Are you hungry for practical tips about how to plan a garden that prioritizes biodiversity while being tailored to your goals and space? Much like people, plants have individual personalities that reveal themselves when they share a common space. Participants in this Native Plant Trust online class on October 14 at 5:30 will explore how to create varied, beautiful native plant landscapes that benefit wildlife all year long. We will focus particularly on how to create sustainable, compelling landscapes while keeping in mind the unique growing habits of individual plants. A recording of this class will be available for 30 days after the class date. Marie Chieppo is the instructor. $25. Register at https://nativeplanttrust.org/class/foundations-of-a-four-season-garden/
Registration Deadline November 2! The Massachusetts Master Gardener Association sponsors the Winter Gardening Know-How Series online starting November 4 and continuing through December 2 (no meeting November 25.) Gardeners with all levels of experience and lots of questions, new homeowners starting from scratch, garden “rehabbers”, everyone can benefit from some know-how. Lectures will include Invasives in Massachusetts, Creating Pollinator Habitat Anywhere, Where Our Vegetables Come From, and A Holistic Approach to Gardening. Virtual sessions include a question and answer time live with speakers, and a number of handouts to read in advance or to revisit in the future. Register at https://www.massmastergardeners.org/educational-resources/gardening-know-how-series
Barbara McIntosh is a Lifetime Master Gardener and has been a Master Gardener since 2016. She has been the coordinator of the prison programs, having created partnerships with MCI Framingham, MCI Concord, Pondville, and NECC. She has also organized volunteers for MCI Shirley and Gardener. Barb has mentored numerous master gardeners, and has contributed to sourcing the How-to and Project Garden articles for The Dirt. Barb currently is coordinating the renovation of the Bedford VA serenity, memorial, and healing gardens in partnership with the Wellesley Boy Scouts and the Bedford garden club. Barb is also on the Speakers Bureau and the education committee.
Bonnie Power has been a Massachusetts Master Gardener since 2016 and member of the MMGA Speakers Bureau since 2018 … and a serious outdoor/indoor gardener most of her life. Curious and research-oriented by nature, she has many horticultural interests and areas of expertise. Bonnie holds both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in Zoology, which informs her perspective on the management of garden insects. She spent the past year as manager of the MMGA Soil pH Testing team and while she has passed this on to a new manager, she continues as a member of the team. She also volunteers at Garden in the Woods, a Native Plant Trust botanical garden in Framingham, where she is a guide. She learned to grow vegetables as a child from her father, and flowers and houseplants from her mother. Early in her marriage, her father-in-law provided her first lessons in organic gardening. At home in Marlborough, Bonnie grows a variety of vegetables and ornamentals (with a bias for natives).
Denise Guérin is a Certified Massachusetts Master Gardener, graduating in the class of 2022. She fell in love with gardens (and their contents) at a young age while “helping” her father and grandmother in their large family gardens. She volunteers regularly at the Wakefield Arboretum, the Medford Food Pantry Garden, and the MMGA’s new Ohrenberger School Pollinator Garden. Her primary focus is on growing native plants and creating habitat for native bees, birds and insect pollinators. She is a graduate of the MMGA Speakers Bureau Training Program.
Tony Bonnano has been a Massachusetts Master Gardener since 2007. He designed, built, and oversees the Victory Gardens at the Veterans Community Health Care Center in Lowell and is the horticulture leader for the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Concord’s Outreach Organization, teaching and running a volunteer program at the facility’s farm. Tony also chairs the Topsfield Fair Home Garden committee and is a Certified Massachusetts State Fair Judge. An accomplished vegetable grower, he was named a Top Vegetable Exhibitor at the 2017 and 2019 Topsfield Fairs.
COST: The cost of the four-lecture Fall Gardening Know-How Series is $75.00, payable online by credit/debit card or PayPal. Classes are not available individually.
Join members of Zoo New England’s conservation team and John Berkholtz for a rare field study focused on observing and surveying orange sallow moth eggs and larvae, which rely on fern-leaved false foxglove (Aureolaria pedicularia) for survival.
Gain the skills and knowledge needed to include bulbs in your landscape. In this New York Botanical Garden online class on October 6, you’ll explore the diversity of bulbs; their culture, growing requirements, and placement. Learn how to plan and place bulbs in new and existing beds using the fundamental principles of garden design: purpose, style, site analysis, color, balance and rhythm.
Instructor Sheri Forster, Principal of The Scottish Gardener, specializes in custom garden design of residential properties in Westchester & Fairfield counties since 2007. Her client’s gardens have been featured in garden tours and have appeared in national and local publications. This year she was the kickoff speaker for the Connecticut Horticultural Society’s lecture series and The Connecticut Master Gardeners Association annual meeting. Sheri received her certificate in Garden Design from NYBG in 2008.
$64 for NYBG members, $70 for nonmembers. Register at www.nybg.org
Now you can gain gardening expertise whenever and wherever you want with Classes On Demand! Featuring several of Mt. Cuba Center’s most popular courses, each class lasts about 90 minutes. Once purchased, students are able to watch the pre-recorded videos more than once, or stop at any point and re-start it again later within 30 days of the purchase date. Please call if this is a gift that will need a specific start date.
Carex are a diverse and versatile, yet underutilized genus of native plants that are overflowing with garden merit. They can fill various niches in landscapes as groundcovers and living mulch, while some can even be used on their own as specimen plants. Traditionally thought of as shade perennials, some Carex species exhibit remarkable tolerance to full sun as well, making them a viable and worthy addition to the garden. Sam Hoadley, manager of horticultural research, shares the top-performing Carex from Mt. Cuba Center’s Trial Garden and discusses strategies and examples of how to successfully incorporate Carex in home gardens.
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. Prior to working at Mt. Cuba, he was the lead horticulturist for Longwood Gardens’ Hillside Garden. He earned his degree in Sustainable Landscape Horticulture from the University of Vermont.
Over six weeks, we’ll follow the seed-saving process from the botany behind it to the community that keeps it growing:
September 28: The Botany of Seed Saving October 5: Harvesting and Cleaning Seeds—Dry Processing October 12: Harvesting and Cleaning Seeds—Wet Processing October 19: Seed Quality and Storage October 26: Growing and Saving Seed with Regional Experts November 2: Next Steps—Connecting to Community
Classes are live on Zoom on Monday evenings, with time for questions and conversation. Recordings will also be available to registered participants. This course is a Seed Savers Exchange offering, sponsored by the Organic Seed Alliance.
The human use of plant fibers has shaped entire landscapes — territories, economies, and identities. In Latin America, this history spans thousands of years and holds a complexity rarely captured in the literature: distinct peoples, distinct plants, distinct bodies of knowledge, each built and passed down within very specific ecological and cultural contexts.
This online course is a journey through Latin America told through its fibrous plants. We’ll cover botany, ethnobotany, history, textile uses, and extraction practices documented in scientific literature, historical sources, and audiovisual records. We will also discuss communities’ rights over their traditional knowledge of plant fibers, including the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the concept of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK). More information can be found on Google Docs HERE.
Class 1 — Tuesday, September 22, 2026: A Panoramic View of Pre-Colonial Plant Fibers in Latin America Which plants were used, by which peoples, in which territories. How fibers structured economy, spirituality, identity, and memory.
Class 2 — Wednesday, September 23, 2026: Botany, Ethnobotany, and Extraction Practices A deep dive into some of Latin America’s key fiber species — from Mexican henequén to Amazonian curauá. Ecology, geographic distribution, and textile uses. Extraction techniques documented in the literature and in reference videos.
Class 3 — Tuesday, September 29, 2026: Colonialism, Expropriation, and Rights What colonialism did to fiber knowledge. Concrete cases of appropriated and erased knowledge — and what protections exist today.
Class 4 — Wednesday, September 30, 2026: What Fibers Exist Where You Live? Ahead of this class, you’ll be asked to go outside, observe the plants around you, and bring back a photo or sample. In our final session, we’ll identify these plants together, trace their stories, and connect what’s growing near you to everything we’ve covered throughout the course.
Who this course is for Anyone curious about plants, history, and material culture. Artisans, designers, and fashion professionals who want to understand the origins of what they work with. Students and researchers in anthropology, biology, history, and law.
About the instructor Eduarda Bastian is a doctoral researcher in Botany at UFSC (PPGFAP – Laboratory of Human Ecology and Ethnobotany, Brazil), where she studies the traditional and contemporary use of plant fibers across the Global South. She is the founder of Fibershed Brasil, a nonprofit organization supporting and strengthening the work of traditional communities engaged in plant fiber and textile projects.
Join Master Gardener Chris Ferrero at Berkshire Botanical Garden on Saturday, September 26 from 1 to 3 p.m., to explore how to maintain perennial borders, foundation plots and vegetable gardens that have been created and tended over the years. This course will teach participants how to reshape their garden design and how to choose appropriate types of plants that can improve the gardening process.
Chris Ferrero is a gardening speaker, writer and consultant. Chris is a Cornell Master Gardener from Dutchess County, N.Y., where in addition to speaking and teaching classes, she has led demonstration garden renovations, organized regional events and served on teams as a perennials specialist known for particular expertise in shade gardening, flowering shrubs, pollinator-approved planting designs, and native plants as alternatives to invasives. $30 for BBG members, $45 for nonmembers. Register at https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/gardening-baby-boomers-10-ways-garden-smarter-we-get-older
Milk Street is heading to Parish Hill Creamery in Westminster West, Vermont to learn from the cheesemakers who teach cheesemakers – Peter Dixon and and Rachel Fritz Schaal. The three day course takes place March 1 – 3, 2027.
Peter and Rachel usually only teach professional cheesemakers, but they’ve amended their professional-level course for us, the home cheesemaker. We’re honored they are welcoming us to their dairy and sharing their expertise with us.
Parish Hill can only fit 8 students and we’re inviting you to grab your spot. You’ll make a wide range of cheeses using both raw and pasteurized milk, from fresh mozzarella to aged tomme, and learn the science and craft of natural cheesemaking.
During hands-on sessions, lectures, demos and tastings, Rachel and Peter will help you understand the nature and qualities of milk, the mechanisms and techniques necessary for transforming milk into curd and curd into cheese, and the nuances of cheesemaking. Rachel and Peter believe that a solid understanding of science is essential to the craft and each day will include in-depth science lectures to inform your practice on site and back home.
At each cheesemaking session, you’ll also talk about the style of cheese, where and how it developed and ways to adapt the specific techniques to your home kitchen. You’ll measure milk and cultures for each recipe, learning when and why to use raw milks and pasteurized ones. And you’ll heat, cut, stir, hoop and stretch curds to experience how the same ingredients become entirely different cheeses depending on the different techniques you use.
We’ll pause every day for a group lunch, cooked by Milk Street, that features local cheeses and ingredients. And throughout the sessions, we’ll taste a range of Parish Hill and other local Vermont cheeses to consider how cheesemaking choices provide sustenance as well as joy.
Now you can gain gardening expertise whenever and wherever you want with Classes On Demand! Featuring several of Mt. Cuba Center’s most popular courses, each class lasts about 90 minutes. Once purchased, students are able to watch the pre-recorded videos more than once, or stop at any point and re-start it again later within 30 days of the purchase date. Please call if this is a gift that will need a specific start date.
On-demand classes are intended for independent learning by one student. They do not offer teacher interaction and are available for a limited time only.
The beauty of using native plants in containers is that they are adapted to our local growing conditions. From short to tall, sun to shade, spring through fall, there are plenty of plants for creating a small, wildlife-friendly oasis on a balcony, patio, or porch. Leave with a list of our favorite container-loving natives.
Julia Eppes was an Assistant Horticulturist working in the Formal Gardens at Mt. Cuba Center. She has a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology with a minor in Landscape Horticulture from the University of Delaware. She formerly interned at Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library and worked at Gateway Garden Center.
