Daily Archives: September 28, 2022

Friday, October 14, 10:00 am – 7:00 pm, & Saturday October 15, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm – Olmsted: Bicentennial Perspectives

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The Harvard University Graduate School of Design, in partnership with the Arnold Arboretum, will host a two-day academic conference as part of the national Olmsted 200 celebration. While Olmsted was central to the conceptual formation of the degree program in landscape architecture at Harvard University and the design of the Arnold Arboretum, the interpretive ambitions of the conference are anything but parochial.

More details to come. Friday’s program will take place at the GSD, Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium, and Saturday’s program will take place at the Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway. Free and open to the public. Anyone requiring accessibility accommodations should contact the events office at (617) 496-2414 or events@gsd.harvard.edu.

Sunday, October 2, 5:00 pm – The Parks That Made the Man Who Made Central Park: A Frederick Law Olmsted Lecture, Online

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John Phibbs will speak on Sunday, October 2 at 5 pm Eastern time on Zoom on the topic of Frederick Law Olmsted and the influence of his travels in England on his work. In its travels across the Atlantic the English idea of gardens was stripped down and reformed to make a new approach to landscape architecture, which was, in turn, shipped back to Britain in the 20th Century. The talk is sponsored by the National Association of Olmsted Parks and is free to all. Register at

https://olmsted200.org/events/the-parks-that-made-the-man-who-made-central-park/?mc_cid=4c61303777&mc_eid=24631ab4cc
Birkenhead Park, Liverpool, the first public park and Olmsted’s inspiration for public parks

Famously, Olmsted took from his travels not only the delight in nature that is so much a part of 18th Century English landscape, but also its didactic and philanthropic role in ameliorating the lives of ordinary people in the new industrical cities.

Tuesday, October 11, 6:45 pm – 8:15 pm – Wild Wood: True Tales of Trees, Online

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Soundless but sentient, trees were absent for all but the last 10% of Earth’s history yet are essential to all air-breathing life on the planet today. They are the longest-living organisms on Earth, can communicate to one another through intricate underground soil networks, and even thermoregulate, all while rarely ever dying from old age.

Join Liana Vitali, naturalist and educator at Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary in Maryland (and self-proclaimed tree-hugger), for an immersive audio-visual journey into the fascinatingly complicated and connected life of trees—from their first tiny emergence through the topsoil as seedlings, to their lasting value to forest life as fallen logs.

Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary, just 12 miles outside Washington, D.C., is the jewel of the Patuxent River. Its 1,700 acres of open water, tidal freshwater marshes, forested wetlands, upland and riparian forest, creeks, meadows, pine and sand barrens, and fields along the eastern shore of the Patuxent contain multitudes of welcoming habitats for a true diversity of wildlife.

The October 11 webinar, beginning at 6:45, is $20 for Smithsonian members, $25 for nonmembers. Register at https://smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/tickets/wild-wood