For the sixth year, woodturners from throughout New England will exhibit their work at the Arnold Arboretum. Using a lathe to form their pieces, woodturners create practical objects or “turn” to the purely aesthetic, resulting in a show that appeals to the eye and the touch. For more information on this free exhibit, including hours, visit https://arboretum.harvard.edu/events/#ds-3 (Image: “Cherry Root Bowl,” Steve Wiseman)
This October 3 talk on The English Rose in Life and Textiles is with Mary Schoeser, sponsored by The Gardens Trust. The talk is part of a 6-part Gardens Trust online lecture series, exploring how flowers and gardens have inspired textile artists, begins Mondays at 18:00 BST, equivalent to 2 pm Eastern time. Here in their latest series of talks they are taking a sideways view by exploring how gardens and flowers have influenced and inspired other arts and crafts. This first series of 6 will focus on textiles and explore some of the historical and technical aspects of embroidering, weaving and printing using floral designs on fabric. You will look at textiles from Elizabethan crowns to Edwardian table linen to see how flowers provided inspiration, taking in the prolific art embroiderers of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Then you will be brought bang up to date with two contemporary embroiderers with very different approaches to floral imagery who will share their design processes with us.
This talk follows the fate of the rose as depicted in English textiles of the 19th century. Acknowledging two French Queens who helped to establish the royal connotations of this flower, it turns to Victoria and the impact of both the ‘Gardenesque’ and the Great Exhibition of 1851, particularly on members of the Arts & Crafts circle. The resulting ‘branch and net’ theory of design is seen in works by William Morris and others, including his daughter May, who also personifies the epithet, an ‘English Rose’.
This ticket (click HERE to purchase) is for this individual session and costs £5, and you may purchase tickets for other individual sessions via the links below, or you may purchase a ticket for the entire course of 6 sessions at a cost of £24 via the link 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.
Mary Schoeser FRSA is a Senior Honorary Research Fellow at the V&A, Honorary President of the Textile Society and Patron of both the Bernat Klein Foundation and the School of Textiles. Mary has collaborated with many museums, including the Fashion Textile Museum, the V&A and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. As an historic textiles advisor she has worked with English Heritage, the National Trust and private house owners, and as a consultant archivist, with organizations such as Laura Ashley, Sanderson and the John Lewis Partnership. A prolific author of many books including World Textiles: A Concise History (2003); Sanderson: The Essence of English Decoration (2010) and Textiles: The Art of Mankind (2012). Her latest book is The Art of Wallpaper: Morris & Co. in Context (2022).
Autumn is a great time to assess your woody plants for shape, structure and health. This Berkshire Botanical Garden October 1 demonstration/workshop will focus on pruning, including when, why and how to shape, renovate, train, or rejuvenate your woody plants. Learn about pruning tools, timing and specific techniques available to the home gardener. Pruning techniques for both evergreen and deciduous hedges will be covered. Dress to be outside, and bring pruners. The class runs from 10 – 1, and is $20 for BBG members, $28 for nonmembers. Register at https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/events/fall-pruning
Ken Gooch is the former forest health program director for the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation. Additionally, he is a Massachusetts-certified arborist and teaches arboriculture at the Garden.
David Bird is a photographer based in Danielson, Connecticut. He makes characters out of acorns, sticks, and whatever else he finds in the back yard, and then photographs them in the wild with real animals. Most of these photos are the result of a careful study of animal behavior, patience, and a lot of birdseed. An exhibit of his photographs will be on view at Blithewold Garden, 101 Ferry Road (Rt. 114) in Bristol, Rhode Island through October 16. For more information visit www.blithewold.org or call 401-253-2707. Check out David Bird’s website here. Included with general admission
Thomas High (below) presented the Mary Natale Citizenship Award to Laurie Thomas for her long standing work including the promotion of our urban green space in the Back Bay. She is a leader of the Garden Club of the Back Bay, where she coordinated two inventories of the front yard and alley trees. Laurie was central in the creation of the Club’s Back Bay Trees website (Backbaytrees.org) which educates our residents on the importance of preserving our green canopy. Laurie is also a leader on the Gibson House Board of Directors, where she co-chairs the Museum Committee and is also is a key member of NABB’s Architecture Committee, where she combines her environmental and preservation knowledge, with plain old good sense to evaluate the many proposals the Committee considers every month. Her many contributions have made the Back Bay a better place for us all. Laurie is also one of the Garden Club’s premier wreath decorators, which is no small feat – an artist, a conservationist, and wonderful person.
With its long history of advancing positive social outcomes in the US and around the world, the Loeb Fellowship is eager to celebrate its 50th anniversary and alumni weekend, October 6-9, 2022. In celebration of its 50th year, the Loeb Fellowship is hosting a reunion weekend for its 400+ alumni, as well as hosting a series of public discussions examining the social impacts of the built and natural environments. Throughout the weekend, significant voices will convene to share reflections, wisdom, and insight with the Harvard GSD and broader community, and also engage directly with the Loeb Fellowship on this momentous occasion in its history.
On Thursday, October 6 at 6:30 PM in Gund Hall’s Piper Auditorium, Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson will give an opening keynote. Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is a marine biologist, policy expert, writer, and Brooklyn native. She is co-founder of Urban Ocean Lab, a think tank for the future of coastal cities. She co-edited the bestselling climate anthology All We Can Save, co-founded The All We Can Save Project, and co-created the Spotify/Gimlet climate solutions podcast How to Save a Planet. Recently, she co-authored the Blue New Deal, a roadmap for including the ocean in climate policy. Previously, she was executive director of the Waitt Institute, developed policy at the EPA and NOAA, and taught as an adjunct professor at New York University.
Dr. Johnson earned a BA from Harvard University in environmental science and public policy, and a Ph.D. from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in marine biology. Her writing has been published widely, including in The New York Times, Washington Post, and Scientific American. She serves on the advisory boards of Environmental Voter Project and Scientific American, and on the board of directors for GreenWave and Patagonia. Recent recognitions include the Schneider Award for climate communication and Time’s 100 Next List. Outside magazine called her “the climate leader we need.”
Dr. Johnson’s forthcoming book has the working title What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futurism. Find her @ayanaeliza.
Please note that masks are required for the Thursday night keynote by Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. For more information and to register, please visit the Loeb Fellowship website.
Have you ever wondered what and how photography professionals see or more of how they approach their work? Through the Nature Photography Classes Speaker Series, you will be able to see what goes on in their minds, within their cameras, and in the field as they bring to you some of their most impactful images, thoughts, and insights. The speaker series is a live opportunity to ask questions as part of a 90-minute web-based format.
Join us as we talk to the leading nature and landscape photographers. The speaker series is a unique opportunity to hear from and interact with people that rarely speak with audiences or give presentations and some of the best photography educators in the world. Plus at only $10 per speaker, it is incredibly well priced and you don’t have to be there live to get the recording. This is guaranteed to be an amazing Fall Series where you will hear from 7 speakers, talking about their creative processes, how they have put practices to work to grow in their own work, found the elements of creativity to work for them and what we can all learn from this process.
The registration links will come via Zoom. For complete biographies of each speaker, and to see examples of work, visit https://www.naturephotographyclasses.com/speaker-series Register HERE.
A strong tradition of health tourism at spa resorts in continental Europe has identified the ‘Kurpark’ and ‘Kurgarten’ (spa parks and spa gardens), as a subtype in garden history, in which the planted environment is an integral part of the visitor experience, an important element of ‘the cure’. Of the many spas in existence at some time in Britain, landscape designed for ‘taking the waters’ has featured in a high proportion of the locations. This series of talks looks at notable examples, identifying the characteristics and influence of their planned landscape.
For visitors to spas, the supposed curative properties of the waters were only part of the spa experience. The facilities and ambience were also vital in choosing where to take ‘the cure’ and although a scenic location was most desirable, designed landscaping had an important part to play. A potential suite of plantings including tree-lined avenues (well walks), embellishment for pump rooms, promenade parks and pleasure gardens were used to support and promote spa visiting. This Gardens Trust talk, second in a series on British Spa Landscapes, summarizes recent research on parks, gardens and avenues directly associated with ‘taking the waters’ in British spa locations, identifying what remains long after medicinal spa visiting has declined to almost zero in this country. Illustrated with selected – and some-times surprising – examples from England, Scotland and Wales, it will also consider the extent to which remaining spa landscapes are acknowledged and portrayed as important aspects of spa heritage.
As modern spas have morphed into facilities offering pampering and relaxation rather than medicinal water treatments, the talk will present the most recently designed spa garden at Carden Park in Cheshire, recognizing a continuity of intent in the creation of green spaces with therapeutic value.
Karen Emery is an educator, having taught in schools, colleges and running a prison education department, as well as working with industry to foster education-business partnerships. As a qualified ITG Tourist Guide since 2013, garden visits are part of her repertoire, which led to an MA in Garden and Landscape History from the University of London in 2021 with a dissertation on designed spa landscape in Britain. Since then, she has become active with the Kent Gardens Trust as researcher and co-ordinator for garden research projects in part of the county. www.kentgardenstrust.org.uk
A ticket is for this individual session costs £5, and you may purchase tickets for other individual sessions, or you may purchase a ticket for the entire course of 5 sessions at a cost of £20 via the link 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.
Refine your drawing and watercolor techniques with Sarah Roche and Wellesley College Botanic Garden in a six session class beginning Tuesday, September 27. You will focus on achieving the accurate representation of botanical subjects, with the fall project being Fungi & Ferns. Fall in the woods is an exciting time as all the showy plants have faded away, and the fungi, ferns and grasses become the stars. Your composition will be the result of your foraging. Observation, note taking and detailed sketching will be key since your specimens won’t be in their prime for long. You will create a painting of your habitat with all the fall leaves, twigs, ferns and grasses that are associated with your fungi. In person sessions at Elm Bank will take place September 27, October 18, and November 1. Other sessions are online. WCBG members $295, nonmembers $345. Register by calling 781-283-3094 or emailing wcbgfriends@wellesley.edu The series will be offered again January 31 – March 7.
Join The Trustees and herbalist Faith Johnson for a guided plant meditation on September 24 at the Leland Cooperative herb Garden, 4 Leland Street in Jamaica Plain, helping us to connect more deeply to our plant medicine. We’ll gather outdoors in an enchanting, tucked-away JP community garden to connect with the consciousness of the medicinal plant burdock and experience the herbal decoction. During the meditation, Faith will guide us through relaxing embodiment exercises and visualizations, followed by journaling, group reflection, and a sharing of the medicinal and energetic properties of the plant. These workshops are magical, contemplative, and leave participants not only with oral knowledge but experiential knowledge and a general feeling of well being and connection to themselves and the natural world.
Faith Johnson (she, her, hers) is a contemplative arts facilitator, herbalist, Reiki practitioner with experience working at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and owner of Full Circle Arts. She is an internationally exhibiting multi-medium artist with an MFA from Tufts University specializing in collaborative and meditative art making. Faith created Full Circle Arts to bring together and share her knowledge and love of the natural world, creativity, healing arts, and the desire for individual and communal contemplative experiences that support well-being. Trustees members $12, nonmembers $20. Register at https://thetrustees.org/event/79982/
