Join other enthusiasts in great conversation while immersed in the beauty of the Garden at Elm Bank. The Massachusetts Horticultural Society Book Club meets monthly at 1:30 in the Putnam Building, 900 Washington Street. On May 16, the book to be discussed is Fifty Plants that Changed the Course of History by Bill Laws. To join the list, visit www.masshort.org.
Come to Berkshire Botanical Garden on May 7 at 3 pm and explore the most popular of natural dyes, INDIGO. From India to Japan to Greece, indigo has been the foundation of century-old textile traditions. Maggie Pate will begin this class with a brief introduction to indigo and then give a demonstration of how the magic of indigo works. Bring your own fiber and dye with our indigo vats. The purpose of this class is for students to repurpose old items, cover up stained pieces or create something original with new purchases. Each student will be asked to bring their own natural fiber items from home – up to 4 pieces. No large items like towels or bedding as it will use up all the indigo.
Maggie Pate is the designer and purveyor of Nåde. She began her career in fashion modeling internationally then retired to work for a label in New York City. Her work in textiles is a cross-section that explores the synthesis of textures, repetition and geometry. It forms a poetic visual language that ignites the potential of figurative rhythm – a visual synesthesia; where shapes, colors and mood transform into a kaleidoscopic canvas. The last few years, her focus has shifted to cultivating a 100% sustainable and eco-friendly studio by capturing color with predominantly food waste collected from local restaurants and farms.
BBG members $25, nonmembers $30. Register at https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/events/bring-your-own-indigo
Saturated colors, intricate patterns, striking architecture: Umberto Pasti’s house and garden in Tangier is the ultimate example of a well-curated Moroccan villa. Set in a lush hillside garden filled with the native flora of northern Morocco, the house offers glimpses of the serene landscapes and fountains through windows, archways and loggias, as well as Pasti’s scholarly collection of tiles and rare textiles from Africa, the Middle East, and southern Europe.
In this Garden Conservancy online talk on May 4 at 2 pm Eastern time, writer Umberto Pasti and photographer Ngoc Minh Ngo will talk about their latest book, The House of a Lifetime and explore the subjects of Jbala Berbers, Northern Moroccan flora, and its influence on Moroccan art. $5 for Garden Conservancy members $15 for nonmembers. A recording of this webinar will be sent to all registrants a few days after the event. We encourage you to register, even if you cannot attend the live webinar. Register at https://www.gardenconservancy.org
Umberto Pasti graduated in philosophy of history in his native Milano. After traveling extensively in North Africa and the Middle East, nearly forty years ago he bought a place in Tangier. Now he lives between Milano, Tangier, and Rohuna, a small village on the Atlantic Coast of Northern Morocco. He is a writer, a gardener, and a garden designer. He has published several books, A House of a Lifetime, about his home in Tangier, is published in January 2023.
Ngoc Minh Ngo is a New York-based photographer and author of three books, Bringing Nature Home: Floral Arrangements Inspired by Nature; In Bloom: Creating and Living with Flowers, and Eden Revisited: A Garden in Northern Morocco, all published by Rizzoli. Her work has been the subject of solo shows at the Yves Saint Laurent Museum in Marrakech and Wave Hill Public Garden and Cultural Center in the Bronx, New York. Ngoc received the Land Place Spirit Award from Longhouse Reserve in 2022.
The New England Botanical Society is holding its May meeting on Saturday, May 6 in person at the Native Plant Trust’s Garden in the Woods in Framingham at 7 pm. The speaker is Dr. Kirsten Coe, Assistant Professor, Department of Biology, Middlebury College, speaking on Sphagnum Moss-Associated Nitrogen Fixation in New England Peatlands. To register, and for more information, visit https://www.rhodora.org/meetings/upcomingmeetings.html
Kirsten K. Coe is a plant ecophysiologist, focusing on how environmental stress shapes plant performance and growth, and in turn how plant responses influence ecosystem level processes. She uses mosses as a model system to answer questions in this domain, focusing on ecosystems where they carry large ecological importance, often as keystone species. The Coe lab applies a combination of field manipulation experiments, stable isotope analysis, and laboratory photosynthetic stress assessment using infrared gas analysis and chlorophyll fluorescence. Two current lab research foci include (1) an NSF-funded project exploring the ecological, physiological, and genetic basis of desiccation tolerance in Syntrichia, a diverse clade of dryland mosses; and (2) the influence of symbioses between nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria and peatland mosses on nitrogen cycling.
Oak gall wasps take advantage of the annual flow of resources throughout an oak tree to produce beautiful and distinctive novel plant organs to feed and protect them. With an estimated 1000 species in North America, each producing two different galls per year, this symbiosis is one of the most engrossing puzzles in nature. On May 10, Adam Kranz, in conjunction with the Athol Bird & Nature Club, would like to equip you to help put it together. Adam Kranz is one of the co-founders of www.Gallformers.org an online database for amateur and academic naturalists studying plant galls in North America. He lives in Austin, TX.
You are invited to his Zoom webinar.
When: May 10, 2023 07:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Topic: Oaks and Wasps: Shaping Novel Organs in the Seasonal Round
Register in advance for this webinar: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_eHhPGrokR4mspgwFJ7-jcQ
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.
If you’re lucky enough to have a sunny yard with rich soil, you may already have planted a vegetable garden. But what edibles can you plant in other spaces, such as the narrow strip of land along the chain link fence, the shady spot on the north side of the building, or the abandoned lot across the road from the community garden? Join Dan Jaffe Wilder online on Thursday, May 11 from 5 – 6 pm to learn about native edibles that will grow in these areas. $15 for NPT members, $18 for nonmembers. Register online at http://www.nativeplanttrust.org/events/edible-natives-city-landscapes/
The Garden Conservancy hosts the Middlesex County Open Day on May 20 with three gardens, one in Weston, two in Stow.
The Spencer-Scott Garden in Weston is a sun-drenched site with deep loam. The owners set out to create a garden to satisfy their varied interests in flowering trees, shrubs, vines, ground covers, perennials, and bulbs. They designed, created, and maintain the garden. Included are rock gardens, partial shade gardens, dwarf evergreens, and perennial beds with walking paths, all set against an open meadow. Of special interest are many varieties of peonies, species of old roses, iris, hardy geraniums, alliums, lilies, wildflowers, clematis, daylilies, azaleas, and rhododendrons. They have collected more than 1,500 varieties over the years.
The Rock Bottom Garden in Stow is a one-acre garden has been shaped by three decades of collaboration between a woody plant zealot and a perennial gardener. From the 1855 house situated on top of a dry knoll, one enjoys sweeping vistas of the gardens below. When they first started gardening here, the property was a jungle of invasive trees, dying white ash, and multiflora rose. All were cut down, leaving them with a garden as sunny and windswept as the plains of Kansas for some years. They remedied this by planting trees, some of which are now nearly 60 feet tall. At present the garden is shaded in large part, and the perennial plantings are transitioning to reflect that. The garden features many unusual trees and shrubs, including rare magnolias and maples (some grown from seed), an herb garden, gravel garden, and a small vegetable garden. The striking topography makes the garden seem much larger than its actual size, and the trees include beautiful specimens you probably won’t see anywhere else in New England.
Also in Stow is Glenluce Garden, a small, personal, and romantic garden. Entering by the western gate, you will find yourself on a mound with green paths beckoning in seven directions. Explore these paths to discover a grove of paperbark maples, an island of tree peonies, or a border of fragrant native azaleas. A pergola covered by climbing roses leads to a frog pond shaded by heptacodium and a courtyard with raised vegetable beds. Magnolias, rhododendrons, peonies, and roses abound in Glenluce Garden.
Access to each garden is $5 for Garden Conservancy members, $10 for nonmembers. Tickets must be purchased in advance – no tickets will be sold on site. https://www.gardenconservancy.org/open-days/open-days-schedule/middlesex-county-ma-open-day-5
Join Speak for the Trees and The American City Coalition (TACC) for the 3rd Annual Savor the Square Tree Giveaway in Nubian Square for Roxbury Arbor Day. This event is sponsored by Verizon and in collaboration with the Arbor Day Foundation.
Savor the Square brings people together and connects them to local businesses and other community members. It celebrates and leverages the history and cultural assets for social and business development, and expands neighborhood vitality. The event takes place at the Roxbury Branch of the Boston Public Library, 149 Dudley Street in Roxbury, beginning at 10 am.
Celebrate the arrival of spring with a visit to the Lyman Estate annual herb sale featuring thousands of naturally grown culinary, medicinal, and ornamental herbs. Scented geraniums, herbal topiaries, pottery, and garden gifts are also available, and the staff is on hand to offer expert advice. The Lyman Estate Greenhouses are located at 185 Lyman Street in Waltham, and the sale will take place Friday, May 5 – Sunday, May 7, from 9:30 – 4, and will be repeated Saturday, May 13, also from 9:30 – 4. Free admission. For more information, call 617-994-5913, or log on to www.historicnewengland.org
The Gardens Trust presents a four part online lecture series with Toby Musgrave beginning April 18. Tickets £16 for the series or £5 each through Eventbrite. For thousands of years peoples and civilizations the world over have adopted belief systems that give a key role to the natural world and the trees, fruits and flowers to be found there. Whether living a primitive existence in a desert land or enjoying the fruits of a richly cultivated soil, man endows his spirit world, his gods and his presumed afterlife with fertile, sweet surroundings that reflect an ideal – a garden paradise. Taking a global perspective and with a chronology of over 5,000 years, Gardens of the Gods examines, explores and interprets the purpose, role, use and symbolism of plants and gardens in more than fifteen belief systems, some still practiced and others not.
The third in the series on May 2 delves into the very different – from a Western mindset – view of the concept of time and reincarnation we will explore the concepts and garden expressions influenced by Taoism, Buddhism and the Immortals in China, the syncretism with Shinto and garden outcomes in Japan, and the floral symbolisms within Hinduism as well as the celestial worlds of Svarga.
Lecturer Dr Toby Musgrave FSA FLS is a garden and plants historian, horticulturist and author. His books have covered a wide range of subjects from head gardeners to heritage fruit and vegetables, plant hunters to paradise gardens, and a biography of Sir Joseph Banks. He was a major contributor to Radio 4’s series “The British Garden” and he has been a consultant for many gardening and garden history related programs on both the BBC and commercial television. He lives in Denmark and when not gardening, teaching or writing he works as a submersible pilot. Tickets £16 for the series or £5 each. Register for this lecture HERE.
