Daily Archives: April 9, 2025

Thursday, April 16, 12:00 noon – 1:00 pm Eastern – Poisons & Remedies, Online

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Join the New York Botanic Garden on April 16 online for Poisons & Remedies, the second panel of our 2025 Plant Humanities Conversations, co-organized between NYBG’s Humanities Institute and Dumbarton Oaks. In this session, Dr. Michael Balick (NYBG), Dr. Hannah Cole (UCSC), and Dr. Luciana Martins (Birbeck) explore plant stories of poisons and remedies as they feature in ethnobotanical research, literature, and botanical collections.  Dr. Balick will share examples of how plants have been identified and used as poisonous from Western and non-Western medical traditions; Dr. Martins will dive into the economic botany collections at Kew to uncover stories of remedies in them; and Dr. Cole will explore literary representations of plants and toxicity.

The panel will be moderated by Yota Batsaki, Executive Director of Dumbarton Oaks, and Lucas Mertehikian, Director of NYBG’s Humanities Institute.This event is free and open to the public. Register in the link HERE to receive a Zoom invitation.

Friday, April 11, 12:00 noon Eastern – John Ystumllyn, Online

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This portrait below of John Ystumllyn is a central piece in The Garden Museum’s new ‘Black Gardening in Britain’ display in the museum. Ystumllyn was a Black Welsh Gardener who lived in North Wales in the 1700s.

Before the portrait – which is on temporary loan to the museum from Anthony Mould – leaves to go on display in the British Library’s Unearthed exhibition, come and say goodbye to John Ystumllyn at an evening centred around his life, where we discuss how he ended up in Britain, his legacy and how we view his life beyond the painting of him at 16. £10 Livestream Book tickets at GardenMuseum.org. The speaker will be Edward Adonteng. Edward Adonteng is an essayist, poet, artist, gardener, and academic from South London. He describes himself as a bridge-builder, facilitating discourse on several themes and creating platforms for people to thrive and fully exercise their ingenuity. Recently published as a Contemporary Ghanaian Poet, Edward ruminates on ways that human beings can communicate with each other in a new world that ignores the “little things.” He focuses on intellectual histories, epistemology, and anti-colonial thought/practice within academia. His attitude around growing is simple – to grow is to be human.