The Friends of the Public Garden will return to the Four Seasons Hotel Boston on April 29 for its signature fundraiser, The Green & White Ball. This event typically sells out well before the date, so for more information contact Amanda McGuire, Development Manager, at amanda@friendsofthepublicgarden.org, or call 617-723-8144.
The Gardens Trust is presenting an online lecture on April 4 at 2 pm Eastern exploring the Jardins Anglais with Gabriel Wick. £5 through Eventbrite – register HERE. Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start and a link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 1 week.
In September 1777 Marie-Antoinette invited her husband and a select number of courtiers to an inaugural fête at the Jardin Anglais of the Petit-Trianon, her personal domain within the park of Versailles. Over the preceding three years, despite the climate of fiscal austerity, the queen and her architect Richard Mique had succeeded in replacing Louis XV’s celebrated botanical gardens with rolling fields, a meandering river and clumps and woodlands. Subsequent years witnessed the addition of a temple, grotto, a dramatic alpine outcropping, and a hamlet. The prevailing interpretation of this garden is as an escapist fantasy, a refuge from a hostile court for a frivolous and unhappy young woman. This talk considers it in another light – a celebration of the autonomy and formidable influence of what was fast becoming one of the most powerful factions at court, the Partie de la Reine.
Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, in partnership with the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training (NCPTT), will host a three-day symposium as part of Olmsted 200, the national bicentennial commemoration of the birth of Frederick Law Olmsted, social reformer and founder of American landscape architecture. The symposium will be held in Boston, home to the Emerald Necklace, Olmsted’s last great public project. Adjacent to Boston is Brookline where the Olmsted firm’s home and office resided through 1980. For Olmsted, “nothing else compares in importance to us with the Boston work…I would have you decline any business that would stand in the way of doing the Best for Boston all the time.”
Through events, education, and advocacy at the local and national levels, Olmsted 200 ensures that the legacies of the Olmsteds live on across the country by renewing public and policy commitments to the preservation and maintenance of our historic parks and places. Olmsted Now is the Greater Boston effort, an inclusive coalition that connects communities and organizations commemorating Greater Boston’s bicentennial of Brookline-based Olmsted with the “fierce urgency of now.”
Registration for Olmsteds: Landscapes and Legacies is live HERE. Learn more about the symposium at this link. $49 – $99.
There is a new video from Britain’s National Trust on Caring for Shrub Roses. A couple of weeks ago, The Trust visited the sunken rose garden at Fenton House in Hampstead on a video tour to learn how their head gardener, Andrew Darragh cares for climbing roses. Now they are back with Andrew to learn how winter is the ideal time also for giving your shrub roses some care and attention. WATCH NOW Missed that other video? WATCH CARING FOR CLIMBING ROSES
