Join Essex Gardens Trust’s Writer in Residence, Siobhan Pierce and Artist in Residence, Jane Frederick for three FREE exciting creative online sessions to celebrate your favorite parks and gardens.
These fun and friendly practical workshops are designed for you to have a go at writing and image making to develop your confidence and enhance your skills whilst celebrating a treasured garden, park or green space that you know and love. Siobhan and Jane will help you nurture your memories and provide you with inspiration and the practical tools to stimulate your imagination through drawing, collage and prose.
Your free ticket includes access to all three lunchtime sessions:
Wednesday, August 13, Glimpses of the Garden: Building Your Favorite Garden with Drawing and Collage; Wednesday, August 20, Sensory Garden: Exploring Your Favorite Garden Through Word Play; and Wednesday, August 27, Reimagined Garden: Playfully Combining Image and Text.
Suitable for complete beginners, the workshops may be attended individually or as a group and are suitable for 7 years and up.
For a suggested materials list, and to sign up, visit Eventbrite UK HERE.
Are you curious about unusual and inspiring perennial plants? Join sponsor National Bank of Middlebury on August 7 at 10 am for a guided tour with Marijke, owner of Marijke’s Perennial Gardens Plus, 1299 Robert Young Road in South Starksboro, Vermont. Marijke will share her extensive knowledge on a wide range of perennials – how to grow, care for, and enjoy them in your garden. While not all plants will be blooming, you’ll have the opportunity to see mature specimens, appreciate their unique foliage, and envision their full seasonal potential.
This tour is perfect for the passionate gardeners and nature lovers alike. Whether you’re seeking ideas, expanding your plant knowledge, or simply looking to enjoy the natural beauty of a thoughtfully curated garden, you’ll leave inspired. Visitors often describe Marijke’s Perennial Gardens Plus as “magical,” “whimsical,” “heavenly,” and “a paradise for plants, bees, birds, and wildlife.” Come and see why!
Marijke is the proud recipient of the 2024 Environmental Awareness Award from the Vermont Nursery and Landscape Association, recognizing her commitment to sustainable gardening and environmental education.
Discover the sensory magic of herbs in this immersive, hands-on New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill experience, guided by expert Jia Li. Explore the flavor profiles, healing properties, and traditional uses of a variety of botanicals as you learn the art of balancing ingredients for both taste and wellness. Leave with practical knowledge, a calming ritual to enjoy long after the workshop ends, and craft your own custom tea blend to take home. The class takes place Sunday, August 10 from 2:30 – 4, and is $70 for NEBG Members, $84 for non-members. Register at www.nebg.org
The Healey-Driscoll Administration announced the appointment of Easthampton Mayor Nicole LaChapelle as Commissioner of the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR). She takes over for Brian Arrigo on July 21, who is departing the administration to join the University of Massachusetts Lowell.
Nicole LaChapelle has served as Mayor of Easthampton since 2018. During her time as Mayor, Easthampton leveraged record-level grant funding to promote new affordable housing, protected green spaces, and strengthened infrastructure. She partnered with the Kestrel Land Trust to launch a unique initiative to build 90 units of affordable housing and conserve the vulnerable meadows, hayfields, and forests along the Manhan River. LaChapelle also partnered with the Land Trust again to secure 23 acres for the Mt. Tom North Trailhead Park.
In 2019, she led the City’s efforts to qualify for Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness grants, later leveraging those dollars to improve stormwater management, flood preparedness, and the urban tree canopy. LaChapelle helped oversee the redesign of the New City neighborhood, creating a new park, adding multi-use paths, and upgrading the sewer system. These upgrades are a part of Easthampton’s larger Green Infrastructure Plan spearheaded under Mayor LaChapelle, which envisions cleaner rivers and restored natural resources throughout the city. In 2021, she became the first mayor in the country to offer an employee benefit for EV adoption, concurrent with City’s own plans to transition the City fleet to electric vehicles. She hired Easthampton’s first Sustainability Coordinator to advance future climate preparedness and clean energy initiatives.
Prior to her time in office, LaChapelle spent over two decades working to support the interests of disabled and marginalized students. As a certified Massachusetts School Superintendent and Special Education Administrator, she went on to serve as the Chief of Pupil Services for Holyoke Public Schools in 2015, overseeing district special education services and related compliance functions. LaChapelle also served as a local attorney focused on civil rights advocacy, especially as it pertains to education and disabilities.
This summer, step into the world of Frances Palmer — potter, gardener and photographer — through an immersive new exhibition at Berkshire Botanical Garden that runs in the Leonhardt Galleries from Augus 15 through October 5. The public is invited to the opening reception on Friday, August 15, from 5 to 7 p.m.
Frances Palmer will bring together three intimately connected aspects of her artistic life, showcasing her signature terracotta ceramics, platinum palladium photographs of garden flowers and luminous color photographs of floral arrangements. A self-taught potter for nearly four decades, Palmer has long explored the relationship between earth and bloom. She began growing flowers in her Connecticut garden specifically to arrange in her handmade vessels and photograph in her studio.
“The pottery and the flowers are the two halves of my earthly paradise,” Palmer says. “I honestly can’t imagine one without the other.”
Visitors will encounter Palmer’s warm, expressive terracotta pots — some of which will be thoughtfully composed using blossoms grown at BBG. Her photographs, known for their dreamy, meditative quality, reveal a deep reverence for the ephemeral beauty of flowers and the everyday magic of the natural world. Palmer’s work has been featured in The New York Times Style Magazine, Vogue, House & Garden, and Veranda, and is held in collections around the world. She is the author of “Life in the Studio,” and her newest book, “Life with Flowers: Inspiration and Lessons from the Garden” (Artisan Books), offers a deeper look into her creative process and garden philosophy.
“I love the scale of Berkshire Botanical Garden and the beautiful setting,” she says. “The exhibition will, in a way, serve as a conversation or dialogue with the Garden’s living landscape.”
Established in 1934 as the “Berkshire Garden Center” and revered as one of the older public display gardens in the Northeast, Berkshire Botanical Garden is a not-for-profit, membership-supported educational organization encompassing 24 acres of land at the intersection of Routes 102 and 183 in Stockbridge. It’s mission is to “provide information, education and inspiration concerning the science, art and joy of gardening and its role in preserving the environment.”
Join WBUR at CitySpace at the Lavine Broadcast Center on Commonwealth Avenue on August 4 at 7 pm to celebrate National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day with three local chefs and cookie innovators: Marissa Ferola, founder of Nine Winters Bakery, Maura Kilpatrick, pastry chef and co-owner of Sofra Bakery and Cafe, and Nicole Walsh, owner of Clear Flour Bread. WBUR transportation reporter Andrea Perdomo-Hernandez moderates. Get your cookie and baking questions ready. Chocolate chip cookies from all three chefs will be served following the conversation,. $10 – $30. Click HERE to buy tickets.
Join Friends of the Public Garden on August 7 from noon – 2 for a Backyard Bash, Carnival Style. Enjoy a live DJ, a performance by Nick Shea, games and prizes, slushies from BPD, treats and more as the Boston Common is turned into a festive carnival experience. This is a free event – no registration required!
Pen and ink is a versatile drawing medium offering a rich black-and-white expressive language for illustration. In this one-day Massachusetts Horticultural Society class on August 25, you will find out how to hold the pens to make different strokes and tips and strategies to control ink flow, prevent ink blobs, and correct mistakes. We will work with the crow-quill metal dip pen with India ink and the Pigma micron pen. Instructed by Carol Ann Morley. $120 for Mass Hort members, $150 for nonmembers. Register at https://www.masshort.org/upcoming-classes
We always remind readers that, as American Express says, Membership Has Its Privileges. Since 2009, the Garden Club of the Back Bay has given the Magnolia award to an individual or organization that meets the criteria of its mission; to promote civic beauty, and to advance and encourage horticultural improvements by planting and cultivating trees along the streets and public squares of the Back Bay and to educate the public in the art of gardening.
On August 7, Club members will tour a few of the Magnolia Award winners from the past and present, ending with lunch at Terra in the Prudential Center. When you send in your RSVP, please say whether you’ll be able to join the group for lunch. Meet at 57 Marlborough Street at 10:00 am. RSVP HERE.
Not yet a member? No burdensome letters of recommendation or geographic requirements needed. Just visit https://bostonflora.com/ and click on to the membership link.
