Photographer Claire Takacs and landscape architect and planting design expert Giacomo Guzzon will present their new book, Visionary: Gardens and Landscapes for Our Future. They will share stunning imagery and discuss key themes and findings, highlighting a selection of the book’s eighty gardens and public landscapes from around the world. These featured spaces showcase innovative, inspiring, and beautiful ways to work with our changing climate across diverse scales, climates, applications, and budgets. This Garden Conservancy online event takes place on October 31 at 2 pm.
$5 for members of the Garden Conservancy $15 for General Admission
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/education/
Experience the vibrant flavors of Egypt at A Night with Koshari Mama – Vegan Egyptian Delights, at Wright-Locke Farm in Winchester on October 28 beginning at 6:30 pm. The Farm is thrilled to partner with Koshari Mama for this special event, where you’ll indulge in authentic vegan Egyptian cuisine. Between courses, enjoy the captivating artistry of a professional belly dancer. For tickets visit www.WLFarm.org
Ale is one of the oldest beverages produced by humanity, a method of preserving calories from otherwise perishable grain while also providing a way to make water safe to drink. The Scandinavian people brewed both ale and mead, but their ale was quite unlike the IPAs available today. For one thing, hops did not come into common use as a flavoring agent until the 11th century, well into the Viking age. Instead, they flavored their beers with gruit, a mix of herbs which they could collect locally. These included mugwort, heather flower, yarrow, and meadowsweet. In this Cambridge Center for Adult Education hands-on class on November 6, we will brew a beer, with your choice of herbs in the gruit, and send you home with a gallon of the brew. Course fees include a growler and gas lock, and all instructions to complete fermenting the ale. Instructor: Michael McComas. $95. Register at https://ccae.org/classes/offering/3946/brew-like-a-viking-in-person-new
The Boston Committee of the Garden Club of America is pleased to announce its Fall Lecture and Lunch featuring David O’Neill of the Massachusetts Audubon Society as the featured speaker. David is a Conservation Superhero: prior to his senior roles with Audubon, he served as Vice President at the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Executive Director of the Chesapeake Bay Trust, and Director of Land Use Policy and Outreach for the Urban Land Institute
Members of garden clubs who are part of the Boston Committee will receive notice of the October 29 meeting, and a link to register, but if you are missing the information visit https://bostoncommitteegca.org/
Celebrate the launch of The Gardens Trust book on Unforgettable Gardens with online talks from three of its contributors. Ticketholders will receive a code for a 30% discount on pre-orders of the book from Batsford, the publishers.
Unforgettable Gardens explores the history of British garden design through some of the most beautiful, intriguing, unusual and important gardens, parks and landscapes in the UK, with stunning photography accompanied by insightful profiles from leading garden historians and conservators.
Arranged chronologically, Unforgettable Gardens covers over 50 individual gardens, most of which are open to the public, which have been carefully selected to give an overview of British garden design from the 16th to the 20th century. Each century opens with an illuminating essay, exploring the wider changes in social context, taste and style in each period.
Curated by the Gardens Trust, the UK conservation charity dedicated to protecting, researching and celebrating historic gardens, this book is intended to inform, inspire and encourage everyone to enjoy, visit and support our national heritage of parks and gardens.
This ticket is for the entire series of 3 talks, or you may purchase a ticket for individual talks, costing £8 via the links below. (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 3 for £15.75).
Ticket holders can join each session live and/or view a recording for up to 2 weeks afterwards. 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 2 weeks.
Week 1. 15th October: the Bobarts and Oxford Botanic Garden with India Cole. First in a series of 3 online lectures, £8 each or all 3 for £21 (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 3 for £15.75) Jacob Bobart the Elder (c.1599-1680) was the first keeper of the Oxford Physic Garden (as the Botanic Garden was originally known). Bobart’s early life is shrouded in mystery, and he is best remembered now for his supposed eccentricity, but he deserves recognition for establishing the garden’s original (impressive) plant collection with limited resources. His son, Jacob Bobart the Younger (1641-1719) later became the second superintendent of the garden and was crucial in its development and on-going success. Bobart the Elder’s other son, Tilleman (?-1735), gained a position working as a gardener at Blenheim Palace and then Hampton Court. This talk will give an overview of the Bobarts and their contributions to botany and horticulture, as well as considering how mercantile and commercial interests informed, influenced, and aligned with their pursuits of gardening and botany in the early-modern period.
Week 2. 22nd October: Margery Fish and East Lambrook Manor with Catherine Horwood. Second in a series of 3 online lectures, £8 each or all 3 for £21 (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 3 for £15.75) In 1980, John Sales, then Head of Gardens for the National Trust said of East Lambrook Manor, in Somerset, that ‘in the development of gardening in the second half of the twentieth century, no garden has yet had greater effect.’ This effect was to create a passion in Britain for ‘cottage garden’ planting brought to prominence through the enthusiasm and hard work of its creator, Margery Fish.
In this talk, Dr Catherine Horwood will look at how Margery Fish was able to take cottage gardening forward into becoming a national movement by telling her life story, and the legacy she left behind. As well as describing Fish’s work at East Lambrook Manor, she will reveal how her books, starting with We Made A Garden published in 1956, show Fish’s knowledge of plant material having amassed over 2,000 different species and cultivars from a network of horticultural friendships and wayside finds.
Week 3. 29th October: Castle Howard with Sally Jeffery. Last in a series of 3 online lectures, £8 each or all 3 for £21 (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 3 for £15.75) The dramatic and varied landscape at Castle Howard was designed in the early eighteenth century by John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor with the active participation of the owner, Charles Howard, 3rd Earl of Carlisle, and is among the most memorable and innovative ever created. As Horace Walpole wrote: ‘Nobody had informed me that at one view I should see a palace, a town, a fortified city, temples on high places, woods worthy of being each a metropolis of the Druids, the noblest lawns in the world fenced by half the horizon, and a mausoleum that would tempt one to be buried alive…’. Its main lines survive today, and its history can be further illuminated by surviving drawings and documents.
As co-founder of Seattle-based landscape design firm GGN, Shannon Nichol is committed to specifying local native plant palettes through long-term and norm-breaking collaborations with local horticulturalists and landscape managers around the world. Stemming from a lifelong enthusiasm and amateur familiarity with her home region’s under-used native plants, Nichol has documented the successes and failures of incorporating native plantings into her own gardens over the last 15 years, a process that has heavily influenced her professional work and led to many creative explorations and friendships along the way.
Hear from Nichol as she shares learnings and insight from projects including; Chicago’s Lurie Garden at Millenium Park, the Gates Foundation Campus in Seattle, and the Seattle Residence: Native Gardens. This New York Botanical Garden webinar will take place October 15 at 6:30 pm. NYBG members $35, nonmembers $39. Register at www.nybg.org
Join The Museum of Old Newbury on October 28 for a full day Conference on Newburyport and the China Trade, 1844-2024: Commerce, Diplomacy, and the Arts in the Years of the Dragon.
In 1843, Caleb Cushing of Newburyportresigned from the U.S. Congress to become America’s first commissioner to China. He arrived in China with four American warships, laden with gifts including revolvers, a telescope, and an encyclopedia, and used both threats and flattery to achieve his ends. The subsequent 1844 Treaty of Wanghia, named for the village where it was signed, was the first treaty between the U.S. and China. It was one more way in which Newburyport and the China Trade were inextricably linked.
JoinEric Jay Dolin, author of When America Met China, and Dane Morrison, author of True Yankees: The South Seas & the Discovery of American Identity, along with art, shipbuilding, and modern China experts to evaluate the impact of the China Trade on various aspects of our community, our nation, and the world.
This full-day event includes lunch and all sessions and is hosted by The Governor’s Academy, 1 Elm Street, Newbury, Massachusetts.
Tickets are $45 for Museum of Old Newbury Members; $60 for non-members. Register at www.newburyhistory.org
Boston Flora achieved a milestone in September. The number of highlighted events of horticultural and environmental interest written since its debut as the blog for The Garden Club of the Back Bay now exceeds 12,000. The exact number is a bit fuzzy since some recurring annual events such as major fundraisers are edited, not rewritten, so the post numbers remain the same. A couple of years ago The Garden Club of the Back Bay launched a different site, https://bostonflora.com, focusing on Club activities, while Boston Flora remains committed to broadening public awareness of educational opportunities nationwide. When COVID lockdowns expanded online lecture opportunities, I jumped on the challenge, and now Boston Flora has followers across the country. Still, New England is my spiritual home, and local organizations are prioritized. If you are not already registered, please sign up for the daily email through the website – thousands of households already do. There are no advertisements – the site is maintained on a volunteer basis as a labor of love. Feel free to let me know about events you think may be of interest, and I will do my best to include them. Boston Flora has a Facebook page and an Instagram account @bostonflorablog. On Instagram, you won’t see the daily posts, since the platform prioritizes the visual. To see what is going on, you really need to check out the website. Thank you all for following Boston Flora and me, Francine Crawford!
Smithsonian Associates presents a Zoom talk on October 21 at 6:45 pm Eastern on The Great Wide Ocean. The open ocean, far from the shore and miles above the sea floor, is a vast and formidable habitat that is home to the most abundant life on our planet, from giant squid and jellyfish to angler fish with bioluminescent lures that draw prey into their toothy mouths.
In an illustrated lecture, sea-going scientist Sönke Johnsen explores how life thrives in one of the most mysterious environments on Earth and vividly describes how life in the open sea contends with a host of environmental challenges. He also interweaves stories about the joys and hardships of the scientists who explore this beautiful and mysterious realm, which is under threat from human activity and rapidly changing before our eyes.
Johnsen is professor of biology at Duke University. His new book, Into the Great Wide Ocean: Life in the Least Known Habitat on Earth(Princeton University Press), is available for purchase at registration. The lecture is $20 for Smithsonian members, $25 for nonmembers. Register at https://smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/programs/great-wide-ocean
Do you prefer simple and clean or wild and lush? Whatever your preference, learn to use basic principles of repetition, symmetry, and color theory to blend your beloved collection of houseplants into a unified design. We’ll discuss a broad palette of plants, how to mix and match them, and how to select the best pots or shelves to complement your decor. Walk away with a unique potted houseplant. Price includes a $30 materials fee. This New York Botanic Garden online workshop takes place October 26 from 10 – 1 online, and is taught by Daryl Beyers. NYBG members $130, nonmembers $140. Register HERE.
