Join Lorraine and Mary Lou from Artistry Floral for in this Massachusetts Horticultural Society workshop and create your own floral display to take home or give away. You’ll learn the basics of conditioning flowers and see some basic mechanics of floristry through the process of designing a tabletop arrangement. Great opportunity to bring a friend and design together! Explore the ins and outs of floral shapes and cuttings flowers. The event will take place at The Gardens at Elm Bank in Wellesley on March 9 from 7 – 8:30.
Please bring floral scissors and a bucket or box to carry home your arrangement. $75 – $95. Register HERE.
In 2016, Lorraine Walsh and Mary Lou Ashur met as floral associates at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. There, studying fundamentals of floristry and working in teams, they designed and executed a variety of art inspired floral arrangements for certain museum locations as well as the restaurants, special events, and holiday installations. Now in the marketplace, they are committed to producing artistic floral creations, using only the highest quality flowers and plants, from local growers and flower producers around the world.
They are also focused on sustainable floral design and eco-friendly floral purchases from wearables to table arrangements, bouquets, and large installations They are inspired to produce arrangements that are unique and designed to honor their clients’ significant events respecting their individual styles, while sourcing seasonal flowers, and respecting the environment.
Morven Museum & Garden is pleased to present the 2023 Grand Homes & Gardens Speaker Series: Trailblazers and Trendsetters. Join us as we explore the people and spaces, past and present, who cultivated new opportunities and inspired breakthrough trends for future generations of landscape architects, designers, entrepreneurs, and horticulturalists. Today, these places continue the work of preserving historic and natural landscapes for public benefit and community engagement. The 2023 series will feature Manitoga, Villa Lewaro, Beauport – The Sleeper McCann House, and Bartram’s Garden. On March 8 at 6:30 pm, explore the unique and ornate designs in the summer home of one of America’s first professional interior designers, Henry Davis Sleeper.
Henry Davis Sleeper set many trends as one of America’s first professional interior designers. Sleeper’s unique and ornate design concepts were showcased throughout his summer home, Beauport, in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Here he hosted a regular cohort of artists and intellectuals, navigating early twentieth century society as a gay man. Presented by Kristen Weiss, the Cape Ann site manager at Historic New England, this talk will examine Sleeper’s groundbreaking interior designs, still featured in the house today, as well as Beauport’s architecture and arts and crafts landscape design.
Please note that our speaker will present this program virtually. The talk will be streamed live for an in-person and virtual audience alike. Speaker Kristen Weiss is the Cape Ann site manager at Historic New England; managing Beauport, the Sleeper-McCann House in Gloucester, Mass. and Cogswell’s Grant in Essex, Mass. She previously worked in the American Decorative Arts department at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass. She has developed multiple tours and lectures on historic sites, landscapes, and collections with a focus on American folk art. With an undergraduate degree in History and graduate work in Museum Studies and in Preservation Studies, Kristen has been working with museum collections and historic houses for over twenty-five years. $10 – $30 – Register HERE.
Cannon Hall dates back to the 14th century but it doesn’t become the parkland we see today until the 1760’s onwards, with obvious transition from Georgian splendour to Victorian folly it remained unchanged throughout the 20th century. Sold to Barnsley Council in 1951 the parkland and Hall have welcomed visitors for over 70 years, as the new millennium dawned the parkland and gardens needed fundamental repairs, and so £3.4million was invested to Restore the Glory and Reveal the Secrets. This talk looks at the appointment of the Project Manager Sharon Sutton, why she was chosen to manage the refurbishment, and how she navigated her way through the 4 year project to Historic Parks for the Future – Cannon Hall provide visitors with a destination parkland and gardens, but also delivered improvements the Council and visitors didn’t expect.
Sharon Sutton started her career in the Agricultural Industry and became increasingly interested in the places where she worked, the landscape, woodland, plants and wildlife were all fascinating, so a change of career was needed. A HND in Landscape Science was obtained in 1998 and as a result, she joined local government working in the Parks and Gardens sector for the next 24 years. During this period, she developed a particular interest in Historic Parks and Gardens and their associated buildings, renovating them for the benefit of the public and wildlife, and searching for ways to ensure their long-term use and protection.
In this second of a series of talks the speakers will introduce a variety of landscapes, gardens and themes enjoyed by Yorkshire Gardens Trust members which portray the wide diversity of designed landscapes in the 3 Yorkshire counties and the interests of the membership. £5 each or all 5 for £20. Register HERE.
Study three pioneering women designers – Beatrix Farrand, Marian Coffin, and Ellen Shipman – who shaped America’s tastes in the early 20th century. We’ll focus on gardens that showcase Farrand’s knack for innovation and infallible eye for design, Coffin’s use of contrasts in color, texture, and space, and Shipman’s rich planting style that exploded formal organization. You will also be able to view original plans of NYBG gardens they designed, such as Rockefeller Rose Garden, Benenson Ornamental Conifers, and Ladies’ Border, respectively. This New York Botanical Garden online talk with Paula Capps Sarathy takes place on three successive Thursdays from March 9 – 23, from 6 – 8, and is $125 for NYBG members, $139 for nonmembers. Register at www.nybg.org
Mosquitos are a nuisance at best and health risk at worst, so it’s understandable why many people turn to insecticides to try and control these pests. Though spraying may seem like a quick and easy way to deal with mosquitos, it’s often an ineffective control strategy. Worse, these insecticides are toxic to pollinators and other beneficial insects. Join Aaron Anderson, Xerces Pesticide Program Specialist, to touch on the risks that mosquito spraying poses and discuss practical, alternative methods of mosquito control in residential landscapes.
This Xerces Society webinar will be recorded and available on our YouTube channel. Closed Captioning will be available during this webinar. The live presentation will take place March 2 at 1 pm Eastern.
Mark your calendar for the next NEBS Meeting on Saturday, March 4, 2023 at 7pm ET at Harvard University’s Haller Lecture Hall and via Zoom. Non-members may register for the meeting access link here.
The traditional framework for explaining how a plant’s traits can influence its fitness is that the trait is based solely on its own genome. However, microbes inhabit all internal and external spaces of a plant both above and below ground and can impact the expression of these traits. In mutualisms, this microbially mediated selection can result in conflicts between host plant and microbe over the optimal trait value. Gaining a better understanding of the strength of selection exerted by microbes can lead to fundamental changes in how we approach microbiome research and may be key to moving towards more sustainable agriculture.
The speaker, Dr. Chandra Jack, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at Clark University in Worcester. Dr. Jack received her undergraduate, Masters, and PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Rice University. She is an evolutionary biologist interested in studying the eco-evolutionary dynamics of biotic interactions (microbe-microbe, plant-microbe, plant-insect, and all combinations). The ubiquitous nature of microbes and their association with all living organisms makes them an ideal system for studying how coevolution between species has led to long-term cooperative associations and how intra-and interspecific microbial conflict can determine the population structure of the plant microbiome. My current and future research seek to understand how microbes influence plant fitness, functional traits, and population structure; how genetic variation is maintained through species interactions; and the consequences of these interactions under different environmental conditions.
This is the third lecture in a six-week series of lectures which will look at the history and development of garden technology from Medieval times right up to the present day. The ‘technology’ of gardening has developed enormously over the past centuries due to mechanization, automation, advances in science – and we can now grow plants without soil, we have automated watering systems for our greenhouses and we can watch while the robot mower, controlled from our smartphones, trims our lawns to perfection. But although we may approach them differently, the tasks and challenges that face gardeners today are much the same as they were back in Tudor times and earlier: preparing the soil, planting, protecting, composting, propagating and so on and so on. The rise in the organic movement over the past few decades has reminded us that the gardeners of old knew at least as much about gardening and working in harmony with nature as we do now, so how have new technologies developed and progressed our gardening knowledge, practice, and techniques?
The Gardens Trust has engaged a series of expert speakers to examine this question, including the renowned garden writer and designer, Noel Kingsbury, National Trust curator James Rothwell, expert on lawnmowers through the ages Keith Wootton, as well as regular Gardens Trust lecturers Jill Francis and our very own David Marsh; who will take a different technology in turn – tools, fertilizers, pest control, glasshouses, lawnmowers and plant breeding – and explore their history and development in relation to gardening. Tickets £24 or £5 each. 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 (If you do not receive this link please contact us). A link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 1 week.
On March 7, enjoy Things ‘that noye Gardens’ – A History of Pest Control, with Jill Francis. Garden pests and diseases have been with us for as long as we have been making gardens. The first gardening text to be published in English promises to teach us how to dress, sow and set a garden, but at the same time, and equally importantly, offers remedies for ‘beasts, worms, flies and suchlike’ that are harmful to gardens. This talk will look at the many and various ways gardeners have sought to control them, from the downright superstitious, through practical remedies learned through observation and experience to the introduction of revolutionary chemical controls, which we may now wonder whether they have done more harm than good.
Jill Francis is an early modern historian, specializing in gardens and gardening in the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries. She was awarded her PhD in 2011 by the University of Birmingham and has taught as a visiting lecturer at Birmingham and also the University of Worcester. She also has lectured in a variety of Garden History fora, including the Institute of Historical Research Landscape and Gardens seminar program and most recently, has become increasing involved in the Gardens Trust extensive online provision. She also works at the Shakespeare Institute Library in Stratford-upon-Avon. Her first book, Gardens and Gardening in Early Modern England and Wales, was published by Yale University Press in June 2018.
In this Massachusetts Horticultural Society in person workshop, we will explore combining Asian paper collage with watercolor paints. The class takes place at the Gardens at Elm Bank in Wellesley on March 3 from 10:30 – 2:30. $55 for Mass Hort members, $75 for nonmembers. Register at www.masshort.org
The various textures of the papers and the slight resist quality of the glue, will result in interesting textural accidents when watercolor paints are added. Demos and handouts will be provided to create these uniquely textured paintings.
Instructed by Nan Rumpf
Nan Rumpf grew up in a small Iowa town on the banks of the Mississippi River, where she spent much of her childhood exploring the outdoors on her bicycle and daydreaming under a lilac bush. She graduated from the University of Iowa with a Bachelor of Arts. She has studied watercolor painting with Susan Swinand, Jane Goldman, Paul George, Charles Reid, Miles Batt, and Cheng Khee Chee.
Her paintings have been exhibited at The DeCordova Museum School Gallery, The Danforth Museum, The Art Complex Museum in Duxbury, The Attleboro Arts Museum, The Wellesley Free Library (First Place Award), The Center For The Arts in Natick, Art on the Common in Needham (First Place Award), The Clinton Art show (Best In Show), Post Road Art (First Place Award in the Abstract Show), The Wellesley Community Center (Margaret Fitzwilliam Award for Excellence in Watercolor), The New England Watercolor Society Show in Cotuit (Woodruff Art Center Award) and her painting Soaring was awarded by George Nick in Concord Art’s Juried Members show.
She is a member of the Concord Art Association, the Wellesley Society of Artists, The Rhode Island Watercolor Society and is a signature member of the New England Watercolor Society. She was chosen as one of the two art judges for The Amazing Things Summer Juried Art Show in 2012.
She has been a visiting artist instructing students at Framingham State University, The Bancroft School, and at Medfield High School. She has given artist talks and demos for many art groups in New England.
Created and re-created against the backdrop of cycle of war and peace with its accompanying social and economic impacts, the twentieth century garden pivots between tradition and modernism, informality and structure. The century sees a shift in both style and materials as concrete takes its place at the heart of new towns and spaces, whilst the country house garden struggles to survive and flourish again in a new order. Garden design increasingly reflects the needs of a wider range of society, whilst literary and artistic movements locate gardens at the very heart of the struggle for meaning in a world of change and aspiration. The Gardens Trust series reflects the continuity and change in garden design and understanding through the twentieth century highlighting specific gardens and designers and setting them within more contextual discussions. Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days (and again a few hours) prior to the start of the first talk (If you do not receive this link please contact us), and a link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 1 week. Tickets £30 or £5 each. To purchase a ticket for the complete series through Eventbrite, visit HERE. The Gardens Trust has complete details on its website.
The second lecture of the winter series is A New Jerusalem: from a Tonic to the Nation to New Towns, with Kate Harwood. As part of the New Jerusalem, Clement Attlee’s post-war government planned a series of ‘new towns of the future with blocks of flats, American-style highways and flyovers and a strict separation of the new city into different zones for housing. leisure and industry’. As Maxwell Fry declared ‘The new Britain must be Planned’. But where were the landscape architects and garden designers in all this? The contributions of these professionals, first intimated in the Festival of Britain of 1951, and the influences they absorbed from the United States and Europe will be considered in this talk – which is very much a work in progress!
Kate Harwood is a garden historian involved with planning and conservation , especially for Hertfordshire Gardens Trust. Hertfordshire is an area which has been blessed with many of the New Towns and the work of designers such as Jellicoe, Patterson, and just over the border in Essex, Gibberd. She has taught and lectured on garden history for some years.
Join a balmy Caribbean winter escape aboard the brand-new superyacht Emerald Azzurra (serving up to 100 guests). Sail to seven island paradises, once vital stops on transatlantic trade routes, and rediscover often-forgotten links between the Caribbean and the birth of the United States. From Barbados, sail to the little-visited yet spectacular island of Dominica and tour an 18th-century military fortress surrounded by virgin forest, shimmering rivers, and dormant volcanoes. Call at Nevis, the birthplace of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, and visit his childhood home. Spend a day among the white-sand beaches of St. Barthélemy (“St. Barts”), with opportunities to swim in the warm Caribbean waters. On magical Antigua, visit the famous Nelson’s Dockyard and a restored 17th-century sugar plantation before calling at Montserrat, described as “a modern-day Pompeii” and home to a stunning botanical garden. Step ashore for a day in the archipelago known as Îles des Saintes, site of the most significant naval battle ever fought in the Caribbean between the British and the French. Before disembarking upon return to Barbados, meander through a magnificent garden in Soufrière, a town on the island of St. Lucia. This Harvard Alumni Trip cosponsored with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, University of Chicago Alumni Association, and Johns Hopkins Alumni Association will take place February 24 – March 2, 2024 – a year away, time to plan!
This is a fairly active program that involves walking (in some cases on some uneven terrain such as cobblestone streets and on sandy beaches), and standing during visits to museums, gardens and historic sites. In several places on the itinerary the ship will moor in harbors, which requires use of tenders and/or Zodiacs to access the island and staff will always be present to assist accordingly. (The intention is to have the ship secured to the dock for both embarkation and disembarkation) The temperatures during your time in the Caribbean will be tropical, with daytime highs into the 80’s and evenings in the 70’s Fahrenheit. Any rain encountered will most likely only be temporary showers and the sun is very strong. It’s recommended you pack a hat, sunblock, and insect repellant. Casual dress is appropriate most of the time and comfortable walking shoes are essential. For welcome and farewell dinners, country club casual is customary, as is resort style clothing. Please refrain from shorts, t-shirts and flip flop sandals in the dining room at dinner. The Emerald Azzura has two elevators, granting access to all levels of the yacht. Full information is available on https://alumni.harvard.edu/travel/trips/caribbean-2024
