Boston Flora

Month: April 2023

  • Wednesday, May 3, 2:00 pm Eastern – A Celebration of Play in the Landscape: Follies

    This Gardens Trust online series of four lectures considers aspects of play and playfulness within the landscape and garden. For children, play is the life’s work. We all want to discover what’s new and explore what’s out of sight. We should never lose this sense of revelry. Families that play together come away walking tall and feeling better about themselves and each other. In the spirit, let us celebrate the importance and life-affirming joy of play. 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. This ticket link is for this May 3 individual session on Follies and costs £5: www.thegardenstrust.org

    Follies are structures, buildings, towers, underground chambers or astonishing creations that are ‘utterly useless’, in the sense of having no practical use. If they have a practical function, strictly speaking they are not follies. Some are classically elegant, others completely bizarre. They uphold uncompromising beauty and, on their own terms, perfection.

    These wondrous constructions invite our imaginations to soar. They are sophisticated acts of defiance against a world of harsh reality and mindless speed. Follies provide a timeless oasis, a leisurely paradise, and the substance of a dream.

    Adrian Fisher MBE is the world’s leading creator of mazes of all kinds, full of challenges, discovery and fun. For 44 years he has been transforming the traditional art of getting lost into state-of-the-art adventures, each with a compelling narrative and storyline. He and his wife Marie live in the village of the Durweston in Dorset. Their garden contains his GEOMITICA art, and a hedge maze with a folly tower, mirrored chamber, spiral staircase and battlements.

    He is the author of a whole shelf of books about mazes while his website www.mazemaker explains much more about his work.

  • Friday, May 5, 12:00 noon Eastern – Ask the Expert: Spring Birding, Online

    Spring is here and the birds are back! Enjoy a brisk spring walk in the woods and listen to the calls of our feathered friends as they return to build their nests and lay their eggs. David Allen Sibley, author and illustrator of the Sibley Guides birding book, will join GBH online on May 5 at noon Eastern to discuss everything birding, just in time for the spring migration.

    Sibley has contributed to a series of nature guides, including Smithsonian, Science, The Wilson Journal of Ornithology, Birding, Bird Watching, North American Birds, and The New York Times. He is the recipient of the Roger Tory Peterson Award for Lifetime Achievement from the American Birding Association and the Linnaean Society of New York’s Eisenmann Medal. He currently resides in Massachusetts. The talk is free. Register at www.wgbh.org.

  • Thursday, April 27, 6:00 pm – A Part of Us: Trees and Our World

    Join Speak for the Trees and Professor Mwalim on Thursday, April 27 at 6 pm in the East Room at The Non-Profit Center, 89 South Street in Boston, for a free talk – A Part of Us: Trees and Our World. Learn more about the traditional Indigenous perspectives on trees, which were dismissed as mystical nonsense by colonizers. These perspectives later proved to be scientific fact. For more information call (617) 820-0749 or email jerel@treeboston.org.

  • Saturday, May 20 & Sunday, May 21 – Trade Secrets

    Project SAGE presents Trade Secrets, a beautiful gathering for a great cause. Garden tours and community events will take place Saturday, May 20, and on Sunday, May 21, there will be the famous Trade Secrets Rare Plants and Garden Antiques Sale at Lime Rock Park, 60 White Hollow Road in Lakeville, Connecticut.

    • Project SAGE (formerly Women’s Support Services), a non profit domestic violence agency serving Northwest Connecticut and the surrounding communities in New York and Massachusetts, delivered 194 educational programs to schools throughout the region and has 255 sessions scheduled for this school year
    • Project SAGE responded to more hotline calls and crisis requests than ever before – nearly 1,500 calls were answered last year.
    • Project SAGE has significantly expanded options to shelter families in crisis and assist with interim and long-term housing – including the shelter of beloved family pets.

    Garden tours include Michael Trapp’s West Cornwall Garden and Hollister House Garden. Bunny Williams and John Rosselli’s tour is currently sold out but to be added to a waitlist, please email tsassistant@project-sage.org In Millbrook, the gardens of Christopher Spitzmiller & Anthony Bellomo are featured, as well as Innisfree Garden. Complete details of these gardens, and a purchase link, may be found at https://www.tradesecretsct.com/garden-tours-community-events-1 Tickets to each garden range from $10 to $20.

  • Monday, May 1, 10:00 am – 11:30 am Eastern – Roses from the Arctic to Australia: A Rose Garden on a Working Farm, Online

    This year, following on from the Gardens Trust’s successful 2022 series on the rose, in partnership with the Historic Roses Group, the Gardens Trust is happy to announce a new rose-related lecture series, again with the HRG, this time including an international slant.

    With speakers hailing from Iceland to Australia, via England, Italy and the USA, these talks are wide-ranging. We begin with a portrait of a popular 19th century rosarian who loved riding as much as roses, knew everyone on the literary scene, was a celebrity preacher and organized the first ever National Rose Show in London. An account of a hillside rose garden in Italy which started as a collection of pots on a terrace in Rome; how to grow roses in the Arctic Circle and ‘down under’ on a working Australia farm; the intriguing stories behind the names of some romantic heritage roses; and where to find a unique UN Food and Agriculture Organization collection of the other – edible – members of the rosaceae family continue the series. We finish with practical advice about training and pruning your climbers, whether roses or wisterias, from a professional horticultural gardener, the latest in three generations of market gardeners and a shows organizer and designer whose sumptuous stands have won medals for the Historic Roses Group at the Hampton Court Flower Show.

    This ticket costs £28 for the entire course of 7 sessions or you may purchase a ticket for individual sessions, costing £5. 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. Register through Eventbrite HERE or visit https://thegardenstrust.org/events-archive/page/3/

    In Week Three, Michelle Endersby will discuss The Role of a Rose Garden on a Working Farm. A formal rose garden in the middle of an Australian farm with a high likelihood of drought and flooding rains may seem like a frivolous extravagance. But at Sages Cottage Farm in Baxter, Victoria, an historic 38-hectare property run by disability service provider, Wallara, the rose garden plays a pivotal role in the experience and programs for clients and visitors alike. Not only a tranquil and calming display garden, the roses are also a source of fodder for the farm animals, a cutting garden for the café, a source of materials for craft projects and food source for the bees for honey production. With a collection of interesting roses, rose garden tours are a potential source of income and education. Michelle will show you the microclimates and the multitude of opportunities provided by this special rose garden.

    Michelle Endersby is a writer and visual artist from Melbourne, Australia, and the ‘Rose Lady’ at Sages Cottage Farm where she is responsible for the care of over 150 roses. Inspired by a vision of a light-filled rose garden she experienced on awakening from a coma following emergency brain surgery, Michelle has made roses the focus of her creative and horticultural endeavors. She is also a member of the HRG and has contributed to the Historic Rose Journal. Michelle is the creator of the popular Art, Gardens and Always Roses monthly e-newsletter.

  • Wednesday & Thursday, May 3 & 4, 9:30 am – 4:00 pm Eastern, and Friday, May 5, 9:30 am – 2:30 pm – Variegated Plants in Graphite

    Variegated plants have next-level opportunities for stunning portraits and graphite is the versatile medium to pair with those intricate patterns. Susan Fisher will show you a systematic process that will sort out confusing value issues from the beginning. Learn manageable skills to produce tone and form for variegated subjects. Demonstrations, discussions and easy-to-follow exercises in graphite application are designed to refine proficiency. For intermediate to advanced artists. The three classes May 3 – 5 will take place in person at The Gardens at Elm Bank in Wellesley, sponsored by The Friends of Wellesley Botanic Gardens, and is $395 for Friends members, $495 for non-members. Contact wcbgfriends@wellesley.edu for more information.

    Susan Fisher All Rights Reserved

  • Saturday, May 13, 8:30 am – 12:00 noon – Teacup Sale

    The Mother’s Day Teacup Bouquet fundraiser for the Garden Club of Hingham will be held Saturday, May 13 from 8:30 – noon, 2023. Teacup bouquets can be ordered on the club’s website and picked up at a location to be announced. The website is found at https://gardenclubofhingham.org/event/teacup-sale/ These are charming gifts to bring to your loved ones.

  • Wednesday, April 26, 2:00 pm Eastern – A Celebration of Play in the Landscape: Mazes

    This Gardens Trust online series of four lectures considers aspects of play and playfulness within the landscape and garden. For children, play is the life’s work. We all want to discover what’s new and explore what’s out of sight. We should never lose this sense of revelry. Families that play together come away walking tall and feeling better about themselves and each other. In the spirit, let us celebrate the importance and life-affirming joy of play. 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. This ticket link is for this April 26 individual session and costs £5: www.thegardenstrust.org

    Mazes satisfy the urge to explore what is hidden and forbidden. They offer rich symbolism, puzzling adventures and shared bonding experiences. What are the key principles for creating mazes? What extra maze rules or methods of construction are possible? We also consider ways of creating your own maze in your private garden. The act of creation of a maze is often the most formative experience for the owners. Welcome to a word of imagination and delight with lecturer Adrian Fisher!

  • Monday, May 8, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm Eastern – Japanese Zen Rock Gardens: Philosophy, History and Design, Online

    The great Zen priest and garden designer Musō Soseki (1275-1351) once wrote that “He who distinguishes between the garden and [Zen] practice cannot be said to have found the Way.” This tour opens a path toward a fuller understanding of these enigmatic gardens, their history, design principles, and their most iconic examples, from medieval to contemporary times.

    There are probably no more enigmatic gardens in the world than the Japanese Zen rock garden. Called “dry landscape” (karesansui) gardens in Japanese, our first encounters with these fields of stone, raked gravel, and flecks of moss may leave us wondering what they mean, who made them, and why, and how we are supposed to interpret them. Diving deep into examples spanning from the medieval past to the twenty-first century, we gain a richer appreciation of these remarkable works of garden art.

    We begin with a close inspection of the earliest masterpieces that set the standard for centuries: Saihōji and Ryōanji. We explore their antecedents in Shinto and Chinese gardens, and Daoism and Zen philosophy, before turning to examine how these two iconic gardens have evolved over time. With these as precedent, we examine several additional iconic rock gardens to see how subtle shifts of design yielded strikingly different results. Finally, we turn towards designers eager to infuse the form with new energy, from the masterpiece Mirei Shigemori (1896-1975) created at Tōfukuji in 1939, to the stunning designs by the contemporary Zen priest and garden designer Shunmyo Masuno (1953-).

    Led by an expert on Japanese history, Gavin James Campbell, this interactive seminar will explore the philosophy, history, and design of the Japanese Zen rock garden. Designed to inform curiosity as well as future travels, participants will come away with the tools necessary to more fully enjoy these stirring gardens. Gavin received a Ph.D. in history from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and came to Kyoto in 2001. He is a Ph.D. professor of history at Doshisha University. His teaching and research revolve around Japan’s cultural encounters with the West, particularly during the Edo, Meiji, Taisho and early Showa periods (1600-1940), and he has published on the history of foreign tourism and of Protestant missionaries in Japan. To further explore Japan’s global cultural encounters, he is currently writing a book on the history of Japanese menswear from the 1600s through the early 20th century. He is also an expert on Kyoto geisha culture and a frequent participant in geisha entertainment.

    The Context Learning online seminar takes place November 7 at 7 pm, with a fee of $26.50. If you can’t make this date, a recording link will be sent to registrants following the seminar. Register at www.contextlearning.com

  • Tuesday, April 25, 5:00 am – 6:30 am Eastern (but Recorded) – Gardens of the Gods: Eden and Paradise, Online

    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.

    On April 25, the focus is on the concept of Gan Eden in Judaism, the Garden of Eden in Christianity and earthy paradise of the Islamic chahar bagh garden; and expanding out to discuss mediæval monastic gardens and the hortus conclusus – how did the Virgin Mary become associated with the beloved in the Song of Solomon?

    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 programmes 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. 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 . Register HERE.

    The Garden of Eden with the Fall of Man, Jan Brueghel the Elder