Boston Flora

Month: March 2024

  • Wednesday, April 10, 2:15 pm – The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Nasturtium Display: A Guided Tour

    The Garden Club of the Back Bay will be holding a members only guided tour of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum nasturtium display on April 10, which is reason enough to join the Club today at https://bostonflora.com/

    The nasturtium was one of Isabella Stewart Gardner’s favorite flowers.  Long considered a symbol of freedom, strength and independence, this blooming vine has been appreciated as a food, medicine and work of art.  A gifted gardener, Mrs. Gardner began growing the vines in her greenhouses in Brookline. What came next was the creation of a spectacle out of a fairytale that only a true visionary could have imagined.
     
    In April 1905, to celebrate her birthday and mark the return of spring, Mrs. Gardner arranged for cascading nasturtium vines to spill down from the Venetian balconies of the Courtyard of her Fenway palace.  Since then, the unique display of brilliant orange nasturtiums has become a renowned annual tradition, inspiring artists and visitors to her museum for over a hundred years.
     
    The tour of the Museum will focus on the nasturtiums, as we learn about the process the Gardner’s team of horticulturists use to transform flats of seeds in June to nasturtium vines in lengths that would rival the locks of Rapunzel nine months later.  We will view paintings inspired by the Gardner nasturtiums, and see other works of art that reflect Mrs. Gardner’s love of flowers, gardening and landscapes.

    This program is for members only with a limit of only 25 people. However, we will keep a waitlist. If you sign up and can not attend, please let us know so someone may take your place.  We will meet at 2:00 pm near the bookstore at the Gardner Museum located at 25 Evans Way. For more information email info@bostonflora.com

    (Photo: Robin Lubbock/WBUR)

  • Thursday, December 5 – Monday, December 9 – Brittania in Bermuda

    Join The Royal Oak Foundation on December 5 – 9 for a relaxing long weekend in Bermuda, before the holiday crush takes over.

    EXPLORE continuing ties between Bermuda and Britain in the UNESCO-listed Town of St. George—the oldest continuously operating English town in the Western Hemisphere. DELIGHT in exclusive tours of festively decorated British colonial
    private homes during the much-anticipated annual Bermuda National Trust Christmas Walkabout, a spectacular event featuring dancers, musicians, and carolers. GATHER for a special holiday bell choir performance at St. Peter’s Church, the oldest Anglican church outside of Britain, where Jane Austen’s brother was married in 1807. ATTEND exclusive events, including a boat cruise, behind-the-scenes visits to artists’ private homes, and a farewell dinner at the private Coral Beach and Tennis Club with special guests. DISCOVER Bermuda’s rich artistic legacy through private museum tours led by directors and curators, including a special director-led inside look at the 2024 Bermuda Biennial at the Bermuda National Gallery. MEET Bermudian artists and learn about their creative processes during intimate gatherings, such as a lecture by an award-winning documentary filmmaker and tea with a renowned dollmaker. HONOR centuries of fallen British military heroes on a poignant visit to “The Glade,” the island’s most significant historical cemetery. JOIN the executive director of the St. David’s Island Historical Society (pending confirmation) to learn about Bermuda’s early English settlers on an exclusive visit to one of Bermuda’s oldest farmhouses. SAVOR a candlelit private dinner in one of Bermuda’s oldest British colonial homes, Verdmont, an elegant 18th-century, Georgian-style home
    maintained by the Bermuda National Trust. SPEND four nights at the glamorous Hamilton Princess & Beach Club,
    and join a curator to peruse the hotel’s art collection featuring works by Picasso, Matisse, British street artist Banksy, and a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II by Andy Warhol.

    To reserve your place, please contact our tour operator Arrangements Abroad at 212-514-8921 or trips@arrangementsabroad.com.

  • Tuesday, March 26, 3:00 pm – 4:15 pm Eastern – Sourcing Native Plants and Seeds: A Homeowner’s Guide, Online

    Once you’ve decided what to plant, in what form and where do you obtain those plants? This can be a challenge, as the nursery and seed industry has not kept up with the altered requirements of  the burgeoning native plant movement. In this NDAL online presentation on March 26 at 3 pm Eastern, Ian Caton will draw on his extensive experience as both a garden designer and plant grower to provide guidance on sourcing often hard to find native plants and seeds, determining the best plant size for your application, the use of horticultural cultivars, when and how to obtain plants grown from local seed sources, and how to determine the likely survivability of the plants you are purchasing. He will also show how seeds, both purchased and collected, can help to overcome nursery industry shortfalls, and provide an inexpensive supplement to live plant installation.    $42. Register at www.ndal.org

  • Tuesday, March 26, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm – Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape

    Sand and stone are Earth’s fragmented memory. Each of us is also a landscape inscribed by memory and loss. Lauret Savoy’s Trace interweaves journeys and historical inquiry across a continent and time to explore how this country’s still unfolding history has marked the land, this society, and her. From twisted terrain within the San Andreas Fault zone to a South Carolina plantation, from national parks to burial grounds to names on the land, from “Indian Territory” and the U.S.-Mexico Border to the U.S. capital, Trace grapples with a searing national history to reveal the often-unvoiced presence of the past. Lauret will offer elements from this book and introduce her current project on the Chesapeake region. The new work braids histories of the land and of “race” using as a lens her search for ancestors, lives entwined by converging diasporas from Africa, Indigenous America, and the Indian Ocean basin with immigrants from Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Their stories are entangled with the rise and fall of tobacco agriculture and the origin and growth of the capital city along the Potomac River. Lauret delves through fragmented histories—geological, personal, cultural—to find shadowy outlines of other stories of place in America. She asks, what is your relationship with history, told and untold, on this land? Lauret will speak at the Harvard Graduate School of Design on March 26 at 6:30 in the Gund Hall Piper Auditorium in Cambridge. Free and open to the public.

    Lauret Savoy‘s research and writing consider how the nation’s ever-unfolding history has marked the land and people. Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape won the 2016 American Book Award; it was a finalist for PEN American and additional honors. Her other books include The Colors of Nature: Culture, Identity, and the Natural World and Bedrock: Writers on the Wonders of Geology, named one of the “Five Best” science books in the Wall Street Journal. Lauret writes of the complex intertwinings of natural and cultural histories to understand the American land’s origins—and the stories we tell of ourselves in this land. A woman of African American, Euro-American, and Indigenous heritages, Lauret is the David B. Truman Professor of Environmental Studies & Geology at Mount Holyoke College.  Winner of Mount Holyoke’s Distinguished Teaching Award and an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, Lauret has also held fellowships from the Smithsonian Institution and Yale University.  She is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America and a pilot.

    This program is co-sponsored by the GSD, the Environment Forum at the Mahindra Humanities Center, and the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability.

  • Friday, April 5, 7:00 pm Eastern – Unlocking the Grasses, Sedges, and Rushes: Fresh Approaches to Identifying These Challenging Plants, Live and Online

    Join the New England Botanical Society on Friday, April 5 for its monthly meeting. Ted Elliman, MA botany/ecology instructor, retired, Native Plant Trust, and Lauren Brown, Connecticut author, VP Connecticut Botanical Society, will speak on Unlocking the Grasses, Sedges, and Rushes: Fresh Approaches to Identifying These Challenging Plants. Non-members may register for the meeting access link here.

  • Wednesday, March 20, 1:00 pm Eastern – Bright Prospects: Curating & Conservation at Wentworth Castle Gardens & Beninbrough Hall, Online

    This is the final episode of the second series in the Gardens Trust’s new partnership with the county gardens trusts, looking at restoration in action. Join Yorkshire Gardens Trust to learn about researching, restoring and reinterpreting a selection of glorious gardens in the county. The chosen projects cover four centuries of garden design and showcase the skills, sensitivities and determination needed to conserve and enhance historic gardens. This ticket is for the course of 3 sessions. or you may purchase a ticket for individual sessions, costing £8. [Gardens Trust and Yorkshire Gardens Trust Members may purchase tickets at £15.75 for the series or £6 each talk]. Register at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/restoration-in-action-yorkshire-tickets-780066468807 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.

    Both created at the same time in the early 18th century by some of the same craftsmen, these two Yorkshire sites have seen centuries of change and challenge before coming into the care of the National Trust.

    Wentworth Castle Gardens near Barnsley was conceived as a grand expression of aristocratic pride and taste. The remains of this vision sit at the core of the site, overlaid with important 19th and 20th century influences. The contemporary Beningbrough Hall near York was the creation of a wealthy young gentry couple hoping to consolidate and enhance their family status. The remarkable preservation of their house stands in contrast to the much-altered garden and parkland.

    Most recently, both sites have shifted from being private spaces to thriving public assets. How has this developed and how is the contemporary National Trust working at these places to further enhance their social benefit alongside ensuring the care and conservation of nationally significant heritage assets?

    Matthew Constantine is a heritage professional with over 25 years of experience. He now works as a Cultural Heritage Curator for the National Trust in Yorkshire, including supporting the site teams at Wentworth and Beningbrough to understand, care for and interpret their places.

  • Thursday, April 9, 6:00 pm – 54th Annual Meeting of the Friends of the Public Garden

    You are cordially invited to the 54th Annual Meeting of the Friends of the Public Garden on Thursday, April 9 at 6 pm at the UMass Club, Amherst/Boston Room, 32nd Floor, 1 Beacon Street in Boston. Reception to follow. Please RSVP by April 2 by signing up HERE or calling 617-723-8144.

  • Saturday, March 23 – Saturday, May 18 – A Bird’s Eye View: New England Birds, Four Perspectives

    Four artists will show their works at the Old Schwamb Mill March 23 through May 18. The opening reception is from 2 – 3:30 on March 23, where you will meet Laurie Bogdan, Suzette Durso, Kim Starbuck, and Johanna Finnegan-Topitzer. An artist talk on April 27 from 2 – 3 will give you important insights into the artists, and a closing reception on May 18 from 2:30 – 4 will wrap the event. Old Schwamb Mill is located at 17 Mill Land in Arlington. The Old Schwamb Mill in Arlington, Massachusetts, is located on the oldest continuously operating mill site in the United States. Mills have been located on the main building site since the late 1600s. In 1971, the Old Schwamb Mill was listed on the United States National Register of Historic Places.

  • Saturday, March 16, 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm – Ethan Carr: Getting it Together at Franklin Park, The Past and Future of a Boston Landmark

    UMASS professor and author Ethan Carr discusses his 2023 nonfiction book, Boston’s Franklin Park. Franklin Park is one of the great urban parks of the world. Generations of Bostonians have loved this landscape and invested it with many diverse memories and meanings. Today the park is at a turning point. Mayor Wu has approved an Action Plan to guide its future, and the City of Boston and its partners have proposed new multi-million dollar construction projects. The time is right to consider the past, as well as the future, of Franklin Park.

    Ethan Carr is a professor of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His latest book is Boston’s Franklin Park (Amherst: Library of American Landscape History, 2023).

    This event is co-sponsored by the Grove Hall Branch of the BPL, the Dorchester Historical Society and the JP Historical Society. It is free and open to the public. It will use a hybrid format you can attend in-person or via Zoom. Please register here for the Zoom details: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_pUtwfzf1RL-U8n5yWxCJdw

    In the case of heavy snow, the event will be held virtually.

  • Tuesday, March 19, 5:00 am – 6:30 am Eastern (but recorded) – Ancient Roots: Exploring the Gardens of Ancient Pompeii

    Join The Gardens Trust and Gillian Hovell and discover how the ancient Romans set the seeds of the shape and uses of our modern gardens. Explore the truly ancient, vibrant and fascinating origins of our personal garden spaces and of the grandeur of public gardens. Find out why, if the Romans could have had ‘House and Garden’ magazines, they would have reveled in them! See gardens anew through ancient kitchen gardens, mythological stories, attitudes to wildlife and public parks that all still flourish in our green spaces. Then stroll through the gardens of Roman Pompeii, now blossoming with new insights. This final session on March 19 will discuss the Gardens of Pompeii.

    Pompeii is famous for being the Roman town that was buried in AD 79 by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. This tragic event miraculously preserved unique evidence of the not just the town, but its people and their daily lives and the plants and gardens. Join Gillian as she reveals the amazing archaeological skills that have unearthed 2,000-year-old horticultural secrets from the gardens of this Roman town. We shall glimpse back in time, as we see not just personal gardens tucked into homes but also productive fertile orchards of delicious fruits and nuts (fed by the fertility that came from long forgotten volcanic eruptions). Squeezed into the town’s buildings and streets are commercial perfume growers, sacred religious symbols amidst the greenery, and gardens in memorial of the dead. All these carefully designed social space can now bring vividly to life the aspirations and pleasures of the folk of Pompeii. Pompeii is not just a ruined town of stone; its buried clues reveal a vibrant town alive with enterprising bustle of people and lush with plants flourishing for everyone’s enjoyment and use.

    After graduating with 2-1 (Hons) in Latin and Ancient History from Exeter University, Gillian Hovell worked in BBC Television and became an award-winning freelance writer, author, public speaker & broadcaster in the media and online. As an independent expert in the ancient world she specializes in archaeology, prehistory and in the Greek and Roman eras. She is a lecturer at York University and can be seen and heard on TV & Radio.

    Gillian has excavated at major sites in the UK and Europe (hence ‘The Muddy Archaeologist’) and she shares her expertise and her passion with diverse audiences in the UK and internationally. For history and archaeology are everywhere, and they add colour, depth and meaning to every aspect our lives today.

    Her series of The Muddy Archaeologist Online Courses enables you to explore ancient history, archaeology and Latin with her at any time. An ever-growing collection is available, and they can also be found on Gillian’s website here.

    This ticket (REGISTER HERE) is for this individual session and costs £8, and you may purchase tickets for o the entire course of 6 sessions at a cost of £42 via the link here. [Gardens Trust members may purchase tickets at £31.50 for the series or £6 each talk]. 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.