Celebrate orchid-blooming season at the Lyman Estate Greenhouses, 85 Lyman Street in Waltham, October 3 – 5 from 9:30 – 4. Hundreds of orchid plants are for sale, including many hard-to-find varieties. Visit the greenhouse and enjoy gorgeous floral colors, shapes, and scents. Varieties on display and for sale include Cattleyas, Laelias, Oncidiums, Paphiopedilums, Phalaenopsis, and many more. Their long-lasting blooms are a dramatic addition to any indoor environment. This adaptable species can grow in a variety of home conditions. Staff are available to offer expert advice.
Historic New England members receive a 10% discount.
The 30th Annual Boston VegFood Fest takes place at the Reggie Lewis Athletic Center, 1350 Tremont Street, on October 18 and 19. Boston Veg Food Fest brings together an amazing array of providers of 100% plant-based food and lifestyle products, notable speakers and chefs, and educational exhibitors in a fun and welcoming environment.
It is a chance to talk directly to food producers, learn about new items in the marketplace, taste samples, and shop at show-special discounts. Learn from experts in the fields of plant-based nutrition, culinary arts, athletics, climate, and sustainable, animal-friendly living. The event is free. For more information visit https://bostonveg.org/foodfest/
This Berkshire Botanical Garden four-week course, held on Thursdays, October 2 – 23, from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., will help students better understand the principles and practices of ecological gardening with a focus on native plant communities. Students will learn the native plant palette, resources needed to identify these communities, and habitats and methods of introducing native plants into gardens. Identifying and controlling invasive plant species, in addition to restoring areas that have been impacted by invasives, will also be highlighted. Gardeners will learn how to enhance garden spaces with native plants that create sustainable and low maintenance gardens. This course will be taught by Bridghe McCracken of Helia Land Design.
Three years ago, HNN was founded by horticulturalist and landscape designer Bridghe McCracken, after the sale of Project Native, a non-profit where she was Chief Landscape Designer for ten years. The founding of HNN was a solution to continue her and Project Native’s mission to save unique Berkshire native plant seed and propagate plants from those seeds, to be sold to landscape design clients and the public, part of an effort to restore and expand the strained ecosystem in the Berkshires.
The Boston University Food Studies Program has announced its Fall 2025 Pépin Lecture Series. On Thursday, October 9 at 6:00 pm Hi’ilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart will present a talk based on her new book Cooling the Tropics. Beginning in the mid-1800s, Americans hauled frozen pond water, then glacial ice, and then ice machines to Hawaiʻi—all in an effort to reshape the islands in the service of Western pleasure and profit. Marketed as “essential” for white occupants of the nineteenth-century Pacific, ice quickly permeated the foodscape through advancements in freezing and refrigeration technologies. In Cooling the Tropics Hiʻilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart charts the social history of ice in Hawaiʻi to show how the interlinked concepts of freshness and refreshment mark colonial relationships to the tropics.
From chilled drinks and sweets to machinery, she shows how ice and refrigeration underpinned settler colonial ideas about race, environment, and the senses. By outlining how ice shaped Hawaiʻi’s food system in accordance with racial and environmental imaginaries, Hobart demonstrates that thermal technologies can—and must—be attended to in struggles for food sovereignty and political self-determination in Hawaiʻi and beyond.
Hiʻilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart (Kanaka Maoli) is Assistant Professor of Native and Indigenous Studies at Yale University. An interdisciplinary scholar, she researches and teaches on issues of settler colonialism, environment, and Indigenous sovereignty. This first book, Cooling the Tropics: Ice, Indigeneity, and Hawaiian Refreshment (Duke University Press, 2022) is a recipient of the press’s Scholars of Color First Book Award. It will be available for purchase on October 9.
Her articles have appeared in refereed journals such as NAIS, Media+Environment, Food, Culture, and Society, and The Journal of Transnational American Studies, among others. She is the co-editor of the special issue “Radical Care,” for Social Text (2020), and the editor of Foodways of Hawaiʻi (Routledge, 2018). She is currently working on a project about cultural memory, commemoration, and hauntings in Hawaii State Parks. Professor Hobart holds a PhD in Food Studies from New York University, an MA in Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture from the Bard Graduate Center, and an MLS in Rare Books Librarianship and Archives Management from the Pratt Institute.
The event will take place at 808 Commonwealth Avenue, in Fuller 124, and is free, but registration is recommended through Eventbrite HERE.
The Trustees invite you to The Incredible Naumkeag Pumpkin Show, Wednesdays through Sundays in October. Advance tickets and further details are found at https://thetrustees.org/program/halloween/. The address is 5 Prospect Hill Road in Stockbridge.
By selecting climate-resilient plants and landscape management practices, you can mitigate the impact of prolonged droughts, intensified weather events, extended growing seasons, rising temperatures, and ecological mismatches. Join the Massachusetts Horticultural Society online on September 30 from 6 – 8. $45 for Mass Hort members, $55 for nonmembers. Register at https://www.masshort.org/upcoming-classes
Beginning in the mid-1800s, Americans hauled frozen pond water, then glacial ice, and then ice machines to Hawaiʻi—all in an effort to reshape the islands in the service of Western pleasure and profit. Marketed as “essential” for white occupants of the nineteenth-century Pacific, ice quickly permeated the foodscape through advancements in freezing and refrigeration technologies. In Cooling the Tropics Hiʻilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart charts the social history of ice in Hawaiʻi to show how the interlinked concepts of freshness and refreshment mark colonial relationships to the tropics. The October 9 lecture takes place in Room 124 at 808 Commonwealth Avenue in Brookline at the Boston University School of Culinary Arts, as part of the Jacques Pepín Lecture Series, Register in advance on Eventbrite HERE.
This October 7 Gardens Trust and Garden Museum online talk, illustrated with plans, drawings and photographs from the RHS Lindley Library will look at the challenges William Andrews Nesfield faced when commissioned by the Royal Horticultural Society to design its new garden at the heart of the ‘Albertopolis’ cultural quarter in Kensington. The talk will look at the conflicting agendas and personalities of the many people Nesfield had to work with and the factors influencing the design and planting choices eventually settled on. Although the garden was only in existence for forty years, it had far-reaching consequences for Nesfield, the RHS and horticulture generally.
Fiona Davison has been Head of Libraries and Exhibitions at the RHS since 2012. Prior to that she worked in museums for more than 20 years, including Hackney Museum and the Museum of London. She has published two books on garden history: Hidden Horticulturists: the working-class gardeners who shaped Britain’s gardens (Atlantic Books, 2019) and An Almost Impossible Thing: pioneer women gardeners (Little Toller, 2023). She regularly gives talks on garden history at the Lindley Library and external venues.
This ticket is for this individual session and costs £8. Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days (and again a few hours) prior to the start of the first talk, and a link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 2 weeks.
For the first time ever, Night in the Stacks will take place on Halloween—and we’re taking over every haunted corner of the iconic McKim Building for a one-of-a-kind celebration. Step inside the Library after dark and uncover Boston’s spookiest stories brought to life through live music by the Sweetbeats band, dancing, delicious food, and an open bar. Guests will also enjoy exclusive access to the brand-new Revolution! 250 Years of Art + Activism exhibition—opening just days before the event.
This night of mystery raises essential funds for the Boston Public Library’s free programs and services. Costumes inspired by gothic literature and Boston lore are warmly encouraged.
This is a 21 and older event. $200 through September 30, $220 October 1 – sold out. There will be an open bar, curated small plates and dessert, live music by the Sweetbeats band and dancing, tarot card readers and a wandering haiku poet, and more. Register at https://bplfund.org/nits/
Bound by high moorland, the wooded valley of the river Wharfe at Bolton Abbey has been a popular beauty spot for over two centuries. The place began to attract visitors once the Reverend William Carr opened up Bolton Woods as a landscape garden, during the 1790s, by introducing paths interspersed with seats that offer a series of surprise views. Hackfall, on the river Ure, was the notable Yorkshire precedent. The seats were named to invoke the landowning dynasties, and were placed to reveal views of natural spectacle, such as The Strid and High Strid, as well as the historical ruins that framed this stretch of river: Bolton Priory and Barden Tower. The Yorkshire Gardens Trust online talk will focus on the representation of the place by artists and authors. In his History of Craven (1805), Dr Whitaker hailed Bolton Abbey as a Picturesque tour de force that combined natural splendour with historical associations, as did the numerous guidebooks that followed. The artist, J.M.W. Turner, and poet, William Wordsworth, made several visits, inspired both by the place and by the financial benefits of the tourist market. Wordsworth’s poetry dramatized the history of the ruined priory and the mortal hazards of The Strid. Turner’s watercolors were engraved for poetic and topographical publications. Unbeknown to most visitors today, Bolton Abbey remains a Picturesque landscape garden.
Dr Patrick Eyres is editor and publisher of the unique New Arcadian Journal, in which artists and writers explore the landscape garden. The current, 56th, is the penultimate edition. On behalf of The Gardens Trust, he set up the annual New Research Symposium and chaired it for the first ten years. Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk). A link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 2 weeks
This ticket is costs £8, and you may purchase this October 8 session through Eventbrite HERE.
