Boston Flora

Category: Field Trip

  • Friday, March 26, 8:30 am – Saturday, March 27, 4:40 pm – The Cultural Landscape Foundation Los Angeles Garden Excursion

    TCLF is pleased to announce its spring garden excursion March 26 and March 27,  highlighting the diverse cultural landscapes of Pasadena and Los Angeles, California.  Attendees will have the opportunity to tour several private contemporary and historic gardens, with both the original designers and those who have stewarded the properties.

    Events will include a visit to Pasadena’s Thornton Garden (recently featured in Garden Design magazine), a tour of the Norton Simon Museum’s outdoor sculpture garden by designer Nancy Goslee Power, a walking tour of the Garret Eckbo-designed Ambassador College (pictured below), and evening drinks on the terrace of the Greene and Greene-designed Gamble House (subject of a recent exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). Day 2 will place the spotlight on modernism and guests will have the opportunity to visit three private, contemporary gardens, punctuated by lunch at a Richard Neutra-designed estate in Los Angeles famed Laurel Canyon.

    Transportation for this weekend event will be provided from downtown Santa Monica. We recommend that attendees stay at Hotel Shangri La in Santa Monica, as the bus will depart and return to this location, however, Santa Monica offers a diversity of hotels including the nearby Viceroy.  The price for this unique trip is $450 (hotel extra), and you may register on line at www.tclf.org/event/los-angeles-garden-excursion.

    http://farm1.static.flickr.com/91/231275852_4babff665e.jpg

  • Friday, April 23, 7:00 pm – Saturday, April 24, 4:00 pm – 7th Annual Great Gardens and Landscaping Symposium

    Reservations are steadily coming in for this premier symposium scheduled for April 23 & 24, 2010 at The Equinox Resort (www.equinoxresort.com). For all of you who attended that 2008 symposium, you will be blown away by the resort’s new look. It has undergone a $20-million restoration including new luxury amenities, accommodations, dining options and lounges. This four-star resort, providing world class service, has a unique blend of New England charm and contemporary luxury. The 13,000 square foot Spa puts the property over the top!

    Now insert the Seventh Annual Great Gardens and Landscaping Symposium into this setting and you’ve got one magnificent time. The programming kicks off on Friday evening, April 23 at 7:00 p.m. and runs through Saturday at 4:00 p.m. Overnight and day-only rates are available. Here is the extraordinary speaker line-up:

    Julie Moir Messervy is an internationally known landscape designer, speaker, and writer. With over three decades of experience, five books, and numerous high-profile lectures, Julie has emerged as an innovative leader in landscape and garden design theory and practice. Her newest book, The Toronto Music Garden: Inspired by Bach was just released. It’s an in-depth guide to the conception and creation of Julie’s award-winning three-acre public garden, designed in collaboration with eminent cellist Yo-Yo Ma.  Home Outside: Creating the Landscape You Love was released in 2009. She has lectured at distinguished venues such as the Smithsonian Institution, the National Geographic Society and the Getty Museum. Her imaginative landscape design work has delighted clients including the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Marshall Field’s, Fidelity Investments, the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, and the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. In 1999, Julie completed the award-winning Toronto Music Garden, a collaboration with renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the City of Toronto to create a three-acre public park based on the “First Suite for Unaccompanied Cello” by J.S. Bach. In 2005, the Toronto Music Garden received a Leonardo Da Vinci award for innovation and creativity(See picture below).  For more about Julie, visit her web site at http://www.juliemoirmesservy.com/. Julie will be presenting two talks at the Seventh Annual Great Gardens and Landscaping Symposium:

    Home Outside: Creating the Landscape You Love. In this inspiring lecture, Julie demystifies the art and practice of landscape design for homeowners and professionals alike. Using beautiful images, together with helpful tips, case studies, befores and afters, diagrams, and plans, she walks you through the process of turning any property into the “home outside” you’ve always dreamed of. Julie highlights many of the ideas introduced in her book, Home Outside: Creating the Landscape You Love, illustrating that good landscape design does not have to be overwhelming or expensive.

    Gardening for Your Soul. Contemplate the transcendent power of landscape as seen through Julie’s eyes, an award-winning landscape designer and author. Julie explores the deeply personal process of designing a beautiful landscape and reveals how spirituality can inform garden design and the landscapes we create on the earth.

    Heather Poire from Proven Winners will speak on creating colorful spring containers and how to refresh tired looking containers for season long beauty. Heather has worked at Pleasant View Gardens (in New Hampshire), one of the founders of Proven Winners North America, for six years and currently works as a regional sales manager. Her expertise is broad, with a specialty in Proven Winners annuals and perennials. Heather graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a degree in Horticulture. She has been an avid gardener since 1997. Heather visits independent garden centers around the Northeast providing guidance, consulting, and garden inspiration.

    Charlie Nardozzi from the National Gardening Association will share his expertise about kitchen and vegetable gardening in his charming, easy to understand style. His talk is titled Edible Landscaping. Charlie has gardened for over 20 years, written articles for many magazines, and has authored several books including Vegetable Gardening for Dummies to be released soon. He presently is the senior horticulturist and spokesperson for the National Gardening Association. In 2005 he was the host of PBS’s Garden Smart, reaching more than 60 million households. He has also been a gardening expert on many nationally syndicated television shows, such as HGTV’s Today at Home and Way to Grow, Discovery Channel’s Home Matters, and DIY’s Ask DIY. He currently co-hosts In The Garden on a local CBS-affiliate television station in Vermont, does a weekly call-in radio show on WJOY-1230AM, and is a commentator on Vermont Public Radio.

    Joe Kunkel is the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society (http://www.masshort.org/) in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Joe served as the president of the Perennial Plant Association in 2005 and also owned his own nursery, Akin’ Back Farm in Lagrange, Kentucky for fifteen years. This successful nursery sold herbs and perennials and featured 18 display gardens. In 2000, he met Adrian Bloom, the head of Blooms of Bressingham. Already considered one of Great Britain’s best-known plantsmen, Bloom was becoming known in the U.S. for his stint as host of the PBS series Victory Garden, as well as being the author of numerous books on gardens and contributions to horticulture. Working with Bloom, Joe helped build five demonstration gardens around the U.S., including spectacular ones in Ohio, New York, Kentucky and California. Each garden had the common elements of promoting horticulture and utilizing donated plants and volunteer labor. The fifth Adrian Bloom project was the one that brought Joe back to his native Massachusetts. Mass Hort saw the potential for a ‘wow’ kind of garden as a counterpoint to the adjoining, formal Italianate Garden at Elm Bank. Then in March of 2008, Joe oversaw the nearly 5-acre Garden on the Greenway project in Boston. Joe helped turn a sea of mud and construction scrap into a world-class urban oasis of greenery and color. Joe’s brilliance, passion for helping others, and leadership are inspirational. Joe will speak on top performing perennials and annuals that in the New England Trial Garden located at Elm Bank’s 36-acre hands-on horticulture center. Breeding companies from all over the world contribute the newest and best varieties of annuals to the New England Trial Garden  for viewing by amateur and professional gardeners. This garden also tests new and unreleased varieties competing for All-America Selections awards, displays previous winners, and grows hundreds of cultivars submitted for evaluation by commercial plant breeders.

    Kerry Ann Mendez’s talk, Make Me Beautiful…PLEASE is all about what your gardens are trying to tell you to make them more beautiful and lower maintenance. You would be surprised at the wisdom they want to share with you. Allow her to interpret for them. The lecture’s in-depth handout is filled with tips and tricks. You’ll be waving your garden hoe and magically turning your gardens into a wonderland.Kerry’s first garden book, The Ultimate Flower Gardener’s Top Ten Lists, will be released in March, 2010.

    For more about the speakers, agenda and topics, visit www.pyours.com/Symposium2010.html.

    The Equinox Resort was eager to have the symposium back and put together amazing packages. The one night package (Friday night) includes one night’s accommodation, the Friday evening lecture, full breakfast buffet, lunch, five lectures on Saturday, refreshment break, handouts, garden gift, and all taxes and gratuities. A single is $266.38 and a double is $384.26 ($192.13 per person). The two night package includes all of the above plus Saturday night’s accommodations, Sunday breakfast buffet, and all taxes and gratuities. A single two night package is $441.08 and a double is $585.15 ($292.58 per person).

    The day only rate for all Saturday’s program includes five garden lectures, coffee at registration, refreshment break, lunch, handouts and a garden gift is only $98 per person. Day only participants may attend the Friday 7:00 pm lecture at no charge. For overnight packages, please call The Equinox Resort at (877) 854-7625 Monday through Friday between 8:30 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. Day only participants register through me, Perennially Yours by using the registration form at www.pyours.com/Symposiumregister.html or calling (518) 885-3471.

  • Friday, August 20, 10:00 am – 1:00 pm – Northeast Harbor Gardens

    Since you already are up in Maine for the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller garden tour with Bonnie Drexler (see post below), stay a day and visit Northeast Harbor with Bonnie and The New England Wild Flower Society.  This tour, described below, is limited to 20 participants, and costs $30 for NEWFS members and $36 for nonmembers.  Register at www.newfs.org.

    The Asticou Azalea Garden and the Thuya Garden are linked by location as well as history. These complementary gardens were created by Charles Savage, a local innkeeper and self-taught landscape designer, who rescued plants from designer Beatrix Farrands’ abandoned estate in Bar Harbor to create the gardens along the north edge of Northeast Harbor. At the Asticou Azalea Garden, rhododendrons, mountain laurels, heathers and azaleas were planted to transform a swamp into a stroll garden with an Asian flavor. The water gardens of the Katsura Imperial Villa in Kyoto, Japan supplied the inspiration for Savages’s flowing Asian design.

    Farrand’s plants were also used to create Thuya Garden, where an overgrown apple orchard stood before. We climb a trail winding up the slopes of Eliot Mountain under towering spruce and cedar trees. Rustic cedar shelters provide rest stops with views of Northeast Harbor below. At the top, we enter the formal garden through a pair of carved wooden gates (below) featuring fiddlehead ferns, lady’s slipper orchids, frogs, iris, and owls among others. The two main formal borders are planted with drifts of perennials that range from warm to cool hues as you stroll by. A shallow reflecting pool, a hidden summer house, and giant garden urns punctuate the garden’s floral displays.

  • Thursday, August 19, 9:00 am – 2:30 pm – Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden and Wild Gardens of Acadia

    Advance notice: a spectacular day field trip has been planned by The New England Wild Flower Society in Seal Harbor and Bar Harbor, Maine on Thursday, August 19, from 9 – 2:30, led by Bonnie Drexler.  Participation is limited to twenty, so register quickly at www.newfs.org.  The cost  is $60 for NEWFS members and $72 for nonmembers, and this event is sure to sell out.

    Two of Mt. Desert Island’s most evocative gardens open their gates  this day.

    Noted garden designer Beatrix Farrand designed a stunning garden for David and Abby Alrich Rockefeller in the late 1920’s. Today, this garden (pictured below) continues to weave an enchanting spell over its visitors, combining Asian art and architecture with vibrant displays of annuals and perennials. Enter another world as you pass through the circular Moon Gate to come upon a sunken lawn, surrounded by lavish English border gardens at their peak of summer color. Stroll the woodland “Spirit Path,” flanked by Korean tombstone figures, all the while enclosed by a rose-colored serpentine wall, capped with yellow tiles from China’s Forbidden City. Native shrubs, groundcovers, mosses and ferns shine alongside the ancient stone sculptures, some from the 14th century. Meet with the horticulture staff for a behind the scenes understanding of the Garden.

    Following lunch (on your own at the nearby Jordan Pond House),  you will tour the Wild Gardens of Acadia, where we explore a microcosm of Mount Desert Island’s natural habitats. Only plants indigenous to Mt. Desert Island find a home here on this small, but intensely planted site. Over 300 native plant species are arranged by habitat setting. The plant communities include mixed woods, roadside, meadow, mountain, heath, seaside, brookside, bird thicket, coniferous woods, bog, marsh, and pond with corresponding native plants and birdlife. Maintained by the Bar Harbor Garden Club, this jewel of a native plant garden won the Homer Lucas Landscape Award from New England Wild Flower Society in 1998.