Join Berkshire artist and writer Suzi Banks Baum in Berkshire Botanical Garden’s Mother Earth Lodge for a hands-on workshop from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday September 19 and Sunday Sept ember 20. We’ll harvest peak-season color from BBG’s gardens, create natural dyes and use them to dye thread and paper. With simple embroidery stitches, you’ll embellish book pages to create a small handmade book that carries the garden’s beauty into winter. You’ll be introduced to natural dyeing, receive resources for further study and take part in poetic journal prompts and conversation about daily creative practice. A materials fee of $15 is payable at the workshop. Please bring an apron and lunch. BBG members $200, nonmembers $230. Register at https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/stitched-gardens-plant-dyes-and-book-art
Join Krissy Romano, Visitor Center Manager at Berkshire Botanical Garden, for a two-part leaf casting workshop on Fridays, September 18 and 25 from 2 to 4 p.m. In the first session, you’ll select a leaf, prepare a sand form, and apply and shape concrete to create your cast. In the second, you’ll reveal your piece, refine its form, and learn techniques for painting and sealing. You’ll leave with a handcrafted garden sculpture to take home. BBG members $110, nonmembers $140. Register at https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/leaf-stone-concrete-leaf-casting-workshop
Join farmer, chef and educator Tracy Hayhurst for this farm-to-table class on Preserving on Sunday, September 20, from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. The participants will harvest from the BBG vegetable garden, then head into the kitchen with Hayhurst to make a multiple-course meal or in this case, preserved produce.
September is peak harvest time, and with fall around the corner, we want to save all the season’s goodness. We’ll cover several different preserving techniques, including fermentation and water-bath canning.
Tracy Hayhurst began her culinary training in the late 1990s, attending Ballymaloe Cookery School in Ireland. In 2002, she co-founded Chubby Bunny Farm in Falls Village, Conn. In 2015, she returned to the kitchen in her dual role as chef and community outreach director at Plantin’ Seeds, connecting farmers and the community through meals that highlighted the best of the season. Her passion for sharing both farming and cooking has led her to Husky Meadows Farm, first as farm manager and now as culinary director for Husky Meadows’ Seed and Spoon Culinary Farm Stay programming.
The Victorian age transformed Britain’s gardens more profoundly than any previous period. Advances in science and technology, expanding global trade, imperial ambition and the rise of the middle classes combined to create an unprecedented enthusiasm for gardening, introducing thousands of new plants and reshaping both public and private landscapes.
This ten-week course explores the remarkable stories behind this horticultural revolution. Through the lives of pioneering botanists, adventurous plant hunters, gardeners, engineers and influential patrons, we will discover how exploration, scientific discovery and empire shaped the gardens of nineteenth-century Britain.
From hazardous collecting expeditions in the Himalayas and Robert Fortune’s clandestine mission into China to Joseph Paxton’s revolutionary glasshouses and the spectacular bedding schemes that became a hallmark of Victorian taste, the course examines the close relationship between horticulture, science, commerce and society. Alongside figures such as Joseph Dalton Hooker, Charles Darwin and Marian North, we will also consider the contributions of influential women, professional gardeners and the great nursery firms that helped fuel Britain’s passion for plants.
Topics include the creation of public parks, the rise of kitchen gardens and conservatories, the fascination with orchids and ferns, and the enduring appeal of celebrated gardens such as Kew, Biddulph Grange and Cragside. We will also examine the more challenging aspects of this history, including the relationship between botanical collecting, colonial expansion, indigenous knowledge and environmental change.
Suitable for gardeners, historians and anyone with an interest in the history of gardens, art and horticulture, the course assumes no specialist knowledge. It welcomes all who wish to explore the cultural, scientific and social significance of Victorian gardening and discover how this extraordinary period continues to influence the gardens we enjoy today.
The online Garden Historians Zoom course will begin on Thursday, 8th October 2026. 6 pm-7.30 pm GMT. All Zoom sessions are recorded and notes are sent out after each class.
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. Visit https://mtcubacenter.org/programs/classes-on-demand/ for details, and registration. $19.00.
Amsonia, or bluestars, are a rugged, versatile, and endlessly garden-worthy genus that deserve a place in any home garden. Without exception, bluestars are long-lived and provide multiple seasons of interest from their blue flowers in April and May, to their beautiful foliar textures in the summer, and striking golden color in the autumn. In addition to being exemplary garden plants, Amsonia support a variety of early season pollinators, including bumble bees and hummingbirds, and are even host plants for several butterflies and moths. Sam Hoadley, Mt. Cuba’s manager of horticultural research, will be your guide through the trials, sharing how Amsonia was evaluated to determine horticultural value and performance, disease resistance, and pollinator preference.
About the Instructor 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.
Roughly 1/3 of the food we produce ends up in a landfill. Learn how to fight food waste using the black soldier fly! These incredible insects eat spoiled food and produce two amazing outputs: protein-packed larvae to feed animals and frass (insect poop) to supercharge your soil. Compared to traditional methods, composting with black soldier flies offers a much faster decomposition process, boosts beneficial microbes, and can handle a wider variety of waste, including meat and dairy. This class covers their fascinating biology and gives you the resources you need to decide if a black soldier fly setup is right for your home or farm. Class will include a demonstration of the set up so you will have all you need to get started.
Destiny Mann is a PhD student in the agricultural entomology lab at the University of Delaware. She holds a MS in Entomology also from UD. Her research has focused on reducing food waste by upcycling it into useful products with the help of insects. She enjoys sharing her research with her community from 4H camps to Master Gardeners to Mt. Cuba! Outside of her research, you will catch her continuously fighting to keep invasive plants off of her property.
This Mt. Cuba Center class takes place August 20, but online only attendance is available. Virtual class ends at 2:15, as the instructor takes the in-person students outside for a demonstration. All virtual registrants will receive a recording of the class with access to view the class for 30 days after the live session. Register at https://mtcubacenter.org/event/upcycle-food-waste-with-black-soldier-flies-online/
Join farmer, chef and educator Tracy Hayhurst for this Berkshire Botanical Garden farm-to-table cooking class on Sunday, August 30, from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Participants will harvest from the BBG vegetable garden, then head into the kitchen with Hayhurst to make a multiple-course meal.
The Italian Summer Feast will be using the bounty of the garden in traditional Italian recipes, and we’ll create a fantastic multi-course meal.
Tracy Hayhurst began her culinary training in the late 1990s, attending Ballymaloe Cookery School in Ireland. In 2002, she co-founded Chubby Bunny Farm in Falls Village, Conn. In 2015, she returned to the kitchen in her dual role as chef and community outreach director at Plantin’ Seeds, connecting farmers and the community through meals that highlighted the best of the season. Her passion for sharing both farming and cooking has led her to Husky Meadows Farm, first as farm manager and now as culinary director for Husky Meadows’ Seed and Spoon Culinary Farm Stay programming.
Let’s reimagine the centuries-old Japanese art of bonsai, emphasizing individual expression beyond classical tradition. This approach embraces playful, lighthearted and sometimes humorous ways of working with miniature trees as an artistic form. In this Berkshire Botanical Garden workshop on Thursday, August 27, from 5 to 7:30 p.m., led by artist and horticultural therapist Brian Mikesell, you’ll have creative freedom to shape your own bonsai. Step beyond your horticultural comfort zone and into a hands-on creative challenge. All materials are included, and you’ll take your finished bonsai home. $100 for BBG members, $130 for nonmembers, Register at https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/pop-bonsai-workshop
tI’s tomato season, the most anticipated harvest of the year. In this hands-on Berkshire Botanical Garden class, held on Saturday, August 22, from 3 to 5 p.m., and led by Miriam Rubin, we’ll begin with a tomato tasting, exploring varieties, textures, and flavor, along with a look at the growing season. Each participant will make a personal tomato galette with a choice of toppings on pre-rolled dough. While the galettes bake, we’ll cover an easy method for peeling and seeding tomatoes for sauce or freezing, then prepare Ginger Tomatoes and a Tomato and Peach Salad from Rubin’s book, Tomatoes. $90 for BBG members, $110 for nonmembers. Register at https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/cooking-tomatoes-hands-workshop
Miriam Rubin was the first woman to work in the kitchens of New York City’s famed Four Seasons Restaurant. A food writer and gardener, she wrote the Miriam’s Garden column for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for many years and her work has appeared in many other publications, including Organic Gardening and Rural Intelligence. She and her husband, the artist David J. Lesako, live in Ghent, N.Y. Find out more at her website, MiriamRubin.com, and Instagram @Miriam Rubin.
This seven-hour, fast-paced, information-saturated Berkshire Botanical Garden clinic on Saturday, August 22, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., focuses on common design principles, problem solving, conceptualizing a landscape master plan, and more fully understanding the design process. The clinic will focus on several selected homes/properties in the vicinity of BBG. It may include one or more of the workshop participants, or their clients’ properties. Should time permit, we may visit one or more projects completed and/or in process by the leader.
All attendees will participate in the process of observing and conceptual designing. This field trip is held rain or shine; please dress appropriately for the weather. This clinic is ideal for making you a better, more engaged client for professional design services, or to advance your ability to know your own mind relative to design.
Guest Instructor Walter Cudnohufsky, M.L.A., is a long-time dedicated teacher and artist (see image below.) Having founded and for 20 years directed the nationally acclaimed Conway (MA) School of Landscape Design, he has honed a reasoned approach to planning design. Register at https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/design-clinic-walter-cudnohufsky. BBG members $130, nonmembers $160.
