Boston Flora

Month: February 2023

  • Saturday, March 4, 11:00 am – 12:30 pm – Mt. Cuba Conservation: Behind the Scenes, Online

    While Mt. Cuba Center’s gardens showcase how native plants can enhance formal and naturalistic gardens, behind the scenes, Mt. Cuba conducts conservation programs at many scales, ranging from individual species to whole ecosystems. We monitor and propagate rare plants, cultivate breeding habitat for bird species of conservation concern, and conduct a 100-year reforestation experiment. We collaborate with independent, university, and community scientists to learn more about the flora and fauna at Mt. Cuba, share the results with broader audiences, and contribute data to national community science projects. Dr. Ellen Lake, discusses the range of conservation efforts at Mt. Cuba, ongoing ecological research, and the purpose of Mt. Cuba’s newly constructed greenhouse and plant nursery.

    Ellen Lake, PhD, is the Director of Conservation and Research at Mt. Cuba Center. She taught environmental education and was the Education Director at the Brandywine and Red Clay Valley Associations. Ellen has a master’s degree in Entomology and Ph.D. in Entomology and Wildlife Ecology from the University of Delaware, where she researched biological control of mile-a-minute weed and how to integrate weed management techniques to restore plant communities. Ellen has extensive experience researching insect-plant interactions, including work for the USDA in the Greater Everglades ecosystem.

    This program takes place online Saturday, March 4, 2023. $25. Register at https://mtcubacenter.org/event/mt-cuba-conservation-behind-the-scenes-online/

  • Thursday, March 9, 7:00pm-8:30 pm – The Larger Landscape Conversation: The Design of Disability

    The Design of Disability convenes conversation on the design and planning of the public realm in relation to human capacities, civic aspirations, and bodily experience beyond access. This March 9 lecture in the Calderwood Hall at the Museum features Victor Calise, advocate for people with disabilities, author and professor Elizabeth Guffey, and artist and professor Sara Hendren. 

    The Larger Landscape Conversation is a recurring series at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum that brings together visionaries across disciplines to discuss the intersection of creativity, lived experience, and social justice.

    This program is moderated by Charles Waldheim, Ruettgers Curator of Landscape at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and Professor at Harvard Graduate School of Design.

    Advance tickets are required and include Museum admission. Adults $20, seniors $18, students $13, free for members and children 17 and under. Seating in Calderwood Hall is first come, first served. Seating begins 45 minutes before the event. Late seating is not guaranteed.

    HOW TO BUY

    • Click on the GET TICKETS
    • Call the Box Office at 617 278 5156, Wednesday-Monday, 10 am-4 pm*
    • Museum members free, Adults $20, Seniors $18, Students $13, children 7 – 17 free.

    COVID-19 POLICY

    Face masks, worn over the mouth and nose, are required for free and ticketed events in Calderwood Hall. In line with state and local guidance, we advise anyone who is unvaccinated, and encourage anyone who feels more comfortable, to wear a mask as they explore other areas of the museum.

    ACCESSIBILITY

    To request accessible or companion seating, or to inquire about other accommodations, please call the Box Office at 617 278 5156 in advance of the program.

  • Tuesday, February 28, 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm Eastern – The Many Uses of Mycelium, Online

    Scientists have engineered so many new products from mycelium that Scientific American heralds the dawn of the “Mycelium Revolution” and Harper’s Bazaar dubs fungi “The Future of Fashion.” Explore how scientists have harnessed mycelium’s ability to create complex structures that are now being used as eco-friendly alternatives to plastic, leather, meat, and Styrofoam. This online lecture with John Michelotti is sponsored by the New York Botanical Garden on Tuesday, February 28, and is $45 for NYBG members, $49 for nonmembers. Register at www.nybg.org

    GETTY IMAGES & COURTESY IRIS VAN HERPEN; BOLT THREADS; MADE WITH REISHITM BY MYCOWORKS.

  • Sunday, March 5, 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm, Eastern – Pakora Party with Cambridge Camping, Online

    Join our friends at Cambridge Camping on March 5 at 5 pm Eastern time for an online cooking class and learn to make pakoras and mango lassi with Chef Sandhya. All proceeds for this family friendly webinar go towards youth programing. Join with friends, family, or on your own to make delicious pakoras and mango lassi with a true expert. A list of all ingredients and the Zoom link to join will be sent upon registration. Tickets are $75 per household. Register at www.cambridgecamping.org/events

    Cambridge Camping, a not for profit organization, provides meaningful and inspiring experiences to children from urban and under-resourced circumstances in supportive and inclusive summer camp and school year out-of-school time communities.

  • Tuesday, February 28, 6:00 pm Eastern – Creating Japanese Inspired Gardens in New England, Online

    Lee Schneller Sligh went to Japan for the first time in 1974 and has designed hundreds of gardens in New England, many of them Japanese-inspired. 

    Join The Japan Society of Boston on February 28 at 6 pm online to hear about Lee’s journey and her work while learning about some of the Japanese garden design principles such as “Hide and Reveal” and “The Beauty of Empty Space”. Lee will also talk about rock work and how to achieve a natural effect in the garden. Questions will be welcomed throughout the talk. Free admission but a $10 donation to The Japan Society is encouraged. Register at https://japansocietyboston.wildapricot.org/event-5116629

  • Wednesday, March 1, 6:30 pm Eastern – Trailblazers and Trendsetters: Villa Lewaro, Live and Online

    Journey through the life and grand home of pioneering twentieth century African American beauty entrepreneur Madam C.J. Walker. 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. In this second lecture of the series on March 1 at 6:30, the presentation will include a book signing with our speaker – author and Walker’s great grand-daughter, A’Lelia Bundles. Copies of her book On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker will be available for purchase for the signing. The New York Times “Notable Publication” was the inspiration for Self Made, a Netflix series starring Octavia Spencer.

    There’s no doubt that Madam C.J. Walker was both a trailblazer and a trendsetter. She established a cosmetics empire developing beauty and hair products for Black women while also training nearly 23,000 sales agents and workers through her business. She is often recognized as America’s first self-made female millionaire. This talk will address how Madam C.J. Walker’s entrepreneurship and personal style translated to the unique architecture and grounds of her early-Twentieth century home, Villa Lewaro, while digging deeper into Walker’s fascinating life and work.

    Tickets ($10 – $30) are available HERE through Eventbrite.

  • Monday, February 27, 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm Eastern – The Duchess of Beaufort’s Florilegium, Online

    The florilegium was commissioned by Mary Somerset, the first Duchess of Beaufort between 1703 and 1707. Mary Beaufort was a passionate gardener and her gardens at Badminton and Beaufort House, London, were recorded in several well-known views published in Knyff and Kip’s Britannia Illustrata. Interested in plants and gardens from an early age, after her second marriage to Henry Somerset, first Duke of Beaufort, in 1657, she oversaw the planting of the extensive gardens seen in Knyff and Kip’s engraved views. But it was after her husband died when the Duchess was in her seventies, that she threw herself even more fully into the collecting and rearing of plants from all over the world.

    In order to record permanently her horticultural successes, the duchess commissioned a florilegium from a Dutch artist, Everhard Kick, who had previously worked for her friend, Sir Hans Sloane in London. Kick, whose work was continued by Daniel Frankcom, a member of the duchess’s household, developed an idiosyncratic style in which he showed the roots of plants growing beneath the ground. The online Gardens Trust talk on February 27 at 2 pm Eastern will discuss Mary Beaufort as a gardener and highlight some of the contents of her remarkable flower book. Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and a link to the recorded session (available for 1 week) will be sent shortly afterwards. Register through Eventbrite HERE.

  • Thursday, February 23, 10:00 am GMT (but recorded) – The C20 Garden Part 2: Decline, Fall, and Rise – The Country House and its Garden Between the Wars and After, Online

    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 first lecture on February 23 is Decline, Fall, and Rise – The Country House and its Garden Between the Wars and After, with Ben Cowell. Country houses and gardens faced significant pressures in the early 20th century. Rising costs, diminishing incomes and the impact of war meant that by the early 1950s country houses were disappearing from the landscape at an unprecedented rate, as owners took the decision to cut their losses and recoup the value of their assets. This could leave gardens as the only surviving relics of vanished mansion properties, and these gardens too frequently fell into disarray given the shrinkage in the number of employed gardening staff. Yet the 1950s and 60s also saw a recovery in the fortunes of some estates, as a result of the post-War boom in leisure and tourism. This talk considers the fate of country houses and their gardens, and the efforts that were taken to bring them back to life in the second half of the 20th century.

    Ben Cowell is the Director General of Historic Houses, which represents 1,500 independently owned country houses and gardens across the UK and has nearly 70,000 general members. Ben previously worked for the National Trust and English Heritage. His PhD at the University of Nottingham was on the social and economic history of estate landscapes in the 18th and 19th centuries. His published books include a history of the heritage movement: The Heritage Obsession (The History Press, 2008), and works on different aspects of landscape history: Uvedale Price; Decoding the Picturesque (with Charles Watkins, The Boydell Press, 2012), and Landscapes of the National Trust (with Stephen Daniels and Lucy Veale, Pavilion Books, 2015). Ben was awarded an OBE for services to cultural heritage in the 2021 New Year Honours list.

    Easton Lodge, Norfolk

  • Saturday, March 4 – Sunday, March 12 – The Philadelphia Flower Show 2023: The Garden Electric

    The 2023 Philadelphia Flower Show makes its return to the Pennsylvania Convention Center to amaze visitors with an exciting floral experience, bringing together dynamic designers, bold exhibits, world-class shopping, education, music, food, and family fun.

    Open daily from 10 am – 7 pm; until 8 pm on March 4, March 10 & 11; open until 6 pm on March 12. Tickets are valid for one visit, any day of the Show. Tickets are available HERE In addition to seeing the magnificent exhibits, there are many special events throughout the run of the Show, some needing separate admission tickets. There is Butterflies Live! Experience beautiful and exotic creatures, learn how to attract butterflies to your garden and snap the perfect selfie with you and some fluttery friends. Flowers After Hours on March 11 from 8:30 – 11:30 will allow you to drink, eat, and dance among the beautiful exhibits. Enjoy the night with great tastings and incredible live music. Admission includes exclusive access to the Flower Show after the Show closes for public entry. This event is for guests 21 years and older. Artisan Row is an elevated crafting experience led by talented horticultural artisans. Partake in a variety of arts that includes fresh floral crowns, personalized candle making, dried floral arranging, and botanical jewelry. Design and Dine, sponsored by Smithers-Oasis, is a social, hands-on experience while creating your own Garden Electric-inspired floral arrangement, all while enjoying a light bite. This fun activity is the perfect way for loved ones to spend time together and create something unique. Get into The Garden Electric spirit and purchase a pre-made fresh floral crown on the Show floor from the Bloom Bar. Pick from an array of fresh floral crowns –grab, go, and wear! Subaru is sponsoring a Potting Party. Learn the tricks of the trade at these energetic container gardening workshops hosted by designer Tu Bloom (designer for the GRAMMYs®) and sponsored by Subaru of America. Make your plans now.

  • Tuesday, February 28, 5:00 am – 6:30 am Eastern (but recorded) – Garden Technology: Plant Breeding, A Short History, Online

    This is the second 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.

    Speaker Noel Kingsbury will cover Plant Breeding on February 28. We owe our survival to plant breeding, the ability to produce productive, disease-resistant and resilient crops. This presentation outlines the basics of how we learnt the basics of plant genetics and applied them to the crops that feed us, along the way producing vast numbers of new varieties for our gardens. Although focused on edible crops, we’ll be introduced to some of the key breeders of ornamental garden plants: their plants and their methods. 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. Tickets £24 or £5 each through Eventbrite. Register HERE.

    Noel Kingsbury is best-known as a writer on gardens, plants and especially as a promotor of ecological planting design. Along the way he has written about garden plant history and developed unfashionable thoughts about how we feed ourselves, including Hybrid: The History and Science of Plant Breeding (University of Chicago Press, 2009).