Boston Flora

Month: April 2026

  • Wednesday, April 22, 12:00 noon – 1:00 pm – Native American & Environmental Art at The Trustees

    Celebrate Earth Day on April 22 at noon with a lecture at the Crane Estate, focused on art inspired by nature and Native American Heritage. Join us for a lecture with Tess Lukey, The Trustees Associate Curator of Native American Arts. Learn about The Trustees efforts to center Indigenous voices and culture via our exhibits and programming, to recognize the important contributions of Indigenous peoples to the lands now stewarded by The Trustees. Tess will discuss her work curating the Across Boundaries Across Barriers gallery at The Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, focused on the medicine wheel & seven directions, featuring historic and contemporary works of art from several Native American communities in five sections that center the concepts associated with each direction. Tess will also discuss recent collaborations with local Indigenous educators & The Trustees statewide education team to develop curricula connecting students to this gallery and the medicine wheel. Tess will touch on other projects and collaborative work, such as the next installation in the Art & the Landscape Exhibition: The Land Tells Our Stories, featuring outdoor art on display at The Crane Estate.

    If your schedule allows, we invite you to arrive early and explore the grounds of Castle Hill, where you can view one of three works in the new Art in the Landscape Exhibition: The Land Tells our Stories. This sculpture, created by Maine-based artist Posey Moulton, invites viewers to reflect on environmental impacts on The Great Marsh, and explore how reclaimed materials that wash up as marine debris can be repurposed into art. The sculpture will be on view from mid-April through October 2026.

    Tess Lukey joined The Trustees in 2022 as our first-ever Curator of Native American Art to develop exhibitions and research initiatives related to The Trustees’ Indigenous art collections.

    Lukey, an Aquinnah Wampanoag tribal member and lifelong New Englander, works across the state, and is based both at Fruitlands Museum and the deCordova Sculpture Park & Museum. She works closely with community members, collectors, and donors for potential acquisitions while offering broader access to and knowledge of The Trustees’ collections of art made by Indigenous peoples.

    $5 for Trustees members, $10 for nonmembers. Register at https://thetrustees.org/event/445538/

  • Thursday, April 30, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – Forum: Planting Seeds of Hope

    Join Newton Community Farm on April 30 as we welcome Orion Kriegman, Executive Director of the Boston Food Forest Coalition (BFFC) to share the story of the creation and ongoing work of BFFC. Building on the Community Land Trust model, BFFC has now established 14 food forest parks in Boston. These third spaces build community resilience, engage democracy, and strengthen civil society all while transforming vacant lots into edible public parks.

    Come be inspired by this story of building community resilience, climate resilience, and a city more prepared to adapt to climate change.

    This forum is made possible thanks to The Bard Family Environmental Education Fund.

    Come hear the story of the Boston Food Forest Coalition. May it inspire you to ask: What is mine to do? The 7 pm talk takes place at the Campus Center Auditorium, Charles River Campus of UMass Amherst, 100 Carlson Avenue, Newton, Massachusetts.

    This event is free but registration is requested. Parking is available in front of the Campus Center or where spaces are available. https://www.newtoncommunityfarm.org/events/forumplanting-seeds-of-hope

  • Wednesday, April 29, 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm Eastern – A Loudon Celebration: The Gardener’s Magazine and Other Publications, Online

    The second in The Gardens Trust’s online course celebrating the bicentenary of The Gardener’s Magazine.

    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.

    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. Register for the individual session with Eventbrite HERE. 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 (available until 10 June) will be sent shortly afterwards.

    The April 29 talk is led by Dr. David Marsh. Dr David Marsh was awarded his PhD in 2005 for a study of the ‘Gardens and Gardeners of Later-Stuart London’ and has been lecturing and supervising research in Garden History ever since. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Buckingham and was co-course director for their MA in Garden History. A trustee of the Gardens Trust from 2016-2023, he helped set up and run the Trust’s online lecture program and is the author of a weekly blog about garden history.

  • Wednesday, April 15, 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm Eastern – 25th Annual Meeting of the Esplanade Association, Online

    The 25th Anniversary Annual Meeting of The Esplanade Association will take place online Wednesday, April 15 at 6 pm Eastern. Register HERE. Special guest: Stephanie Fletcher presenting on “25 Species for 25 Years”, highlighting 25 animal species that call the Esplanade home and her biodiversity work using the iNaturalist app. 

    Stephanie has had a lifelong love for nature. From a young age, she was observing insects, adopting and raising orphaned wildlife, and smelling any flower within reach. She graduated with a degree in Economics and a minor in Business Management from Syracuse University, then worked as a Sales Manager for Bloomberg’s multimedia and equity trading division in New York for 10 years.

    In 2003, she became a full-time mother and dedicated volunteer for educational and nature-focused non-profits like the Learning Project and Mass Audubon. She is heavily involved with many local green space organizations, like the Esplanade Association, the Garden Club of the Back Bay, and the Friends of the Public Garden. In 2025, she became a Certified Field Naturalist through Mass Audubon and a Certified Pollinator Steward through UMass Amherst. Her discovery of the first Joro Spider in New England was featured in Scott Loarie’s TEDx Boston talk on the power of using iNaturalist as a tool to discover and log biodiversity for scientific study.

  • Wednesday, April 22, 12:00 noon – 1:30 pm Eastern – Crop Wild Relatives, Online

    Gardening and farming are challenging in the best of times- and even more so with a changing climate. In this Ecological Landscape Alliance online presentation on April 22 at noon, we’ll learn why the wild and weedy relatives of crops hold the key helping crops resist pests and disease, and tolerate drought and other climate challenges.

    Scientists conserve crop wild relatives in gene banks and elsewhere, but we’ll learn about many you can find in your native plant nursery, in natural areas, or even growing as weeds in your yard.

    In this talk, we’ll look at domesticated crops and their wild relatives as all part of a process across a spectrum. We’ll also learn about new crops that breeders are working on to bring us into more regenerative perennial polycultural systems, which provide ecosystem services while feeding us.

    Presenter Nan McCarry is an academic researcher at heart, collaborating with scientists across the country on the conservation of “plant genetic resources,” which you will learn about in this talk. She also enjoys how this work intersects with her gardening, sourcing seeds, and work at Watermark Woods Native Plants in Hamilton, Virginia. Nan received her master’s degree in Geography from the University of Texas at Austin, doing her thesis research in Guatemala on traditional home gardens. She has been converting three acres of lawn to a native food forest. She is a member of the Virginia Native Plant Society, the Society for Ethnobotany, and Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy. Nan is writing a book on plant domestication, or how our crops evolved to be our crops, a topic she will touch on in this talk.

    $10 ELA members, $20 nonmembers. Register at https://www.ecolandscaping.org/new-events-calendar/

  • Tuesday, April 21, 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm Eastern – Chasing Lewis’s Monkeyflower: The Amazing Afterlife of Lewis and Clark Expedition’s Wild Plants

    Chasing Lewis’s Monkeyflower is the 200-year saga of finding, losing, and finding the wild plants collected on America’s first exploration west, the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Thomas Jefferson handpicked Meriwether Lewis to lead the expedition, gather notable specimens along the way, and then write the journals, with one volume to include science-worthy descriptions and classifications of the plants that Lewis collected and pressed to preserve. Not a botanist, Lewis needed help to write this part of the journals. Ambition, deceit, theft, wealth, debt, alcoholism, loss, suicide, serendipity, and stubborn persistence cross the plants’ paths in Philadelphia, New York, and London. This is the first work detailing the places, practices, and times of a cavalcade of people who touched the plants. It’s a fascinating chronicle of an unexplored byway of the great American story.

    ELIZABETH ADELMAN gardened on weekends and summer evenings while practicing law. Twenty-five years ago, she gave in and started Heritage Flower Farm, an award-winning nursery growing perennial flowers, now featured in botanic gardens, historic sites, and backyard gardens around the country. About a decade ago, a friend introduced her to the plants collected on the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and she was hooked. She spent winters researching and writing about the people, times, places, and events creating the mysteries, losses, and rediscoveries of the plant specimens across two continents and 200 years.

    You will receive the webinar link for the April 21 webinar 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. $5 for Garden Conservancy members, $15 for nonmembers. Register at https://www.gardenconservancy.org/events/web26-chasing-lewis-s-monkeyflower

  • Tuesday, April 26, 3:00 pm Eastern – Ukrainian Gardens in Wartime, Online

    At the height of the war around Kyiv in 2022, photographer Sergii Polezhaka began documenting war-torn gardens – an abandoned tank amid neat rows of vegetables; cherry blossom trees with trenches dug around their roots to preserve them; a tended rose garden beside a bombed ruin.

    These images tell the story of a resilient nation. In Ukraine, the words land, soil, country and place share a single word – zemlya – and these gardens offer a powerful new lens through which to understand the ongoing war.

    Sergii and his wife Maria, also a garden photographer, join Clare Foster in conversation to share these haunting images and their experience of living through the conflict.

    Join the Garden Museum online on Tuesday, April 26 at 3 pm Eastern time. A recording will subsequently be available to registrants. Register at www.gardenmuseum.org.uk

    25% of ticket sales will be donated to the Memory Garden, on the grounds of the National Museum of Folk Architecture and Life of Ukraine in Pyrohiv for those who have lost loved ones in the war.

  • Thursday, April 16, 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm Eastern – Future Nature: Cultivating Resilience Amid Ecological Change, Online

    Vegetation is shifting in response to intensifying environmental pressures—from invasive species and habitat fragmentation to rising nutrient loads and imbalanced herbivore populations. Drawing from his firm Phyto Studio’s experience with high-visibility public projects, landscape architect Thomas Rainer shares actionable strategies for designing resilient plantings. Learn how to work with competitive dynamics, select vigorous native species, introduce designed stress through soil manipulation, and embrace adaptive management models that favor abundance. This talk offers a grounded path forward for planting in a rapidly changing world.

    Thomas Rainer is a leading voice in ecological landscape design, pioneering a plant systems approach that anticipates a changing future. As a registered landscape architect based in Arlington, Virginia, Thomas reimagines ecological planting for gardens and public spaces, focusing on merging ecology with horticulture to shape resilient, adaptive landscapes that address today’s environmental challenges. His career features signature designs at landmark locations such as the Battery Park, Toronto Botanical Garden, and The New York Botanical Garden. He has designed over 125 residential gardens spanning from Maine to Florida. Thomas has taught planting design for the George Washington University Landscape Design program, as well as design workshops globally. He is the co-author of the bestselling Planting in a Post-Wild World with Claudia West.

    This American Horticultural Society online talk will take place April 16 at 7 pm Eastern, and is $15 for AHS members and $20 for nonmembers. Register at www.ahsgardening.org

  • Wednesday, April 22, 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm Eastern – A Loudon Celebration: Introducing the Loudons, Online

    The first in The Gardens Trust online course celebrating the bicentenary of the Gardener’s Magazine begins April 22, from 1 – 2:30 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.

    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 registration link through Eventbrite is www.eventbrite.co.uk 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 (available until 10 June) will be sent shortly afterwards.

    The first session is Twelve Vignettes with Gin Warren.

  • Friday, April 24, 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm – Evergreen: The Trees That Shaped America

    Save the Trees and The Loring Greenough House present award-winning author Trent Preszler, author of Evergreen: The Trees That Shaped America, on Friday, April 24 from 7 – 8 at the Loring Greenough House in Jamaica Plain. The event kicks off the Annual Arbor Day Celebration. Evergreen traces the deep history of conifers from their ancient resilience over millions of years to the threats they face today from climate change. Blending ecological and cultural history, the book reflects on the complex relationship between people and trees and highlights the urgent need to protect the natural systems that sustain us.

    The free talk will be followed by a Q&A, light reception, and book signing. Buy your copy of Evergreen from Rozzie Bound Books in advance for signing at the event. Attendees can pick up their reserved copy at the Loring Greenough event. Attendees also have the option to pick up the book at Rozzie Bound before the event if they want to read it beforehand. An email will be sent to you when the book is ready for pick up at Rozzie Bound. All pre-orders not picked up at the store will be brought to the Loring Greenough event for attendees to pick up.

    Register today at https://loring-greenough.org/house-event/evergreen-the-tree-that-shaped-america/