Boston Flora

Month: March 2024

  • Wednesday, March 13, 1:00 pm Eastern – Restoration in Action: Burnby Hall, Online

    This is the second 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.

    The period 2016 to 2019 saw the complete restoration of the substantial early 20th century Rock Garden at Burnby Hall Gardens. Originally created for the owners of Burnby Hall, Major Percy and Mrs Katharine Stewart, by James Backhouse and Son of York, a substantial Heritage Lottery Fund grant supported the transformation of this unique location using the original planting catalogue.

    This illustrated lecture on March 13 at 1 pm Eastern features a brief history of the Stewarts and details the extensive work that has been undertaken to restore the Rock Garden, including obtaining the funding, the challenges that were overcome, and its ongoing maintenance.

    Ian Murphy is Estate Manager at Burnby Hall Gardens and Project Manager on the Heritage Lottery Restoration (2016-19).

    Jill Ward is Head Gardener and responsible for subsequent development of the Rock Garden.

    Peter Rogers is Assistant Estate Manager with Responsibility for the Stewart Museum.

  • Thursday, March 21, 10:00 am – Jaw-dropping, Traffic-stopping, Get Your Neighbors Talking Container Gardens

    Deborah Trickett, owner of The Captured Garden, will show members of The Garden Club of the Back Bay how to create lush container gardens that will be the envy of the neighborhood. Join Deborah for a Powerpoint demonstration as she shows how to take our container gardens from “blah” to “aaah”. She’ll start with the basics, including appropriate containers, soil mixes, and plant choices for different site conditions, then proceed to new and unusual plant material and uncommon, container choices for exceptionally beautiful results. The program will take place March 21 at The Chilton Club in Boston. Members have received notification and instructions on registering on Eventbrite. Email info@bostonflora.com with questions.

    Deborah is an award-winning container garden designer whose work has been featured in The Boston Globe, Garden Gate Magazine, New England Home Magazine and on the TV show New England Dream Home. She is a Massachusetts Certified Horticulturist and a frequent lecturer on container gardening at the Boston Flower and Garden Show, as well as the Philadelphia International Flower Show.  She also teaches classes and workshops at the Arnold Arboretum in Boston.

    If you are interested in joining The Garden Club of the Back Bay to participate in programs such as this, visit https://bostonflora.com

  • Tuesday, March 26, 11:00 am – 1:00 pm Eastern – Spring Meadow Centerpiece, Online

    Celebrate the return of spring by creating a country meadow-inspired centerpiece bursting with field flowers, heirloom parrot tulips, mini daffodils, and fresh herbs. You’ll capture the essence of flower fields with a profusion of colors and textures as you craft this centerpiece in a wooden container. Learn the tips and tricks of the trade for keeping flowers looking fresh and long lasting without chemicals or floral foam. The class takes place on March 26 from 11 – 1 Eastern time. This New York Botanical Garden online course requires the additional purchase of materials. You will receive an email from the instructor, Trish O’Sullivan, with details on what to purchase one week prior to the class start date. NYBG members $125, nonmembers $135. Register at www.nybg.org

  • Tuesday, March 19, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm – Art Applied, Inside Outside

    You are invited to the Margaret McCurry Lectureship in the Design Arts on March 19 at 6:30 with Petra Blaisse, in conversation with Grace La, Niels Olsen, and Fredi Fischli, at the Harvard Graduate School of Design Gund Hall Piper Auditorium in Cambridge. Free. Designer Petra Blaisse discusses her forthcoming publication Art Applied, Inside Outside(2024), a kaleidoscopic view of her work across interior, exhibition, and landscape design over three decades. This comprehensive survey encompasses renowned projects, including the recently completed Taipei Performing Arts Center; the Kunsthal Rotterdam; Biblioteca degli Alberi in Milan, a park spanning almost ten hectares; and LocHal Library in Tilburg, a vast factory repurposed using an architecture of semitranslucent curtains. Joining the conversation are the GSD’s Grace La, Chair of the Department of Architecture; Niels Olsen, John Portman Design Critic in Architecture; and Fredi Fischli, John Portman Design Critic in Architecture.

    Petra Blaisse, Inside Outside’s lead designer, works in a multitude of creative areas including interior design, landscape architecture, exhibition and textile design. After an education in the visual arts and work for commercial photographers and filmers she became assistant curator at the Applied Arts department of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. In 1986 she became free-lance exhibition designer.

    While realizing a series of experimental installations and exhibitions with the Rotterdamse Kunststichting (1988) and OMA (1987-1992), Blaisse’s assignments extended to the architectural field, where her focus on interior interventions (material, colour, light) and large-scale curtains developed, parallel to her life-long passion for gardening. After a two-year period of practical schooling in the early 90’s to gain botanical knowledge, Blaisse decided to add garden design to her practice.

    Since 2016 Inside Outside is led by Blaisse and partners Aura Luz Melis (architect) and Jana Crepon (landscape architect) in collaboration with long-time colleague Peter Niessen (fashion designer). The studio specializes in the creation of dynamic, ever-changing environments of various levels of complexity, both inside and outside.

    For more information visit www.gsd.harvard.edu

  • Thursday, March 28, 7:00 pm – The Larger Landscape Conversation: Queering Public Spaces

    Join architects Joel Sanders, Sami Meylnas Sikanas, and activist Kimm Topping at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on March 28 at 7 pm as they discuss how inclusive design and the crafting of accessible public spaces embrace diverse gender and sexual identities in a conversation that redefines urban design beyond heteronormative boundaries.

    The public realm has been historically conceived, constructed, and construed as heteronormative. The architectural and urban typologies of bathrooms, sports fields, and campuses have spatially reinforced strict gender binaries and prohibitions of various sexualities. More recently, the contemporary city has seen a growing discourse on design beyond its heteronormative origins. Queering Public Spaces convenes conversation on the role of design and planning in the curation of public spaces and landscapes that are accessible and welcoming to all, across the dynamic and vast spectrum of sexual and gender identities and lived experiences. The Larger Landscape Conversation is hosted by Gardner Museum Ruettgers Curator of Landscape and Harvard GSD Professor of Landscape Architecture Charles Waldheim.

    Advanced 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. To request accessible or wheelchair seating please call the box office at 617 278 5156. Register at https://www.gardnermuseum.org/calendar/larger-landscape-conversation-queering-public-spaces

  • Sunday, March 17 – Application Deadline, Trees for Cities Poetry Contest

    Share your nature and tree-inspired poetry with Trees for Cities!

    From urban trees and wildflowers to plants, bees and bugs – take inspiration from your surroundings when out and about with nature and turn it into poems.

    Entries will be open until Sunday 17th March 2024, after which we will choose our favourite entries to be shared across our digital channels and win special Trees for Cities goodies.

    Application may be found HERE

  • Saturday, March 23, 11:00 am – 12:30 pm Eastern – A World of Discovery with Science and Heart, Online

    Much has been written about gardening for human senses, but how do plants and animals perceive the world around them? What do we miss when we landscape for human visual appeal but neglect the sensory experiences of our wild neighbors? Noise, light and odor pollution can have many unintended consequences. Through science, heart, and our powers of observation, we can learn to mitigate these disruptions and create sensory refuges in an increasingly noisy world. This program is part of the Mt. Cuba Lecture Series. This program takes place online Saturday, March 23rd, 2024. $25. Register HERE

    Nancy Lawson is the author of The Humane Gardener: Nurturing a Backyard Habitat for Wildlife and the recently released Wildscape: Trilling Chipmunks, Beckoning Blooms, Salty Butterflies, and other Sensory Wonders of Nature. A certified Chesapeake Bay Landscape Professional and master naturalist, she co-chairs Howard County Bee City in Maryland and co-launched a community science project, Monarch Rx, based on discoveries in her habitat. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, O magazine, Ecological Entomology, and Entomology Today.

  • Monday, March 11, 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm Eastern – What We Sow: The Personal, Ecological, and Cultural Significance of Seeds, Online

    In her American Horticultural Society online presentation on March 11 at 2 pm Eastern, Jennifer Jewell will explore the philosophy of Cultivating Place, her national, public radio program and international podcast, based on the belief that gardens/gardeners are powerful agents and spaces for potentially positive change in our world, helping to address challenges as wide ranging as climate change, habitat loss, cultural polarization, and individual and communal health and being. She will explore how this power of gardens and gardeners can be viewed through a lens of seeds, and the general state of seeds in our gardened lives: how they grow, where they grow, who grows them, who sells and/or controls them, and their care up and down the seedsheds of our world. Jewell will walk us through examples taken from her daily life, her research, and interviews over the past decade with seed keepers as synthesized in her newest book What We Sow, On the Personal, Ecological, and Cultural Significance of Seeds (2023). Register at https://ahsgardening.org/lifelong-learning-2/what-we-sow-the-personal-ecological-and-cultural-significance-of-seeds/

    Jennifer Jewell is the host of the national award-winning weekly public radio program and podcast Cultivating Place: Conversations on Natural History and the Human Impulse to Garden. She is the author of The Earth in Her Hands, 75 Extraordinary Women Working in the World of Plants (Timber Press in 2020), and Under Western Skies, Visionary Gardens from the Rockies to the Pacific Coast (Timber Press, May 2021). Her third book, What We Sow: On the Personal, Ecological, and Cultural Significance of Seeds, was published by Timber Press in 2023. Jewell’s greatest passion is elevating the way we think and talk about gardening, the empowerment of gardeners, and the possibility inherent in the intersection between places, environments, cultures, individuals, and the gardens that bring them together beautifully – for the better of all the lives on this generous planet.

  • Friday, April 26 – Sunday, April 28 – Art in Bloom

    We are thrilled to announce that Art in Bloom returns to the MFA’s galleries on Friday, April 26, 2024! You won’t want to miss these beautiful interpretive floral arrangements of 45 artworks. Enjoy the creativity of many talented volunteer and professional floral designers. Preview Day is Thursday, April 25. Tickets and group tour reservations are available now at https://www.mfa.org/event/special-event/art-in-bloom

  • Monday, March 18, Wednesday, March 20, & Friday, March 22, 10:00 am – 1:00 pm Eastern – Botanical Beachcombing: Signs of Spring, Online

    In early spring, as the snow begins to melt away, the days begin to get longer. Along the edges of the beach and in the habitat that surrounds it, buds are beginning to swell, fresh shoots are emerging, and the birds are chirping. There is an energy in the air and an excitement for warmer days ahead and the promise of spring.

    With Sarah Roche as your guide, record the changing seasons as you botanically beachcomb, drawing the treasures and detritus that wash up along the shoreline and the evidence of last year’s flora that hints at the possibilities of this new season.
    This three part Massachusetts Horticultural Society class will take place online on March 18, 20, and 22 from 10 – 1. $225 for Mass Hort members, $275 for nonmembers.

    Prerequisite(s): Suitable for intermediate or advanced artists who have completed at least one “Techniques of Botanical Drawing & Painting” class, or equivalent.