbarton Oaks Garden (District of Columbia); The Huntington Botanical Gardens (California); Alfred B. Maclay Gardens State Park (Florida); Norfolk Botanical Garden (Virginia); Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens (Ohio); and Winterthur Garden (Delaware). Art director Ethel Kessler designed the stamps with existing photographs by Allen Rokach. Support our Postal Service! Order online at www.usps.com

  • Thursday, July 9, 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm – The New Gardener’s Handbook, Online

    On July 9 at 6:30 pm, enjoy an online Berkshire Botanical Garden lecture and Q&A session with author Daryl Beyers about his new book, The New Gardener’s Handbook, available for purchase through the BBG online shop. Novice or experienced, all gardeners learn something new every time they step into a garden to check on a plant, dig in the soil or harvest the fruits of their labor. Daryl Beyers, author of The New Gardener’s Handbook, shares the why-dos of the how-tos that help gardeners grow beautiful and bountiful gardens. Daryl will discuss the fundamentals of how plants grow, the importance of soil, how to sow seeds, watering and weeding. New gardeners will come away with a foundation to help their gardens flourish, and accomplished gardeners will learn expert insights and some new tips and tricks. Our Summer Author Series is presented in collaboration with Tower Hill Botanic Garden and Timber Press.    $10 for members of sponsoring organizations, $15 for nonmembers. Register at https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/events/summer-author-series-daryl-beyers-new-gardeners-handbook-online

    Daryl Beyers is author of The New Gardener’s Handbook: Everything You Need to Know to Grow a Beautiful and Bountiful Garden, available from Timber Press. As gardening certificate program coordinator at the New York Botanical Garden, Daryl helps guide the program’s curriculum and teaches the popular Fundamentals of Gardening course and courses on container gardening and garden design. He has more than 25 years of professional landscaping experience, specializing in residential garden design and development. As a staff writer, photographer and editor for Fine Gardening magazine, Daryl authored two special issues on garden design, and he served as contributing garden editor for Martha Stewart Living. His articles on gardening and garden design have also appeared in Horticulture and HGTV Magazine. 

  • Thursday, July 9, 4:00 pm – At-Home Fabric Dyeing With Stephen Hamilton Webinar

    Have old fabrics or clothes that need a refresh? Join The ARTery at 4 pm on July 9 for an at-home dyeing workshop with artist and The ARTery 25 member Stephen Hamilton. Stephen will teach us how to transform fabrics at home using natural dyes and West African dyeing techniques. For this workshop, we’ll be using annatto seed, a spice found in tropical climates. You can find annatto seed at your local grocery store or you can order it online.

    Stephen Hamilton is an artist and arts educator living and working in Boston, Massachusetts. His work incorporates both Western and African techniques, blending figurative painting and drawing with resist dyeing, weaving, and woodcarving. Each image is a marriage between the aesthetic perspectives and artistry of both traditions. As a Black American trained in traditional west African art forms, he treats the acts of weaving, dyeing, and woodcarving as ritualized acts of reclamation.

    This workshop is for all ages and is particularly fun for kids. This event is free and open to the public, but advance registration is requested. Visit https://www.wbur.org/events/601568/at-home-fabric-dyeing-with-stephen-hamilton

    Materials

    • 2 cups annatto seed
    • 2/3 cup soda ash/washing soda
    • 2 yards of white or light colored 100% cotton, linen wool or silk fabric (t-shirts, bed sheets or other clothing will work too)
    • Plastic twine (unflavored wax coater dental floss will work too)
    • 1 pair of scissors
    • 1 bucket
    • 1 large cooking pot
    • 1 cup of white vinegar (optional)

  • Thursday, July 9, 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm – The Planters of Patuxet and Plimoth, Online

    When the Pilgrims stepped onto the windswept shores of Cape Cod Bay in the cold and forbidding December of 1620, they encountered a landscape that bore the traces of 12,000 years of native settlement. They traveled across the outer Cape on well-worn paths that were etched indelibly into the sandy landscape. At clearings in the thick woodland, they discovered fields and gardens, covered with the stubble of the recent harvest. Near one of these fields, they dug into storage pits and took away the corn that they found there. This was the homeland of the Wampanoag people. Later that Spring, after settling at Patuxet (Plymouth), Squanto approached the Pilgrims and began to share with them knowledge of both the plants and the planting practices that had provided successful gardens for hundreds of years. How did the English incorporate Wampanoag practices into their own farming tradition, and in the end, what was the result? And, in turn, what English tools, technologies, and seeds were sought by the Wampanoag and how did that affect their traditional farming practices?

    Plimoth Patuxet will hold an online Cocktails & Conversations session on July 9 at 7 pm on this topic, and you may sign up (members $5, nonmembers $10) at www.plimoth.org. For more information email ccoleman@plimoth.org

  • Friday, July 10 and Saturday, July 11, 10:00 am – 5:00 pm – Framework Trees of New England Webinar

    Forests are a dominant feature of the New England landscape. This two part Native Plant Trust online course on July 10 and 11 from 10 – 5 with Yoni Glogower covers the history, changes in composition, and ecology of the region’s forest from the Ice Age through European settlement. We explore the impact of past natural and human disturbances on the landscape and learn how current forestry practices shape forest communities. You will learn to identify native trees, their habitats, and their communities. $252 for NPT members, $308 for nonmembers.