Daily Archives: October 24, 2024

Wednesday, October 30, 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm Eastern – Marcell Proust and the Gardens of the Belle Epoque, Online

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Through an exploration of drama, diaries, novels and magazines, this Gardens Trust Wednesday five part series will examine how writers have used gardens and plants to evoke memories, capture ideas of taste and fashion, satirize attitudes, champion social change and give deeper meaning to the world. The chosen authors cover almost four centuries of literature and, through examining their words, we can gain new understandings of the roles, meanings and emotive power of historic landscapes and horticulture. This ticket link https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/gardens-and-the-written-word-tickets-930348275737 is for the entire series of 5 talks, or you may purchase a ticket for individual talks, costing £8 via the links on that page. (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 5 for £26.25). All purchases are handled through Eventbrite.

Ticket holders can join each session live and/or view a recording for up to 1 week afterwards. Ticket sales close 4 hours before the first talk. 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 weeks.

On October 30, Ben Dark will speak on Marcell Proust. Real and remembered gardens weave through the seven volumes of In Search of Lost Time. This talk will shake some of them loose, blossom hopefully intact, and examine what makes Proust the greatest ever writer on plants and the feelings they evoke.

In doing so we will explore the Pré Catelan Garden in Illiers (Proust’s Combray), the Bois de Boulogne, the hôtels of the Faubourg Saint-Germain and the seaside villas of the Côte Fleurie, examining how their unique treatments provide a window on changing attitudes to garden space in nineteenth and early twentieth century France. We’ll finish with a guide to planting your own Proustian Garden — one capable of provoking involuntary memories in visitors’ decades after they once called round for tea.

Ben Dark is an author, head gardener, broadcaster and landscape historian. He studied Horticulture at Capel Manor, before completing a traineeship at the Garden Museum and an MA in Garden and Landscape History at the Institute of Historical Research. As a gardener he has worked for embassies, cemeteries, heritage bodies and oligarchs. He hosts the award-winning Garden Log and Dear Gardener podcasts, while his book The Grove: A Nature Odyssey in 19 1/2 Front Gardens (Mitchell Beazley, 2022) contains stories of life, death, love and flowers told by the plants of a single street. In 2022 he won the Journalist of the Year award from the Garden Media Guild. Image below: Le Déjeuner (1873), Claude Monet, public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Garden Club of The Back Bay Wreath Sale

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The shop is open for the 2024 Garden Club of the Back Bay wreath sale. Please place your order before November 30. You have almost limitless choices for customization. There are two available sizes – standard wreaths fluff out to between 22″ – 24″ wide, and large wreaths are a generous 31″ wide. The fresh balsam wreaths are enhanced with extra greens for texture and even more fragrance. Bows come in many colors, and are wired. You can specify tones or patterns in the notes while purchasing online. Perhaps you prefer a bright Christmas red, or a brick red, or a purplish red but not quite burgundy: just tell the Club, and they will do their best. The fully decorated wreaths, available in standard size only, are works of art. Best of all, every wreath purchase helps keep the neighborhood trees healthy and happy. To order, visit https://gardenclubbackbay.org/store. Once you click onto a size or style you prefer, more details will be revealed. The wreaths can be delivered in the Back Bay, Beacon Hill, and the South End December 3 – 5, or picked up at The First Lutheran Church of Boston, on the corner of Marlborough and Berkeley Streets.

Thursday, October 31, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm – Bas Smets: Changing Climates

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The Harvard Graduate School of Design exhibition Changing Climates explores how built environments can be transformed into urban ecologies. Producing an enhanced micro-climate, each of these ecologies has the capacity to augment the resilience of the urban condition under the challenges of the climate crisis.

A city can be understood as the juxtaposition of many artificial micro-climates. Buildings change wind patterns and sunlight exposure, while streetscapes modify runoff and soil permeability. For each man-made micro-climate, a comparable natural condition can be found. The study of its living organisms informs the introduction of vegetation as an agent of change into the artificial environment.

The city thus becomes a second nature and an active laboratory. Similar to plants that have gradually transformed their environment, and life in general that has been shaping the form of the earth, these urban ecologies have the force to transform the very nature of the city into a living organism. The built environment becomes an intelligent interface between an uncertain meteorology and an underused geology. Positioned between the above and the below, cities develop into a true zone of life.

In this October 31 lecture in the Piper Auditorium of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Bas Smets will explore how these new urban ecologies can be conceived and constructed through a selection of projects featured in the exhibition. Varying in both scale and program, these projects show how to develop solution-based design through science-based research.

A reception will follow in the Druker Design Gallery. Free and open to the public. Complete information may be found at www.gsd.harvard.edu.