Jana Harris of Essex Forays will take us on an exploration of the vital roles fungi play in garden ecosystems and how gardeners can incorporate them to help plants and trees thrive. This Grow Native Massachusetts webinar will take place March 19 at 7 pm Eastern. Members $28, nonmembers $38. To register, visit https://grownativemass.org/Our-Programs/calendar
Led by After Hours founder Kevin Kelly, this four-session Berkshire Botanical Garden series, held on the first Friday of the month from March 7 to June 6 from 5:00 to 7:30 p.m., is designed to bring excitement and invite curiosity about the culinary world. Through hands-on, experiential learning, we’ll cover the basic techniques and flavor affinities from across the globe. In each of the four sessions, we will work with local and seasonal produce to explore internationally-influenced cuisine. Each session will focus on two to three curated dishes and will conclude with a family-style meal for all participants. The series will cover cuisines from the Mediterranean, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East that we will bring to life with locally sourced ingredients.
Kevin Kelly is the founder and owner/operator of After Hours. Growing up in Great Barrington, and having lineage to the Southern Berkshires going back more than 10 generations, Kevin has grown with a unique opportunity to experience and understand business dynamics in the Berkshires. Initially starting his restaurant career at Allium Restaurant and Bar in Great Barrington, he was quickly hooked on the upbeat and lively atmosphere of the food industry. Over the next 10 years, he would hold nearly every position in the restaurant industry, notably cooking in some of Boston’s most highly awarded kitchens. After his stint in Boston and graduating from business school at Babson College, Kevin was left searching for his next steps in life. What originated as an idea to travel the world and immerse in global culinary experiences quickly transitioned to a homeward journey in attempting to open a restaurant in his hometown.
Can’t do the entire series? Sign up for individual classes. Members: $100/Non-Members: $120. Links are below.
Join the Newport Tree Conservancy on March 12 at 2:30 at 152 Coggeshall Avenue in Newport to learn about and tour its winter propagation projects in the warmth of a beautiful greenhouse. The Conservancy will talk about grafting heritage trees, and you will see the progress of evergreen cuttings. Discuss the methods behind these winter propagation methods, and why they’re an important part of what they do at NTC. Sign up at www.newporttreeconservancy.org
The genus Vernonia, commonly known as ironweed, is an often-overlooked aster relative that has tremendous horticultural potential. Vernonia ranges from compact and tidy plants to towering behemoths topping out at over 13 feet in height. Sam Hoadley, Mt. Cuba’s manager of horticultural research, will be your guide through the trials, sharing how Vernonia is evaluated to determine horticultural value and performance, disease resistance, and pollinator preference. Sam Hoadley is the Manager of Horticultural Research at Mt. Cuba Center where he evaluates native plant species, old and new cultivars, and hybrids in the Trial Garden. He earned his degree in Sustainable Landscape Horticulture from the University of Vermont. Some of his favorite native plants include Amsonia, Baptisia, Clematis, and Silphium.
This program takes place online Wednesday, March 5, 2025. $25. Register at https://mtcubacenter.org/event/vernonia-for-every-garden-online/
The African Landscape Architectures conference at the Harvard Graduate School of Design on March 6 & 7 brings together a wide range of landscape practices from across the continent. This two-day hybrid event highlights the transformative potential of decolonizing design to address social injustices and prepare African cities for the impacts of climate change. Speakers will explore innovative strategies through frameworks such as ecology, adaptation, and materiality that offer alternative futures for African landscapes.
The conference is co-hosted by the Department of Landscape Architecture and the Department of African and African American Studies with generous support from:
For a complete schedule and conference overview, visit https://www.gsd.harvard.edu/event/african-landscape-architectures-alternative-futures-for-the-field/. A livestream player will be available at the top of that link when the event begins. Online viewers are encouraged to submit questions using the Q+A button. Registration and login are not required.
The Opening Keynote speaker is Princess Adedoyin Talabi Faniyi, High Priestess, Osun Sacred Grove, Osogbo, Nigeria, with Tarna Klitzner, TKLA, Cape Town, South Africa.
The Pocket Gardens of Portsmouth will be held June 14 and 15, 2025, so mark your calendars. Tickets will be available in April at www.portsmouthnhtickets.com. More information can be found at https://www.facebook.com/PortsmouthPocketGardenTour
Karl Gercens, Longwood Gardens’ conservatory manager, explores the exciting possibilities of container garden design and display in this Smithsonian Associates Zoom lecture on March 10. He surveys the wide range of available container materials, including metal, wood, ceramics, and terracotta, and discusses the importance of carefully selecting the plantings that go into them.
He provides advice on plants that thrive in conditions of sun, shade, and wind (and even in the presence of animals), as well as tips on watering, fertilization, and pest and disease control. Photos of displays at Longwood Gardens offer inspiration for creating your own container garden. $25 for Smithsonian Associates members, $30 for nonmembers. Register at https://smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/programs/container-gardening
The Untermyer Garden Conservancy hosts a virtual symposium on March 9 at 2 pm Eastern. Creating a Woodland Fantasy in the Real World: Making the Most of Our Woodland Shade Gardens. Panelists include Thom Almendinger, Director of Stewardship. Teatown Lake Reservation, Basil Camu, Co-founder of Leaf & Limb Tree Service, Uli Lorimer, Director of Horticulture with Native Plant Trust, and Timothy Tilghman, Head Gardener at Untermyer Gardens. Tickets are $25. Visit https://untermyergardens.org/
The Arts and Crafts Movement sought a return to vernacular traditions in the face of increasing industrialization. It thrived for two decades or so around the turn of the twentieth century, although its effect is still obvious today in many decorative arts. In the garden, the movement was most clearly articulated through the work of William Robinson (1838-1935) and Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932). Their example was followed by a plethora of British architects and designers into the middle of the 20th century and beyond, and their influence spread to Europe, the US and further afield. What we today identify as Arts and Crafts gardens are perhaps typified by a geometric layout of compartments in close relationship with the house, alongside the use of architectural features in local materials and abundant, color-themed planting.
In this series, we will examine the origins of the Arts and Crafts garden, consider the work of Robinson and Jekyll in detail, and survey some of the many other British garden-makers who were influenced by the movement. The series will end with an international flavor, exploring the work of an American designer who was a life-long admirer of Robinson and Jekyll.
This ticket is for this individual talk (Click HERE) costs £8, and you may purchase tickets for other individual sessions, or you may purchase a ticket for the entire fifth series of 5 talks in our History of Gardens Course at £35 via the link here. (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 5 for £26.25). Ticket holders can join each session live and/or view a recording for up to 2 weeks afterwards. Ticket sales close 4 hours before the talk.
Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk (If you do not receive this link, please contact us). A link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 2 weeks .
Talk 1 will take place March 4 with Richard Bisgrove. What eventually became the Arts and Crafts Movement had two strands: a rejection of ‘modern’ painters in favour of mediaeval art and a reaction to the perceived horrors of the Industrial Revolution. The leading proponents of these ideas were John Ruskin and William Morris. In his talk, Richard will outline very briefly the lives of these two men and discuss their interests in, and influences on, the gardens of their age.
Richard Bisgrove has degree in Horticultural Science and Landscape Architecture. As a lecturer in horticulture and landscape management at Reading University his main research interests were the management of species rich grasslands (the flowery mead!) and garden history, with particular emphasis on Gertrude Jekyll and William Robinson. He was for many years a member of the Council and Conservation Committee of the Garden History Society and of the Gardens Panel of the National Trust. His publications include The Gardens of Gertrude Jekyll (Frances Lincoln, 1992; University of California Press 2000) and William Robinson: the wild gardener (Frances Lincoln, 2008). Image: The Red House, William Morris’s house ‘planted’ in a Kentish orchard, photo Richard Guy Wilson Architecture Archive, 1983, under a CC BY 4.0 license
This is the second program in the 2025 Grand Homes and Gardens Speaker Series, The Quality of Doing: Mid-Century Modern Grand Homes & Gardens, featuring four scholars who will look at the work of Mid-Century Modern architects and designers through the lens of landmark homes and gardens across the United States. Learn more about the series and purchase series tickets.
“To me the whole experience of what’s been labeled now all over the world ‘the glass house’ is a misnomer. To me, the house is a park. To me, the whole experience is a park in which there are, indeed, monuments or occasions or accidents or things by nature and things that I’ve placed there that create a place.” Philip Johnson (1906-2005)
World-renowned architect Philip Johnson’s words convey the undeniable importance of the fifty-acre estate he assembled and tweaked over fifty years in partnership with curator and plantsman David Whitney. This talk will consider the social, architectural, and gardening history of the property, and its evolution from five untamed acres to a carefully contrived ideal landscape that is the setting – and the view — for The Glass House and its orbiting playground of Modernist follies constructed between 1946 and 2005.
All talks begin at 6:30 p.m. in Morven’s Stockton Education Center. Doors and the virtual waiting room open at 6:00 p.m. A Zoom link will be sent to all virtual participants upon registration. Light refreshments inspired by each site will be provided for in-person attendees.
Maureen Cassidy-Geiger is an internationally recognized curator, scholar and educator with special expertise in European decorative arts and the history of architecture, gardens and court culture. Formerly on the staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Frick Collection and Parsons School of Design, she has curated exhibitions in Europe and America and has published and lectured on a broad array of subjects, for amateurs and specialists alike. In 2021, she presented The Art of Architecture: Beaux-Arts Drawings from the Peter May Collection at New-York Historical Society, to accompany the publication of the two-volume catalogue Living with Architecture as Art: The Peter May Collection of Architectural Drawings, Models and Artefacts (Paul Holberton Press).
This program is sponsored by David Schure and Grant Wagner, mid century modern house specialists from Callaway Henderson Sotheby’s International Realty. The 2025 Grand Homes and Gardens series is sponsored by Bryn Mawr Trust.
