The Nantucket Garden Festival is delighted to welcome Ariella Chezar as this year’s featured floral design artist.
The Floral Design Workshop offers an inspiring, hands on experience as Ariella guides guests through her “farm-to-flower” philosophy and signature approach to creating arrangements that feel natural and expressive.
July 7 | 9:30am-11:30am Harvest Garden 163 Hummock Pond Road
Plants in the mid-Atlantic region, as well as the Northeast, are facing new challenges to their survival, growth, and reproduction due to a variety of threats, including land use change, habitat loss, climate change, and more. Invited speakers will address new research in plant science that can help us understand the challenges at hand in our wetland and coastal regions, including mechanisms of plant resistance and adaptation, and possible solutions.
Speakers will include:
Morgan Gostel, Director of Plant Science, Morris Arboretum & Gardens LeeAnn Haaf, Director of Estuary Science, Partnership for the Delaware Estuary Dr. Jay Kelly, Co-Director, Center for Environmental Studies, Raritan Valley Community College Erin Lacour, Biologist, John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge Patrick Megonigal, Associate Director for Research, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center Catherine Seavitt, Chair, Department of Landscape Architecture, University of Pennsylvania
Most landscapes are designed to be controlled. But they don’t actually function that way. They grow, shift, and reorganize over time. The session offers a way to think about landscapes as dynamic systems, with real examples from residential design.
Join Rick Darke online on April 28 at 11 am Eastern for a conversation about how to design with those dynamics rather than against them. Can’t make it? A recording will be available following the program. Cost is free – $25 (pay what you can.) The event is a fundraiser for Homegrown National Park and Wild Ones.
Rick Darke is an award-winning landscape designer, author, photographer, and educator known for shaping how we think about wildness in managed landscapes. His work bridges ecology, cultural geography and aesthetics, showing that residential landscapes can be biologically rich and visually compelling at the same time.
The Penn Studio School of Art presents an online talk with Marta McDowell on May 2 at 10 am on Beatrix Potter. Beatrix Potter was an artist, author, gardener, landowner, sheep breeder, and conservationist.
Author, educator and lecturer Marta McDowell will explore how Potter developed her love of drawing, painting, and gardening and share how these passions came to be reflected in her beloved, classic children’s tales.Lecture is live and will be recorded, students do not have to be present. The recording will be available to students for 3 months after the live lecture, after 3 months the recording will be deleted.
Please check your email spam/junk folder for your Zoom invite. Our business hours are 10:00 AM through 5:00 PM. All lecture information and email correspondence will be sent during business hours. If students purchase the lecture outside business hours or during the weekend the lecture information will be sent the following business day.
Join the Mystic River Watershed Association on Sunday, May 17th for the 30th Annual MYSTIC RIVER HERRING RUN AND PADDLE. You can run, walk, and/or paddle—or volunteer to make this event a success! No matter how you participate it will help the Mystic. The annual Mystic River Herring Run and Paddle runs every May and celebrates the return of the river herring.
WHEN: Sunday, May 17th, 2026
8:00 AM Bib pickup 9:00 AM 5K run/walk starts 11:00 AM 12 mile paddling race starts 11:15 AM 9 mile paddling race 11:30 AM 3 mile paddling race starts
Need a boat? Paddle Boston will deliver the boat or board to the race for you. Day of registration is available. Compete in both the running race and paddling race to be eligible for the Iron Herring Award! All events take place at theDCR Blessing of the Bay Boathouse, 32 Shore Drive, Somerville, MA 02145. Paddlers may drop their boats off in the boathouse parking lot at anytime. You cannot park in this lot.
The third in The Gardens Trust online course celebrating the bicentenary of The Gardener’s Magazine takes place May 6 at 1 pm Eastern.
It was exactly two hundred years ago that John Claudius Loudon (1782-1843) started publishing The Gardener’s Magazine, the first periodical devoted solely to horticulture. As Loudon described it, the aims of the magazine were ‘to disseminate new and important information on all topics connected with horticulture, and to raise the intellect and the character of those engaged in this art.’
In celebration of this bicentenary, the Gardens Trust is hosting a six-part online series that explores the ideas and inventions of this extraordinary Scottish writer and designer, and his equally industrious and radical wife, Jane (?1807-1858). Jane has her own centenary celebrations this year: her novel The Mummy! is set exactly 100 years in the future, in 2126. The career of Jane Webb Loudon is all too often overshadowed by that of her husband, leaving the impression that she did indeed owe him as she said “all the knowledge of the subject she possesses”. But research reveals that she played an important role in the production of The Gardener’s Magazine (with her contributions appearing under the initials ‘J.W.L’ shortly after her marriage to John in 1830) and that it influenced her own short-lived Ladies’ Magazine of Gardening. An examination of her key publications helps us understand her legacy as knowledgeable botanist, best-selling gardening writer and ground-breaking magazine editor, including the role she played in influencing, championing and challenging women’s roles within the garden, the home and wider society.
Dr Rachel Savage’s interest in garden history started over fifteen years ago whilst working as Head of Marketing for the RHS. Since then she has completed qualifications in horticulture, garden design, an MA in Landscape History at UEA and a PhD exploring house and garden design and the gendering of space in the nineteenth century. A trustee for the Gardens Trust, she has also contributed to Norfolk Garden Trust’s publications on Capability Brown and Humphry Repton.
Between them, the Loudons were the driving force behind the rise of the amateur middle class gardener, and also the real professionalism of the 19th century head gardener. Their story is fascinating and will make you realise how much we owe to their non-stop work ethic and enthusiasm.
Series tickets are being offered at the special celebratory sum of £21 for all six sessions, a 50% reduction on our usual ticket price for a six-part series. The ticket for this session may be purchased through Eventbrite HERE
Boston Dance Theater and Native Plant Trust join together on May 2 for a special performance and conversation about the intersection of nature, art, and science, featuring original work: Unfurling by Boston Dance Theater. A panel discussion will take place Immediately following the dance performance.
Unfurling is a site-responsive performance created by the artists of Boston Dance Theater in collaboration with visual artist Kim Radochia. Drawing inspiration from the quiet resilience of plant life and the writings of Indigenous botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer, the work invites audiences into a shared sensory experience of movement, sound, and sculptural installation. Dancers move through the space like tendrils of growth, attuning to one another, the land, and the invisible networks that sustain life. Rooted in slowness, sensitivity, and ecological imagination, Unfurling asks us to notice what is often overlooked and to sense our place within a living, interdependent world. Reception to follow.
Rooting the Soul will discuss a psycho-spiritual illness prominent in Latin America: susto. (In the West, susto loosely parallels post-traumatic stress disorder.) Susto is often treated using plant medicines and other earth-based materials. Myriam Gurba will discuss the ways that susto has manifested in her life and how it shaped the writing of Poppy State: A Labyrinth of Plants and a Story of Beginnings. She will also discuss how transforming her relationship to land and rekindling her relationship to Indigenous nations helped to repair her experience of susto. California native plants and animals will be central to this conversation. Native lands occupied by the settler colonial state of Mexico will also be part of this conversation. Program participants will be encouraged to engage in personal storytelling. This Garden Conservancy online discussion takes place May 5 at 2 pm Eastern. $5 for Conservancy members, $15 for nonmembers. Register at https://www.gardenconservancy.org/events/web26-rooting-the-soul
MYRIAM GURBA is the author of several books, including Poppy State: A Labyrinth of Plants and a Story of Beginnings. Her writing has been published by the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and The Paris Review. She is part of the movement to end gender-based violence. She enjoys coffee, dirt, and freedom.
You will receive the webinar link directly from Zoom. A recording of this webinar will be sent to all registrants a few days after the event. We encourage you to register, even if you cannot attend the live webinar.
Join Shailesh Shukla and Priscilla Settee to discuss their book: Indigenous Insights for Planetary Health and Sustainable Food Systems
Community-based case studies guide readers to understand the emergence, potential application, and renewal of Indigenous food systems and planetary health innovations and their role in supporting the well-being of their communities and lands and advancing the global vision of sustainable futures through interdisciplinary perspectives.
Shailesh Shukla is a Chair and an Associate Professor at the Department of Indigenous Studies, University of Winnipeg. His teaching and research interests include exploring and promoting Indigenous perspectives and knowledge systems to improve food security, sovereignty, well-being, and planetary health in Canada and globally.
Priscilla Settee is a member of Cumberland House Swampy Cree First Nations and Professor Emerita in the Department of Indigenous Studies at the University of Saskatchewan. She is recognized nationally and internationally as an award-winning professor, writer, and global activist.
As this is a virtual event, on April 28 at 6 pm Eastern, we will not be selling copies of the book, but you can purchase it though the publisher’s website. The sponsoring organization is Boston University Food Studies, and the talk is part of the 2026 Spring Jacques Pépin Lecture Series. Free. Register through Eventbrite HERE
Have you heard the phrase “assisted migration” or been advised to plant for a climate south of you? This Mass Pollinators Network free webinar on April 28 with Jesse Bellemare should be a fascinating discussion about what our landscapes may look like in the future and if we can (should?) “help” by planting for a future climate. Register at https://grownativemass.org/Our-Programs/Calendar-of-Events/Climate-Change-and-the-Future-Flora-of-New-England
Jesse Bellemare is a plant ecologist and associate professor in the department of biological sciences at Smith College in Northampton, MA. His research is focused on the ecology of plant range shifts in response to climate change and the novel challenges these dynamics present for plant conservation in the New England region and beyond. Jesse’s research has also explored the role that native plant horticulture has played in facilitating northward range shifts for a number of southern plant species and the complex issues these “neo-native” species raise for management and conservation in the New England flora. In addition to teaching at Smith College, Jesse has also been a visiting faculty member at the Conway School of Landscape Design exploring how insights from climate change ecology might inform design, ecological restoration, and forward-looking plant selection in horticulture.
