Boston Flora

Category: Author Book Signing

  • Tuesday, February 28, 7:00 pm – Growing Potential: Gardening Behind Bars

    On Tuesday, February 28, beginning at 7 pm, James Jiler will speak at Trinity Church, Copley Square, in a program co-sponsored by Trinity Church and The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University entitled Growing Potential: Gardening Behind Bars. James Jiler is former Director of the GreenHouse Project, a renowned horticultural job training program for inmates at New York City’s Rikers Island prison and is author of Doing Time in the Garden. He is currently director of GreenWorks, a re-entry program in Florida offering vocational training in “Greencollar” jobs, both inside and outside prison walls. Jiler will discuss horticultural therapy, the role of gardens inside and outside of prison walls and the human and landscape transformations he has witnessed. Jiler was featured in the documentary Dirt! which explores the life-changing effects that dirt and “doing time in the garden” have had on improving/reclaiming the lives of inmates. Book-signing to follow.

    For more information on James Jiler, please see www.nativesplendor.com.

    Tickets available at the Shop at Trinity, by phone (617.536.0944 x225) or online arboretum.harvard.edu.
    Questions: Kathy Acerbo-Bachmann, kacerbobachmann@trinitychurchboston or 617.536.0944 x217.

  • Sunday, February 26, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm – Women in Botany

    Judith Sumner, botanist, author, and educator, celebrates women’s many roles in botany, at Garden in the Woods in Framingham on Sunday, February 26 from 10 – 4. Expert practical botanists – as gardeners, cooks, herbalists, and midwives – women have also become recognized professional botanists contributing significantly to plant science through exploration, research, and publication. Beginning with colonial America and the work of Jane Colden, explore the role of women in botanical studies and documentation. Recognize the role of women in protecting biodiversity (including the origins of the New England Wild Flower Society) and the work of Beatrix Farrand and others in ecology and landscape design.  In addition to lecture, slides, and discussion, peruse primary source materials from the Society library and participate in hands-on activities that commemorate the diverse roles of women in botany. This lecture is offered in collaboration with The Wellesley College Friends of Horticulture. Fee for members of either organization is $72 per person, and for non-members, $87. Register on line at www.newfs.org, or at www.wellesley.edu/WCFH.

  • Wednesday, March 14, 7:00 pm – High Line: The Inside Story of New York City’s Park in the Sky

    The 2012 Esther Steinberg Memorial Architecture Lecture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston will take place Wednesday, March 14, beginning at 7 pm in the Remis Auditorium at the MFA.  Robert Hammond, co-founder and executive director, Friends of the High Line, will share the story of how the High Line, a new public park atop an elevated freight rail structure in Manhattan, became an innovative urban reclamation project.  Hammond and his co-founder collaborated with neighbors, elected officials, artists, local business owners, and leaders in horticulture and landscape architecture, to create a park celebrated as a model for creatively designed, socially vibrant, ecologically sound public space.  A book signing follows.  This is a ticketed event ($15 MFA members, $18 others) and tickets may be reserved by calling 1-800-440-6975, going in person to the Remis Auditorium box office at the Museum, or visiting www.mfa.org.  Because this event will undoubtedly sell out, we recommend buying tickets early.

  • Wednesday, February 1, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – Creating Beautiful Gardens Filled with Life

    Instructive examples of gardens full of native plants are hard to find. On Wednesday, February 1, from 7 – 8:30 at The Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway, landscape architect and author Carolyn Summers fills that void with a plethora of images and commentary to fire our imaginations. She reviews the science behind the essential life support function of indigenous plants, takes us on a journey through a variety of formal gardens and more “naturalistic” landscapes, and illustrates the effective use of our northeastern native flora so that we can better visualize their full design potential. Ms. Summers is an adjunct professor at Westchester Community College and has been an effective advocate for native plants in the urban landscapes of New York City.  The lecture is free. For more information, call 617-354-0502.

  • Saturday, February 18, 2:00 pm – The World According to Dirr: Trees and Shrubs for the 21st Century

    Plan now for an important horticultural lecture in February. Noted author, educator and researcher Michael Dirr, Ph.D. will present The World According to Dirr: Trees and Shrubs for the 21st Century at the Berkshire Botanical Garden’s 2012 Annual Winter Lecture on Saturday, February 18, beginning at 2 pm.

    Dirr’s illustrated lecture will weave a tapestry rich in topics befitting an American icon of horticulture, complete with his signature humor and style. The endearing noble trees, trends in woody plants and the back story of the landscape industry, including plant breeding and development, are among the topics he will present.

    Dr. Dirr’s influence in horticulture is far reaching. A prolific author and exceptional hybridizer, he has dedicated his life to educating the public about the importance and use of woody plants in the landscape. In addition to his many well-known books, his newly published Dirr’s Encyclopedia of Trees and Shrubs continues to set the gold standard for horticultural reference. Known alternately as the modern father of woody plants and the hydrangea guru, his contributions to the world of horticulture are remarkable.

    Following the lecture, all are invited to a reception and book signing of Dirr’s Encyclopedia of Trees and Shrubs and the Manual of Woody Landscape Plants. Call the Garden today to reserve your advance copies!

    Lecture generously sponsored by Hunter Boot.  (Snow date: Sunday, February 19)  The event will take place at Monument Mountain Regional High School, Route 7 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.  BBG member price $35, nonmembers $42, group rates available.  Call 413-298-3926 for more information, or email rparow@berkshirebotanical.org.

  • Thursday, January 26, 2:00 pm – Beacon Street: Its Buildings & Residents

    Join historian Robert E. Guarino on a nostalgic journey down a highway of history when he discusses his new book Beacon Street: Its Buildings & Residents, at the Boston Public Library’s Rabb Lecture Hall, 700 Boylston Street, on Thursday, January 26 at 2 pm. The grand mansions and the elegant attached row houses of Beacon Street are the homes of Boston’s elite and a backdrop for the city’s long history. The iconic street is crowned with Charles Bulfinch’s magnificent 1798 Massachusetts Statehouse overlooking the legendary Boston Common, where the British occupiers trained and cows once roamed freely. Historian Robert E. Guarino deftly narrates the development of the street, from its expansion as land from the top of Mount Vernon extended its length to Horace Gray’s efforts in 1837 to found the Public Garden. Join Guarino as he takes a fascinating and nostalgic journey down the historic and storied highway of Beacon Street.  Mr. Guarino, currently a resident of Vermont, is a trustee of the Vermont Historical Society.

  • Wednesday, January 18, 6:00 pm – Strange New Worlds: From Meteorites in Antarctica to the Search for Life Beyond Our Solar System

    Renowned astronomer Ray Jayawardhana, University of Toronto and current Radcliffe Institute fellow, will give a lively talk on cutting-edge science of today’s planet hunters, the prospects for discovering alien life, and the debate and controversies at the forefront of extrasolar-planet research, at the Harvard Museum of Natural History on Wednesday, January 18, beginning at 6 pm.  Jayawardhana will also discuss his recent travels to the frigid ice of Antarctica where he went to look for meteorites—and found them. Following the talk, he will sign copies of his recent book, Strange New Worlds. Free and open to the public, Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street. Free parking available in the 52 Oxford Street garage.  For directions, visit www.hmnh.harvard.edu.

  • Tuesday, December 13, 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm – Amateur Entomologists and Digital Photography

    The December meeting of the Cambridge Entomological Club will be held Tuesday, December 13, from 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm and will feature Tom Murray, author of a new field guide entitled Insects of New England and New York, who will speak on Amateur Entomologists and Digital Photography.  CEC meetings are held the second Tuesday of the month from October through May. The evening schedule typically includes an informal dinner (6:15 to 7:15 PM) followed by our formal meeting (7:30 – 9:00 PM) in MCZ 101, 26 Oxford Street, Harvard University. The latter begins with club business and is followed by a 50 minute entomology related presentation. Membership is open to amateur and professional entomologists.  For more information, email CEC President Jessica Walden-Gray at jessisoutside@gmail.com.

  • Wednesday, December 7, 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm – One Writer’s Garden: Eudora Welty’s Home Place

    Eudora Welty’s Mississippi garden ran riot with the camellias, roses, and daylilies that she tended as zealously as her prose. The novelist, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for The Optimist’s Daughter, cultivated characters for her stories along with the flowers that she grew in her modest Jackson garden.

    A fine new book by Susan Haltom and Jane Roy Brown looks at Welty’s enduring relationship with her garden, to which she turned as a respite from her travels and the pressures of making a living as a writer. The garden and house where Eudora Welty (1909-2001) lived and wrote is now a museum, and the garden has been restored to its heyday in the 1920s through the ’40s.

    Welty’s letters, published for the first time in this book, reveal witty and telling observations about not only gardening, but also fellow gardeners. She wrote to a friend, “The delphiniums I planted in my ignorance have all bloomed like everything and are getting ready to bloom for the second time and Mother says the ladies of the garden club come over each day to worship and grit their teeth.”

    On Wednesday, December 7, from 3 – 5, come hear Jane Roy Brown speak about Miss Welty’s garden and how its formation also offers a compelling look at the broader social trends of the time, including the flourishing of womens civic involvement through garden clubs and the development of streetcar suburbs. Brown serves as director of educational outreach at the Library of American Landscape History. Her writing has appeared in the Boston Globe as well as in national publications.

    Admission to the book talk is free but an RSVP is requested to mhorn@masshort.org. The event is co-sponsored by COGdesign (www.cogdesign.org) and the Massachusetts Horticultural Society (www.masshort.org).  The event takes place at the Massachusetts Horticultural Society at Elm Bank, 900 Washington Street in Wellesley.

  • Saturday, December 3, 1:30 pm – 3:30 pm – Flora Novae Angliae

    The New England Wild Flower Society hosts a lecture and book signing with Arthur Haines at Garden in the Woods on Saturday, December 3, from 1:30 – 3:30.  Illustrators Elizabeth Farnsworth and Gordon Morrison will also attend. New England Wild Flower Society is thrilled to announce that after nine years of field, herbarium, and literature study Flora Novae Angliae, a Manual for the Identification of Native and Naturalized Higher Vascular Plants of New England, has been published by Yale University Press.

    This 1,008 page book is the definitive publication for the study and identification of the plants of New England. Join the author for a discussion of the underlying philosophies, a look at some of the research and novel finds on which the manual was written, and discussion of the many collaborators (and their exciting finds) who helped make the book possible. The lecture will present fascinating botanical information pertinent to each state in New England.

    This partly illustrated work presents the latest in nomenclatural, taxonomic, and distribution information for New England’s tracheophytes (i.e., higher vascular plants). The manual makes a departure from its predecessors in several respects. First, well-supported information was incorporated into the text, regardless of how unpopular it may have been viewed. Second, many thousands of herbarium specimens were reviewed to verify not only recent collections but the early ones as well. Third, identification keys were written, where possible, with focus on characteristics that do not display substantial phenotypic (i.e., environmental) variation. And fourth, all hybrid plants that could be verified as part of the New England flora were included (rather than just the well-known or named ones). These underlying philosophies have contributed to building a floristic manual with many substantial changes from earlier works covering the region.

    Arthur Haines stated, “The initial view of this manual may be one of greater complexity, but the goal was simply to write a manual that reflected, as accurately as plant taxonomists understood, our best understanding of the species growing on the New England landscape.”  After the lecture, the author will be joined by the two illustrators, Elizabeth Farnsworth and Gordon Morrison, for a book signing in the Garden Shop at Garden in the Woods.  Please RSVP if you plan to attend the December 3 lecture by calling the registrar at 508-877-7630, ext 3303.