The history of holiday plants and flowers is as surprising as it is delightful—filled with curious facts, ancient traditions, and a fair share of horticultural myths. Ever wonder why holly and ivy, poinsettias, or mistletoe became staples of seasonal décor and song? This lively online American Horticultural Society talk on December 4 at 7 pm Eastern explores the legends and origins behind the plants we associate with winter celebrations, tracing their roots from pagan rituals and Victorian customs to mid-century greeting cards and modern commercial trends. With humor and insight, Matt Mattus unpacks the often-overlooked stories behind everything from seaweed garlands to seashell ornaments, revealing how superstition, vintage imagery, and even the craft aisle at Michaels have influenced our festive traditions. You’ll leave not only entertained and informed, but also inspired with fresh ideas for reimagining your own holiday decorating this season. $15 for AHS members, $20 for nonmembers. Register at https://ahsgardening.org/ahs-live-the-history-of-holiday-plants/
Matt Mattus is the Senior Director of Horticulture at the American Horticultural Society and a leading voice in the world of gardening. He previously served as Vice President of the New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill and as President of the North American Rock Garden Society. A widely published author and contributor, his writing appears in top gardening magazines, and he is the author of two acclaimed books: Mastering the Art of Flower Gardening and Mastering the Art of Vegetable Gardening.
At the intersection of art and science, the still life paintings of Rachel Ruysch (1664–1750) present an extraordinary variety of plants, reptiles, and insects. Though she achieved great success in her lifetime, Ruysch’s work was largely overlooked in the centuries following her death and has not been the subject of a major exhibition—until now. Rachel Ruysch: Artist, Naturalist, and Pioneer at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), is the first-ever retrospective dedicated to the artist, tracing the full arc of her seven-decade career.
The exhibition presents 35 of Ruysch’s finest paintings—some being shown to the public for the first time— alongside plant and insect specimens from Harvard University’s Herbarium and Museum of Comparative Zoology. Ruysch’s paintings of species imported from Dutch colonial territories revolutionized the genre of still lifes while reflecting the intertwined histories of exploitation, resource extraction, and colonial expansion. The exhibition also includes works by other women artists including her sister Anna Ruysch, Maria Sibylla Merian, and Alida Withoos. Together, these works reveal how women advanced scientific knowledge in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries.
The exhibition was curated by Anna Knaap, Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Curator of Paintings, Art of Europe, with guidance for the scientific content from Charles Davis, Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and Curator of Vascular Plants in the Harvard University Herbaria.
An eagerly awaited tradition continues at Berkshire Botanical Garden on Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday, December 5 – 8, with Holiday Marketplace featuring the legendary Gallery of Wreaths.
The festivities begin Friday evening, December 5, with the Holiday Wreath Preview Party 5 to 7 p.m. The party includes early wreath-buying opportunities, live music, hors d’oeuvre, libations, and merriment! This is a pre-registered event. Members: $75/Non-Members: $100. The Marketplace runs Saturday and Sunday, December 6 and 7, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Register at www.berkshirebotanical.org
Select from a collection of 100 unique, one-of-a-kind designer wreaths as well as an assortment of holiday-blooming amaryllis and paperwhites in decorative and clay containers, succulent arrangements, garlands, hanging terrariums and gift items presented by regional artisan vendors. Picture courtesy of the Berkshire Edge.
Join the Garden Museum online on November 25 for an evening with Alan Titchmarsh, and take a magical mystery tour through his personal archives, which he has donated to the Garden Museum’s Archives of Garden Design. He will take us on a journey through those archives, sharing highlights from his own collection, brought to life with stories, voices, and unexpected discoveries. Joining him is Garden Museum Archivist Alexandra Sullivan, who will reveal behind-the-scenes insights and favorite finds, which three special guests share how the archives have shaped their work. £10 Livestream. Book tickets HERE
Founded in 1990 by Landscape Designer Larry Weaner and NDAL, this annual two-day symposium has a long tradition of celebrating native plants and innovative ecological practice. Presenters reflect the diverse factors that shape our landscapes including landscape architects, landscape designers, horticulturists, ecologists, historians, anthropologists, artists and others. The series offers in-depth explorations of forward-looking and overlooked topics, always seeking to connect theory with practical application. Join us as we continue to connect the dots between ecological restoration, cultural landscape practice, and fine garden design.
Special Note: For many years, NDAL has deeply appreciated its partnership with Morris Arboretum of the University of Pennsylvania and Connecticut College Arboretum in jointly presenting the January Annual Symposium. While NDAL will be solely producing the Symposium from this year onward, we would like to gratefully acknowledge the important role these two institutions and their respective team members have played.
The 2026 symposium, January 15 and 16, is Seeing the Forest AND the Trees: Designing Landscapes that Integrate Regional Specificity with Global Commonality. Incorporating a region’s indigenous plant communities and ecological processes is at the heart of ecology-based design. But no natural system operates in isolation or is forever immune to change…..especially today where the effects of watershed alteration, soil disturbance, plant globalization, and climate change are at play worldwide. Our Symposium will begin by zooming in on techniques for regionally-specific landscape analysis and design. We will then widen the lens and learn how disturbance, ecological science, and cultural land practices across regions can factor into those processes. Finally, we will explore how an expansive view of landscape art can unify this micro/macro divide in landscapes ranging from expansive to intimate.
The event takes place at Kean University in Union, New Jersey, but there are virtual options available. Early bird registration savings available through December 10. Register at https://www.ndal.org/2026-annual-symposium
Gardens are many things. An oasis for nature, a retreat from the outside world, a haven for blooms. But how has the LGBTQI+ community been involved with their design, upkeep and prominence throughout the years? How is queerness seen in the natural world? This November he will explore historic gardeners, queerness in ecology, luminaries in the field and how nature often challenges our misconceptions as to gender and identity in the natural world. From Prospect Cottage to Sissinghurst, to his own back garden in Bromley, these talks will examine the relationship between gardening and sexuality.
As well as being a historian and tour guide, Sheldon K Goodman is also passionate about gardening. He will give three talks looking at queerness in gardens from the work of gardeners, LGBTQI+ led community gardening initiatives in London, historical people such as Virginia Woolf, Reginald Farrer and Sir Francis Bacon and queer ecology’s roots in Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality(tr. Robert Hurley, 1978-2021, Pantheon Books) as well as queer gardening in the here and now. A note on the series title: Sheldon recognizes the history and contentiousness of the word ‘queer’. Originally an insult, it has been reclaimed by many in the LGBTQ community as a neutral description for a large and varied group of people.
The first session on November 25 is Queerness in Gardens. How important are gardens to LGBTQ+ identity? From community initiatives to national organizations and individuals seeking queerness in nature, how can these spaces affirm and bring solace to the history of horticulture? Have people who have been ostracized from society because of their orientation redirected this hurt into designing gardens?
Land Portal is a walking tour and published resource by artists Ellie Irons and Aubrie James that reveals ecological and geological features throughout deCordova’s Sculpture Park. Through this project, Irons and James aim to “foster a sense of place (in space, and in time) by calling attention to the ‘background’—the vast, alive, and ever-transforming ‘negative space’ that makes up the parts of the museum and park that are not sculptures or artworks.”
By following their annotated map, visitors are drawn to lesser-known environmental sites of deCordova’s campus, including unique tree specimens, remnants of earlier agricultural land use, and bedrock shaped by glacial sheets. At each station, visitors can follow a series of activations to connect sky and earth and ground themselves further within the surrounding landscape.
Ellie Irons is an artist and educator living and working on Mohican land in current-day Troy, New York, USA. From foraged watercolor paintings to un-lawning experiments, her work combines socially engaged art, ecology fieldwork, and embodied learning. She is a co-founder of the Next Epoch Seed Library and the Environmental Performance Agency, collaborations investigating relationships between humans and spontaneous urban plants (aka weeds). Her solo and collaborative work has been part of recent exhibitions on contemporary environmental art, including Seeds: Containers of a World to Come at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Ecological Consciousness: Artist as Instigator at Wave Hill, and Unsettled Nature at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. Her work has been covered by publications ranging from Art in America to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Irons received a BA from Scripps College in Los Angeles and an MFA from Hunter College in New York. In December 2021, she completed a PhD in arts practice at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, focused on socially engaged environmental art. Her book Feral Hues: A Guide to Painting with Weeds was published by PS Hudson in spring 2023. She is currently Co-Director of The Sanctuary for Independent Media’s NATURE Lab.
Aubrie James is an artist and scientist who uses her intimate understanding of ecology to probe systems of knowing—scientific, artistic, and otherwise. Her wide-ranging art practice intervenes on scientific convention to theorize ecology as an interactive practice of co-constructing internal (psychic) and external (material, organismic) landscapes. Holding a Bachelor’s Degree in Animal Ecology from Iowa State University and a PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Cornell University, her research led her to question how scientific convention had limited her perception and communication of the natural world. Her art practice began as scientific experiments which were covertly designed as land art, and has expanded to include sculpture, multimedia installation, and walks. She formalized her artistic practice with a Master of Science Degree in Art, Culture, and Technology at MIT. Her artworks have been exhibited at the MIT Museum, MIT.nano, and the Weisner Gallery in Cambridge, MA; the Distillery Gallery in Boston, MA; and Espacio Enredo in Madrid, Spain. Her ongoing scientific research focuses on plant biodiversity and has most recently been published in academic journals including Ecology Letters, Ecological Monographs, and Ecology. She currently lives and works in Queens, New York.
The exhibit will be on view at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, 51 Sandy Pond Road in Lincoln, through May 31, 2026. For more information visit https://thetrustees.org/exhibit/land-portal/
The Boston Parks & Recreation Department announce the dates and times of upcoming holiday lighting events. More may be added, and we will keep you informed.
The Boston Tree Alliance Tree Planting and Care Grant is now open and accepting applications for 2026!
With $1.2 million in total funding available, this grant supports tree planting and associated maintenance on private land across Boston, with a focus on under-canopied neighborhoods impacted by urban heat.
As both a member of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation and someone with deep roots in her Mexican heritage, chef Pyet DeSpain works to reflect a balance of these rich cultures in her cooking. Her approach to food blends her identity with history and the drive to keep ancestral traditions alive.
In her new cookbook, she shares how to incorporate an array of key ingredients—from venison, dandelion greens, honey, habanero peppers, and squash to sunchokes, bison, and native berries—into dishes that invite home cooks to honor the seasons and connect with essential foodways. DeSpain talks with Andi Murphy, journalist and producer for NPR’s “Native America Calling,” about the cookbook and the stories, traditions, culture, and philosophies of Indigenous people that flavor each recipe. This Smithsonian online talk on November 20 is $20 for Smithsonian members, $30 for nonmembers. Register at https://smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/programs/rooted-in-fire-with-pyet-despain
