Boston Flora

Category: Author Book Signing

  • Thursday, February 7, 10:00 am – Ellen Shipman and the American Garden

    Thursday, February 7, 10:00 am – Ellen Shipman and the American Garden

    Judith Tankard is a landscape historian, author, preservation consultant, and member of the Garden Club of the Back Bay. She received an M.A. in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU and taught at the Landscape Institute for over 20 years. Ms. Tankard has authored or co-authored ten books on landscape history, including her latest book Ellen Shipman and the American Garden. There will be copies available for purchase and signing at The Garden Club of the Back Bay’s February 7 meeting, beginning at 10 am at The College Club, 44 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston.  Garden Club members will receive notice of the meeting and optional lunch following the lecture. If you are not a member but are interested in attending, please email info@bostonflora.com.

  • Thursday, January 24, 7:00 pm – Going Up the Country: When the Hippies, Dreamers, Freaks, and Radicals Moved to Vermont

    Going Up the Country is part oral history, part nostalgia-tinged narrative, and part clear-eyed analysis of the multifaceted phenomena collectively referred to as the counterculture movement in Vermont. This is the story of how young migrants, largely from the cities and suburbs of New York and Massachusetts, turned their backs on the establishment of the 1950s and moved to the backwoods of rural Vermont, spawning a revolution in lifestyle, politics, sexuality, and business practices that would have a profound impact on both the state and the nation. The movement brought hippies, back-to-the-landers, political radicals, sexual libertines, and utopians to a previously conservative state and led us to today’s farm to table way of life, environmental consciousness, and progressive politics as championed by Bernie Sanders.

    Yvonne Daley is the author of five previous books and director of the Green Mountain Writers Conference. She will speak at Porter Square Books, 25 White Street in Cambridge, on January 24 beginning at 7 pm. If you ever dreamed of escaping to that farm in Vermont, be sure to hear Yvonne’s stories. More information may be found at https://www.portersquarebooks.com/event/yvonne-daley-going-country

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  • Thursday, January 10, 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm – Miles of Portraits: Alaska

    Join the Massachusetts Audubon Society at the Boston Nature Center, 500 Walk Hill Street in Boston on Thursday, January 10, from 6:30-8:30 pm for a special event hosted by REI Boston.

    Come watch two episodes of the film Miles of Portraits: Alaska and hear about the many ways the bicycle brings people together.  FREE general admission, or $49/ticket package.  The ticket package includes: one general admission ticket, two signed magazines, and a poster.

    Registration is managed by REI Boston.  While tickets are free, registration is required to attend this event. Register at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/miles-of-portraits-alaska-boston-nature-center-tickets-53228125757

    When Annalisa and Erik ride their nearly 100-pound loaded bicycles, people ask them questions. A lot of questions. Across America and around Alaska, their bicycles have become the ultimate conversation starter and have introduced them to hundreds of people. Miles of Portraits is a magazine and film that captures their stories.

    Come watch  episodes of the film and hear Annalisa and Erik, both Type 1 diabetics, talk about these kind souls they met on their 1,000-mile bike trip around Alaska as well as their own story managing the disease out in the middle of nowhere.

  • Monday, January 14, 7:00 pm – Red-Green Revolution: The Politics and Technology of Ecosocialism

    Red-Green Revolution is an impassioned and informed confrontation with the planetary emergency brought about by accelerated ecological devastation in the last half-century.

    Its author, distinguished political scientist Victor Wallis, argues that sound ecological policy requires a socialist framework, based on democratic participation and drawing on the historical lessons of earlier efforts. Wallis presents a relentless critique of the capitalist system that has put the human species into a race against time to salvage and restore what it can of the environmental conditions necessary for a healthy existence. He then looks to how we might turn things around, reconsidering the institutions, technologies, and social relationships that will determine our shared future, and discussing how a better framework can evolve through the convergence of popular struggles, as these have emerged under conditions of crisis.

    This is an important book, both for its incisive account of how we got into the mess in which we find ourselves, and for its bold vision of how we might still go forward.

    Victor Wallis is a professor of liberal arts at the Berklee College of Music. He was for twenty years the managing editor of Socialism and Democracy and has been writing on ecological issues since the early 1990s. His writings have appeared in journals such as Monthly Review and New Political Science, and have been translated into thirteen languages.

    The talk and book signing will take place Monday, January 14 beginning at 7 pm at Porter Square Books, 25 White Street in Cambridge. For more information visit https://www.portersquarebooks.com/event/victor-wallis-red-green-revolution

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  • Sunday, November 11, 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm – Heroes of Horticulture: Americans Who Transformed the Landscape

    Author Barbara Paul Robinson will speak at Tower Hill Botanic Garden on November 11 from 1 – 2 on her new book Heroes of Horticulture: Americans Who Transformed the Landscape. Here are the vibrant stories of eighteen contemporary heroes of horticulture – institution builders, plant explorers and garden creators who have all had a major impact on the American landscape. Three of them established The Garden Conservancy. Others worked to revitalize and establish botanical and other exceptional public gardens. Some intrepid plant explorers (one with a Tower Hill connection) have even traveled to remote parts of the globe to bring back and disseminate plants unknown in the West. Over the course of their careers, these heroes have worked to preserve and enhance our public spaces, setting new standards for aesthetics and encouraging wider public participation. Whether you work the soil or not, you’ll read their stories with a sense of wonder and admiration, and there’s a good chance you’ll derive some practical horticultural benefits from their passion, their lives and their work.

    During a sabbatical from the leading international law firm, Debevoise & Plimpton where she was the first woman partner, Barbara Paul Robinson worked as a gardener for Rosemary Verey at Barnsley House. A hands-in-the-dirt gardener herself, she and her husband have created their own gardens at Brush Hill in northwestern Connecticut, featured in articles, books and television. Her first book was Rosemary Verey: The Life and Lessons of a Legendary Gardener (Godine 2012). A frequent speaker, Barbara has published articles in the New York Times, Horticulture, Fine Gardening and Hortus; she has also written a chapter in Rosemary Verey’s The Secret Garden.

    $10 for Tower Hill members, $20 for nonmembers. Register at www.towerhillbg.org.

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  • Wednesday, November 14, 6:00 pm – Athol Rocks! One Billion Years as Seen in Local Rocks and Landscape

    Amazing events have shaped the rocks and landscape of this part of Massachusetts. Attend the Athol Bird and Nature Club Annual Dinner Meeting on Wednesday, November 14 to hear all about it.

    Continents have collided and split. Dinosaurs lived here. Great glaciers have left their mark on the landscape. Learn about these events and see and feel samples of some interesting geologic specimens (such as the rare Jurassic armored mud balls) in this presentation by Professor Richard D. Little. This 60 minute power point program will include handouts and samples. Copies of Professor Little’s books and DVDs will be available for purchase at a discount. Richard D. Little, Professor Emeritus, Greenfield Community College, has presented numerous programs about the region’s amazing geologic heritage and has authored several books and articles, and produced two video programs available on DVD. He leads “Fantastic Landscapes” tours within the United States, Iceland, and Scotland.

    As usual, ABNC will hold its annual dinner meeting at 6 p.m. in Liberty Hall at the Athol Town Hall (584 Main St.), with the program at 7 p.m. Reservations are required for the dinner and must be received by Tuesday, November 3. To reserve, call Cindy Hartwell at 978-828-7665, or email cindyhartwell56@gmail.com. There will be two dinner options available stuffed chicken or vegetarian lasagna  – please indicate your preference when making the reservation. She will call or email you back with a confirmation of your reservation. No reservations are necessary for the program. The event will also feature the always popular tin can auction; participants are encouraged to bring an item to donate.

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  • Thursday, November 1, 6:00 pm – Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore

    Harvey. Maria. Irma. Sandy. Katrina. We live in a time of unprecedented hurricanes and catastrophic weather events, a time when it is increasingly clear that climate change is neither imagined nor distant and that rising seas are transforming the coastline of the United States in irrevocable ways. In her new book, Rising, Elizabeth Rush guides readers through some of the places where this change has been most dramatic, from the Gulf Coast to Miami, from New York City to the Bay Area. For many of the plants, animals, and humans in these places, the options are stark: retreat or perish in place.

    Elizabeth Rush’s journalism has appeared in the Washington Post, Harper’s, Guernica, Granta, Orion, and the New Republic, among others. She is the recipient of fellowships and grants including the Howard Foundation Fellowship, awarded by Brown University; the Andrew Mellon Foundation Fellowship for Pedagogical Innovation in the Humanities; the Metcalf Institute Fellowship; and the Science in Society Journalism Award from the National Association of Science Writers. She received her MFA in nonfiction from Southern New Hampshire University and her BA from Reed College. She lives in Rhode Island, where she teaches creative nonfiction at Brown University.

    The Preservation Society of Newport County will host the author on Thursday, November 1 at 6 pm at Rosecliff, 548 Bellevue Avenue in Newport. Advance ticket purchase is required. Preservation Society Members $10 / General Public $15. You may purchase tickets at https://www.newportmansions.org/learn/adult-programs

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  • Friday, November 2, 7:30 pm – American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic

    Family doctor and friend to both Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, and attending doctor at the famous duel, David Hosack is today a shadowy figure; the great achievements of his life forgotten. In this Smith College Chrysanthemum Show Opening Lecture on November 2 at 7:30 in the Campus Center Carroll Room, featuring her book, American Eden, Victoria Johnson rescues Hosack from obscurity and highlights his significant contributions to botany and medicine.

    In 1801, on twenty acres of Manhattan farmland, Hosack founded the first botanical garden in the new nation, amassing a spectacular collection of medicinal, agricultural, and ornamental plants that brought him worldwide praise from the likes of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander von Humboldt. Hosack used his pioneering institution to train the next generation of American doctors and naturalists and to conduct some of the first pharmaceutical research in the United States. Today, his former garden is home to Rockefeller Center.

    Victoria Johnson is an Associate Professor of Urban Policy and Planning at Hunter College in New York City. She earned her undergraduate degree in philosophy from Yale University and her PhD in sociology from Columbia University. Before joining Hunter College, she taught at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor for thirteen years. Her first book, Backstage at the Revolution, a history of the Paris Opera under the Old Regime, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2008. In the 2015-2016 academic year, she was a Fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and in the summer of 2016 she was a Mellon Visiting Scholar at the New York Botanical Garden, where she conducted some of the research for her new book, American Eden. The lecture is free and open to the public, and will be followed by a reception, book signing, and view of the Chrysanthemum Show at the Lyman Plant House. For more information visit www.smith.edu/garden/

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  • Sunday, October 21, 2:00 pm – Frederic Church’s Olana on the Hudson: Art, Landscape, and Architecture

    As the leader of the acclaimed Hudson River School, Frederic Church made his name as a painter of large and enduring landscapes throughout the mid-1800s. His talents can be seen throughout the interior and landscapes of his property Olana, located in the heart of the Hudson River Valley. On Sunday, October 21 at 2 pm, join Larry Lederman, photographer of historical and important building interiors and landscapes as he discusses his newest book. Explore the stunning 250-acre estate through Larry’s images, including panoramic and aerial views, sunsets, and detail shots. A book signing will follow. The lecture is part of the 22nd Annual Boston International Fine Art Show taking place October 18 – 21 at the Cyclorama at the Boston Center for the Arts. The event is free with admission to the show. For more information visit http://www.fineartboston.com/special-programs

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  • Saturday, October 27, 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm – Ellen Shipman and the American Garden

    Ellen Shipman (1869-1950) was one of the leading landscape architects of the Country House era, designing over 600 gardens, often in collaboration with leading architects, such as Charles Platt and Harrie T. Lindeberg. This Tower Hill Botanic Garden lecture and book signing on October 27 at 1 pm will explore Shipman’s career and recent restorations of her gardens, such as Longue Vue House and Gardens, Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, and several private commissions. Free with admission to Tower Hill.

    Judith B. Tankard is an art historian specializing in American and British landscape history. She is the author of ten books, including Beatrix Farrand: Private Gardens, Public Landscapes and Gertrude Jekyll and the Country House Garden. She is a Fellow of the Garden Conservancy and an advisor for several landscape preservation organizations. She taught at the Landscape Institute, Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, for more than twenty years. Most importantly, in our view, she is a member of The Garden Club of the Back Bay. For more information visit www.towerhillbg.org.

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