Daily Archives: May 15, 2021


Wednesday, May 19, 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm – I Have a Butterfly Garden: Now What?, Online

You’ve created a butterfly garden to attract butterflies but how do you know that they’ve actually visited? Caterpillars and butterflies leave clues, both big and small, so get ready to look at your plants like never before! Using monarchs and swallowtails as our main examples, Amy Mawby will explore native butterfly species in all of their life cycle stages and behaviors. Discover how our gardens support butterflies throughout their marvelous metamorphosis. Go beyond your backyard and learn tricks, tools and timing for raising butterflies at home. This Tower Hill Botanic Garden program will be held virtually on May 19 at 6:30 pm. Once you register you will receive a zoom link in the confirmation. This webinar will also be RECORDED and available for 2 months to all registrants. $10 for THBG members, $15 for nonmembers. Register at www.towerhillbg.org.

Amy Mawby is a garden educator and photographer. Her roots are buried deep in horticulture and she has spent 12+ years leading education and visitor experience teams at public gardens. Amy has most recently worked at Tyler Arboretum and Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve (BHWP). At BHWP, she found a passion for native plants and at Tyler Arboretum she nurtured her love for native butterflies as the staff lead for the seasonal Butterfly House exhibit, as well as in her home garden. She is also a visual storyteller and nature shutterbug. Amy holds a M.S. in Public Horticulture from the University of Delaware and a B.S. in Plant Science from Cornell University.


Tuesday, May 18, 11:00 am – 12:00 noon – Medicine, Knowledge, and Power in the Atlantic Slave Trade, Online

Even as they were brutally forced from their homelands, enslaved Africans brought valuable medical and botanical knowledge with them to the Americas. Professor Carolyn Roberts highlights how African plant expertise was incorporated into 18th-century science and used to sustain the largest forced oceanic migration ever to occur in human history. She will discuss which plants enslaved Africans used, how they made medicines, and what present-day phytochemical research reveals about why these medicines were so effective. This New York Botanical Garden online lecture will take place May 18 at 11 am, and is $18. Register HERE.

Carolyn Roberts, Ph.D., is a historian of medicine and acclaimed educator with a joint appointment in the departments of History/History of Science and Medicine and African American Studies at Yale. Her current book project, To Heal and To Harm: Medicine, Knowledge, and Power in the Atlantic Slave Trade, will be the first full-length study of the history of medicine in the British slave trade.