Boston Flora

Category: Author Book Signing

  • Wednesday, June 6, 7:00 pm – Change Comes to Dinner and Raising the Salad Bar

    Change Comes to Dinner takes readers into the farms, markets, organizations, businesses and institutions across America that are pushing for a more sustainable food system in America.  Author Katie Gustafson is an award-winning writer, journalist and editor whose articles and essays have been published in numerous print and online media. She has written about sustainable food, among other topics, for Yes! Magazine, The Huffington Post, Civil Eats, Change.org, and Tonic.

    Raising the Salad Bar, by Cathy Walthers, of more than 135 inventive salad recipes is timed to answer the great demand for healthy recipes with organic ingredients. Walthers offers up delicious twists on tired classics, including pasta salads, salad wraps, chicken salads, and more.  Walthers, an award-winning journalist and food writer, is also the author of the cookbook Soups and Sides. A graduate of the Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts, she has worked for the past 15 years as a private chef and cooking instructor in the Boston area and on Martha’s Vineyard. She is the food editor of Martha’s Vineyard Magazine and founding member of the Martha’s Vineyard Slow Food Group and the Island Grown Initiative.

    Both authors will appear at Porter Square Books, 25 White Street in Cambridge, on Wednesday, June 6, beginning at 7 pm.  For more information call 617-491-2220, or visit www.portersquarebooks.com.

  • Friday, June 1, 6:45 pm – The Diversity, Evolution, and Ecology of Carex: A Personal Perspective

    The New England Botanical Club will hold its June meeting on Friday, June 1 in the Haller Lecture Hall, Room 102, Harvard Museum of Natural History, 24 Oxford Street, with a talk by Dr. Lisa Standley, Chief Environmental Scientist, VHB, Inc., of Watertown, and New England Botanical Club Curator of Vascular Plants.  She will speak on The Diversity, Evolution, and Ecology of Carex: A Personal Perspective.  The talk is open to the public.  For more information visit www.rhodora.org.  Dr. Standley is the author of the New Field Guide to the Carex of New England.

     

     

  • Saturday, June 23, 11:30 am – 1:30 pm – Derek Fell on Vertical Gardening

    The second keynote presentation at the 2012 Newport Flower Show will take place Saturday, June 23, from 11:30 am – 1:30 pm at Rosecliff.  Derek Fell, former director of the National Gardening Bureau and prolific author with more than 100 gardening books totaling 2.5 million in print, will share his garden magic with us. Fell also hosts an extensive photo library numbering more than 150,000 images of plants and gardens. His love of plants began in England during WWII as a child when his father gave him a packet of seeds to plant against a sunny wall. He claims those seeds produced the best tasting peas as well as the inspiration for a career which has taken him around the world.

    A lively and fun speaker, Fell will share with us the skills of growing up, literally, with vertical gardening. Whether for an urban garden or to maximize use of space, his approach to vertical gardening will appeal to everyone as it results in both beauty and bounty. Fell will also be available to sign his most recent book, Vertical Gardening.

    You have the option of enjoying an elegant luncheon with Mario by choosing a Luncheon & Lecture ticket, or purchasing a Lecture Only ticket. Both include one-day Show admission.  Purchase on line at http://www.newportmansions.org/events/newport-flower-show/lectures-and-demonstrations.

    $80 per person for Luncheon & Lecture
    Please arrive by 11:15 a.m.

    $40 per person for Lecture Only
    Please arrive by 12:15 p.m.

  • Wednesday, May 30, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – Chasing Venus: The Race to Measure the Heavens

    In her new book, Chasing Venus, Andrea Wulf tells the extraordinary story of the first global scientific collaboration, set amid warring armies, hurricanes, scientific endeavors, and personal tragedy. On June 6, 1761 and June 3, 1769, the planet Venus passed between Earth and Sun – each time visible as a small black dot against the burning face of the Sun for six hours. Transits of Venus always arrive in pairs – eight years apart – but then it takes more than a century before they are seen again. In the 1760s the world’s scientific community was electrified because the transit would allow them for the first time to calculate the distance between the planets in our solar system. This would require triangulated data to be compiled from various exact points around the globe – all taken simultaneously during the short period of the actual Transit. Join us for an intriguing glimpse at the spirit of the Enlightenment and the collaborative race to measure the heavens. Chasing Venus will be published in May 2012 in conjunction of the Transit of Venus on June 5/6, 2012.  Andrea Wulf will speak on Wednesday, May 30, from 7 – 8:30 at the Weld Hill Research Building at the Arnold Arboretum.  Register at www.my.arboretum.harvard.edu.  Fee $10 sponsor organization member, $20 nonmember.  Offered by the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Historical Society.

    The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics is holding a special Observatory Night for viewing the Venus transit. Learn more. In 2004 we were treated to a sunrise view of Venus crossing the disk of the sun. On June 5th, we will enjoy a sunset Venus transit. If you miss this one, you won’t get another chance to see it until 2117 – and that’s a very long time to wait. The Center for Astrophysics will hold a special rooftop viewing of the Venus transit beginning at 6:00 pm. The transit will be visible from 6:03 until the sun sets at 8:19. Viewing is weather-dependent so call 617-495-7461 to check for cancellation.

  • Wednesday, May 9, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – The Philosophical Breakfast Club and the Invention of the “Scientist”

    In 1812, four remarkable men met at Cambridge University: Charles Babbage, John Herschel, Richard Jones and William Whewell. Recognizing that they shared a love of science (as well as good food and drink), they began to meet on Sunday mornings to talk about the state of science in Britain and the world at large. Inspired by the great seventeenth-century scientific reformer and political figure Francis Bacon, the Philosophical Breakfast Club plotted to bring about a scientific revolution—one which privileged an evidence-based, inductive method of discovery, and one which asserted the need for science to serve the public good. In her book, The Philosophical Breakfast Club, Laura Snyder follows the intertwined lives and works of these men over the next 60 years, and shows that by the end of their lives they had succeeded, even beyond their wildest dreams, in bringing about a scientific revolution. She will speak about one aspect of the revolution they wrought: the shift from the amateur natural philosopher to the professional scientist.  Dr. Snyder, Associate Professor of Philosophy at St. John’s University, will speak at the Hunnewell Building of the Arnold Arboretum on Wednesday, May 9, from 7 – 8:30 pm.  Register online at www.my.arboretum.harvard.edu.  Fee: Free for Arboretum members; $15 nonmembers.

  • Wednesday, July 4 – Monday, July 9 – Thirtieth Perennial Plant Symposium

    The yearly Perennial Plant Symposium is the only annual symposium devoted entirely to perennials. It is also the oldest with the first symposium presented in 1983. The location changes each year. Enjoy learning about and observing perennials, gardens, and production facilities all across the USA and Canada. This summer the annual meeting of the Perennial Plant Association takes place in Boston, Massachusetts. The conference includes optional tours before and after the symposium, trips to public and private gardens, a trade show, and retail, grower, or designer’s talks and tours. Selected highlights include:

    July 4th: Optional walking horticultural tour of Boston, historical tour by bus of Boston, Lexington and Concord,  and fireworks cruise

    July 5th: Public Day Seminar Speakers

    Julie Merservy:  Home Outside – Creating the Landscape You Love

    Debra Knape: Good Enough To Eat – Designing Edible Landscapes

    David Culp:  Best of Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow

    Adrian Bloom:   Bloom’s Best Perennials and Grasses

    Roger Swain: Ace of Shovels: Finding the Perfect Garden Tool

    Laura Deeter: Bringing Your Perennials Up Right

    July 6th: Eleven fascinating presentations featuring growers, landscape designers, and retailers, plus Keynote by Julie Merservy:  Hearing the Stream With Open Eyes – The Evolution of a Designer

    July 7th: Morning Bench to Border Tours of Cavicchio Greenhouses, Stonegate Gardens, Russell’s Garden Center, Garden in the Woods, Weston Nursery, and Tower Hill Botanic Garden.

    Afternoon Divine by Design Garden Tours of four private gardens, Elm Bank (Massachusetts Horticultural Society), Weston Nursery, and Tower Hill Botanic Garden.

    July 8th – Trade Show and Sixteen Lectures on topics ranging from Biological Controls to New and Upcoming Coreopsis Cultivars to Container Gardening.

    July 9 – Optional Tour to garden centers and Newport gardens

    July 10 – Option Tour:  Journey to the Edge!  The Maine Event.  Visit five wholesale and retail growers in New Hampshire and Maine, and experience a lobster bake at the Coastal Maine Botanic Garden.

     

    Lectures, reception and the trade show will take place at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel, 50 Park Plaza at Arlington Street. The room rate is: $129 for Single or $129 for Double.  Non Perennial Plant Association members are invited to register for the entire conference at non-member rates, or just for the public day on July 5th.  Registration information will be available at www.perennialplant.org.  This is a fabulous opportunity for our Boston area gardening community to participate in one of the nation’s premier horticultural events.

     

  • Tuesday, May 22, 10:00 am – Nature Takes Over

    The Garden Club Federation of Massachusetts, Ruth A. Wallack Fund, presents Nature Takes Over: Creations are Collaborations with Nature, featuring Bill Harper, AIFD & AAF, International Floral Artist, Lecturer, Author, and Educator, on Tuesday, May 22, beginning at 10 am at Regis College Fine Arts Center in Weston.  Tickets are $20, and may be obtained by calling Helga Frazzette at 508-255-6664, or Diane Bullock at 207-361-1818.

  • Wednesday, May 9, 6:00 pm – Coffee Life in Japan

    Boston University Professor of Anthropology Merry White explores the fascinating role that coffee and cafe society have played in Japanese culture in a lecture on Wednesday, May 9, from 6 – 8 at 808 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston.  White’s book, Coffee Life in Japan – part ethnography, part memoir – traces the cafe craze from 1888, when Japan helped to launch the Brazilian coffee industry, up to the present.  Her work examines themes as diverse as gender, privacy, perfectionism, and urbanism.  Learn how coffee and coffee spaces have played essential roles in the formation of Japanese beliefs about public space, social change, modernity, and pleasure.  Hear how the cafe has been a place to encounter new ideas and experiments in thought, behavior, sexuality, dress and taste.  Each person attending this event will receive a copy of White’s book.  Refreshments will be served.  $25.  Register online at www.bu.edu/foodandwine.

  • Wednesday, May 2, 6:00 pm – Why Evolution is True and Why Many People Still Don’t Believe It

    Jerry Coyne, a professor of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago and author of the seminal book, Why Evolution is True, is one of the world’s most eloquent defenders of evolutionary science in the face of legal, religious, and cultural opposition. In this Wednesday, May 2nd talk beginning at 6 pm, Coyne will explore the multifarious evidence for evolution, why Americans are so resistant to accepting the theory, and what can be done to make the country more evolution-friendly. Free and open to the public, Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street. Free parking available in the 52 Oxford Street garage. Part of the Evolution Matters lecture series. Supported by a generous gift from Drs. Herman and Joan Suit.  For more information visit www.hmnh.harvard.edu.

  • Saturday, April 21, 2:00 pm – The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources

    Visit the Harvard Museum of Natural History on Saturday, April 21 at 2 pm for an author talk and book signing by Michael Klare. In his newest book, The Race for What’s Left, Michael Klare, Five College Professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, describes a world facing an unprecedented crisis of resource depletion—from oil to coal and natural gas, copper and cobalt, water, and arable land.
    Regular admission rates apply. Part of the Cambridge Science Festival.  For more information, visit www.hmnh.harvard.edu.