The Gibson House Museum invites you to Masquerade, a Victorian Masquerade Party and Cocktail Reception to benefit the Gibson House Museum. The event takes place Thursday, April 24 at The Chilton Club, 152 Commonwealth Avenue.
Raffle tickets are a great way to support the museum and maybe win some cool prizes. Tickets are available on our website and at the party. You don’t need to be present to win!
To see our raffle items and to purchase tickets to the event, please visit our Benefit page:
The 55th Annual Meeting of the Friends of the Public Garden will take place at the UMass Club of Boston, 1 Beacon Street, 32nd Floor, at 6 pm. Please plan to arrive at 5:45 pm. Join the Friends as we celebrate our members, welcome incoming President Liza Meyer, and honor the 2025 Parks Champion, Beatrice Nessen. Reception to follow. Friends of the Public Garden is thrilled to present Beatrice Nessen with this year’s Parks Champion Award. Since 1970, Beatrice has devoted great amounts of her time to helping the Friends navigate issues related to advocacy, parks care, programming, public safety, and finance. The impact of her volunteerism in our three parks and the City is immeasurable. Please join us at the Annual Meeting as we honor her tireless commitment to the Common, Garden, and Mall. Register at https://friendsofthepublicgarden.org/events/annual-meeting/
In this American Horticultural Society online talk on April 17 at 2 pm Eastern, Dr. Douglas Tallamy shares his new book to address questions about ecological landscaping and further motivate people to help restore ecosystem function where they live, work, play, worship, and farm. Tallamy will offer insight on topics such as ecology and evolution, biodiversity, invasive species, insect declines, native and non-native plants, conservation and restoration, residential and city landscapes, urban issues, oak biology, keystone plants, Homegrown National Park, monarchs, supporting wildlife at home, and more.
Doug Tallamy is the T. A. Baker Professor of Agriculture in the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware, where he has authored 114 research publications and has taught insect related courses for 45 years. Chief among his research goals is to better understand the many ways insects interact with plants and how such interactions determine the diversity of animal communities. His books include Bringing Nature Home, The Living Landscape, co-authored with Rick Darke; Nature’s Best Hope, a New York Times Best Seller; andThe Nature of Oaks, winner of the American Horticultural Society’s 2022 book award. In 2021 he co-founded Homegrown National Park with Michelle Alfandari (HomegrownNationalPark.org). His awards include recognition from The Garden Writer’s Association, Audubon, The National Wildlife Federation, Allegheny College, Ecoforesters, The Garden Club of America, The Herb Society, and The American Horticultural Society.
REGISTER NOW. $15 for AHS members, $20 nonmembers.
Join the Emerald Necklace Conservancy on April 6 at Franklin Park for a program in England and Spanish aimed at children 6 – 9 years old on Wildlife Conservation and the Ecosystem. There will be storytelling, movement, and exploration, Register at https://emeraldnecklace.org/.
This webinar on a twentieth century landscape designer is the last in a series co-sponsored by FOLAR and the Gardens Trust. It takes place April 20. This ticket is for this individual talk and costs £8, and may be purchased through Eventbrite HERE (Gardens Trust members £6 each ) There will be an opportunity for Q & A after the session. This event is on Marian Thompson and is presented by Bruce Thompson.
Ticket holders can join each session live and/or view a recording for up to 2 weeks afterwards.
Ticket sales close 4 hours before the 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 (If you do not receive this link, please contact us). A link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 2 weeks.
Jennifer Jewell, Creator and Host of Cultivating Places, will present a free Grow Native Massachusetts webinar on April 9 at 7 pm as part of Grow Native’s Evenings with Experts series. Gardeners are powerful agents of change; the landscapes we steward can impact climate change, habitat loss, and more. Jennifer Jewell will explore this power through the lens of the ecology, cultural history, and industry surrounding seeds, a story that holds both cautionary tales and guiding lights as we seek to effect positive change. https://grownativemass.org/Our-Programs/calendar
Christopher Woodward explores the history of swimming pools as features in the design of private gardens from the 17th-century until 1939. This Garden Museum program will be livestreamed on April 8 at 7 pm – 8 pm Greenwich Mean Time, and I’ll leave it to you to figure out just what that means in your time zone, but you will be able to access the talk after the event with a link which will be sent to registrants. The cost of the livestream is £10. Buy your ticket at https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/product/livestream-christophers-lecture-08-04-25/.
In this talk, Christopher Woodward will begin by discussing candidates for the earliest swimming pool in Britain, and the distinction between cold bath and swimming pool in the Georgian age; public swimming pools became a phenomenon of the Victorian city but it was not until the Edwardian age that country house gardens gave centre stage to the pool as an ornamental feature.
The 1920s and ‘30s were the Golden Age of the swimming pool, owing to a heady cocktail of Hollywood movies and Country Life magazine, chlorinated water and elasticated swimsuit – and for the first time men and women swimming together in a fashionable new sport.
This talk is research in progress by Christopher Woodward, Director of the Garden Museum. Christopher is an architectural historian and a swimmer, who has recently swum 100 kilometres in Greece to raise funds for the new public garden of Lambeth Green. He reviews swimming pools for Country Life, the Telegraph and the Financial Times.
