Boston Flora

Month: May 2022

  • Tuesday, May 10, 5:00 am – Forgotten Women Gardeners – Edith Lady Londonderry, Online

    Neil Porteus and The Gardens Trust will discuss Circe’s Garden, Edith, Lady Londonderry’s Garden at Mount Stewart, on May 10 at 5 am (recording link sent following the talk, good for a week to view at your leisure.)

    Visionary garden designer, suffragist and society hostess, Edith Vane-Tempest-Stewart, Lady Londonderry, created one of the most original gardens of the 20th century at Mount Stewart, in County Down, Northern Ireland. After the First World War and in her 40s, Edith channeled her energies into the garden, filling it with rich symbolism inspired by her Celtic upbringing and Greek myths. She amassed an unrivalled collection of rare and tender plants, taking advantage of the mild climate of Strangford Lough and experimented with bold planting schemes. She even famously turned down Gertrude Jekyll’s proposals for the garden in favour of her own. The talk will have new research and information on what is one of the most enchanting gardens in the world.

    Neil Porteus has been a head gardener since 1990, he took a voluntary redundancy from the National Trust in December 2020 and works as a garden consultant in Ireland and Northern Ireland. He also propagates a lot of plants from home which are hard to come by now in the horticultural trade. Neil has a BSc Hons in Horticulture and an MA in Garden History.

    £5 – Register through Eventbrite by clicking HERE.

    EDITH, MARCHIONESS OF LONDONDERRY, by Philip de Laszlo (1869-1937), in Lady Londonderry’s Sitting Room at Mount Stewart House, Co. Down, Northern Ireland. (MST/P/2445)

  • Saturday, May 21, 9:00 am – 1:00 pm – Scituate Garden Club Plant Sale

    The Scituate Garden Club will hold its annual plant sale on May 21 from 9 – 1 at the Wildflower Garden at the Mann Farmhouse, 108 Greenfield Lane in Scituate. Admission is free. Located on the grounds of the historic Mann House, the Wildflower Garden is a hidden gem that delights in all seasons. The garden showcases wild and primarily native plants. The garden is open to the public year-round for walking, bird watching, nature observation and peaceful contemplation.

  • Monday, May 9, 1:00 pm – The Rose: Graham Stuart Thomas and Mottisfont Abbey, Online

    This talk is the second in a Gardens Trust Lecture Series on Mondays at 1 pm Eastern time, in association with the Historic Roses Group. £5 – register at Eventbrite HERE. You will be sent Zoom log in information and after, a recorded link to watch at your leisure for seven days following. Historic roses are timeless and beautiful old roses from past centuries continue to deserve a place in today’s gardens. With their classic ‘old-fashioned’ charm and graceful forms, the soft petals and delicate colours of old roses are often accompanied by a deliciously rich and powerful fragrance. Moreover, old roses contain the original gene pool from which all later roses have been bred. They are supremely rewarding to grow, fascinating to study and they need to be conserved.

    On May 9, David Stone will speak on Graham Stuart Thomas and the Roses of Mottisfont. This lavishly illustrated talk tells the story of the history and development of the ornamental Garden Rose. It also tells of the formation of the world-famous display gardens of Historic Roses at Mottisfont Abbey, Hampshire, and the role of Graham Stuart Thomas, the National Trust’s Gardens Adviser, in their creation and establishment. The maintenance and care of shrub roses in general is also covered, with illustrations as to the pruning methods developed by the Garden Team of Mottisfont under their (then) Head Gardener, David Stone.

    David Stone was Head Gardener at Mottisfont Abbey from 1978 until 2014. For more than 20 years he worked closely with Graham Thomas at Mottisfont, and today is recognized as a leading authority on the history and cultivation of Historic Roses. He has lectured in Europe, the U.S.A, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. David Stone sits on the committee of the Historic Roses Group, for which he wrote A Newcomer’s Guide to Old Roses, a booklet available from the HRG website, and has written on roses in the gardening media. In his spare time he also writes poetry. In 2014 he was awarded the British Empire Medal and made an Associate of Honour of the R.H.S.

  • Friday, May 13, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – Hawk Mountain Sanctuary: Owls of the East, Online

    Explore one of nature’s most elusive nocturnal raptors during a virtual visit to Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in eastern Pennsylvania. In an informative and lively Smithsonian Associates May 13 presentation, Aaron Prince, a member of the educational staff and a raptor-care specialist, invites you into the mysterious world of owls, especially the Eastern screech owl found all along the East Coast.

    Prince discusses different methods that scientists use to study owls and describes some of the natural adaptations that have allowed owls to become apex predators, from their highly developed sight and hearing to dexterous feet that assist them in climbing and hunting.

    He also introduces a live ambassador Eastern screech owl and shares the histories of several other species of owls at the sanctuary. The program concludes with a brief Q&A session. $25 for Smithsonian Associates members, $30 for nonmembers. Register at www.smithsonianassociates.org

  • Sunday, May 15, 9:30 am – 11:30 am – Wildflower Field Study

    May is the perfect time to explore our local habitats for wildflowers. This field study throughout the gardens of Tower Hill will explore the great variety of spring blooming wildflowers in the property’s woods, wetlands, and meadows. The class will focus on each plant’s key identification features of flower, leaf, and stem, and note the particular habitats in which they grow.

    Ted Elliman has been engaged in plant conservation in the northeast for over forty years. As a plant ecologist at the Native Plant Trust in Framingham, Massachusetts, he conducted botanical inventories, natural community surveys, and invasive species control programs. Ted also worked as a contract ecologist for the National Park Service. He is the author of Wildflowers of New England and co-author of Grasses, Sedges, Rushes: An Identification Guide.

    $35 Member Adult; $50 Adult (Registration includes admission to the Garden) Register HERE.

  • Thursday, May 5, 5:00 am – Kew’s Palm House, Online

    This Gardens Trust talk on May 5 is the second in our 2nd series on Victorian Gardens on Thurs @ 10.00 GMT (5 am Eastern). £5 each or all 6 for £30. Register through Eventbrite HERE. Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk. A link to the recorded session (available for 1 week) will be sent shortly afterwards.

    At the start of Queen Victoria’s reign, the royal gardens at Kew were regarded as an unnecessary expense and threatened with closure. Saved by a press and parliamentary campaign, Kew was transferred from royal to public ownership in 1840, and Sir William Hooker was appointed director.

    To build Kew’s status, Hooker persuaded the royal family to grant more land and commissioned a magnificent new Palm House. Designed by iron-founder Richard Turner and architect Decimus Burton, the Palm House employed the latest in engineering technology. Hailed as ‘the glory of the gardens’, the Palm House offered Londoners the experience of a day trip to the tropics. Britain’s foremost landscape designer, William Nesfield, laid out the surrounding grounds to make the Palm House the centrepiece of Kew.

    Kate Teltscher explores the function of the Palm House as imperial symbol and botanical spectacle. She traces Hooker’s transformation of Kew from small run-down garden into splendid national botanic establishment. Dr Kate Teltscher is a cultural historian and writer. Her most recent book is the acclaimed Palace of Palms: Tropical Dreams and the Making of Kew (Picador, 2020). She is an Emeritus Fellow of the School of Humanities at the University of Roehampton, Honorary Research Associate of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

  • Tuesday, May 3, 5:00 am – From Gardens to Landscape, Woodbines to Woods: Women at Wrest in a Changing World: Jemima Marchioness Grey and Amabel Hume-Campbell, Countess de Grey of Wrest Park, Online

    Wrest Park is well known for its long association with powerful female garden creators from Lady Elizabeth Talbot (1581-1651) and the ‘Good Countess’ Amabel (1607-98), through to the arrival of the Land Army in the walled garden in the 20th century. This May 3 Gardens Trust talk will contrast the lives and contributions of two of the most influential women on the surviving landscape at Wrest: Jemima Marchioness Grey (1723-97) and Amabel Yorke, Countess de Grey (1751-1833). Their cultural influences and economic contexts provide a dramatic contrast from Jemima’s intellectual rurality within the milieu of Chinoiserie and classical understanding, to the harsher economic realities and political backdrop of enclosure and war experienced by Amabel. We will use their letters and diaries to explore one designed landscape through their two very different lives. The live webinar will take place at 5 am Eastern time, but a recording link is sent the same day to enjoy over the following week at your convenience. £5 through Eventbrite by linking HERE.

    Twigs Way is a garden historian, writer and researcher. Twigs’ talks and books reflect themes of symbolism and meaning, class and gender, art and literature, and her desire to follow unknown paths towards the unexpected. Twigs has a specific interest in the roles of women in and out of the garden, which was the topic of her first book and a particular interest in the women of Wrest Park. Twigs is an accredited Arts Society lecturer and her history of the Chrysanthemum in art and culture was published by Reaktion in 2020. She is currently (not quite) working on the equally golden daffodil.

    Portrait of the Ladies Amabel and Mary Jemima Yorke by Joshua Reynolds

  • Sunday, May 8 – Lilac Sunday

    Join The Arnold Arboretum for the first Lilac Sunday since 2019! We’ll be celebrating 150 years of Arboretum history and 112 Lilac Sundays.

    Experience the springtime bloom of our renowned collection of nearly 400 lilacs. Visit for tours with Arboretum experts, hands-on children’s programming, and more. Picnicking in the Arboretum landscape is permitted on this day only. With 399 lilac plants representing 177 taxa (kinds), the Arboretum holds one of the premier lilac collections in North America. Lilac Sunday has been celebrated at the Arnold Arboretum since 1908. Signs in the landscape feature specific lilacs to reveal the amazing diversity of this special collection. Print a Self-Guided Lilac Tour. For hours and more information, visit https://arboretum.harvard.edu/events/lilacs-at-the-arnold-arboretum/