Boston Flora

Category: Author Book Signing

  • Tuesday, October 18, 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm – Wild Edibles

    The American Institute of Wine and Food, with Newbury College, 129 Fisher Avenue in Brookline, will host a program on Tuesday, October 18, from 6:30 – 8:30 featuring one of the Garden Club of the Back Bay’s favorite speakers. Russ Cohen, professional environmentalist and wild food enthusiast, will be giving a talk, with slides, called “Wild Edibles I Have Known (and Eaten)”. He will also be selling his cookbooks, the proceeds of which go to one of the organizations that he supports. Sometime during the evening, snacks made from the recipes in his book will be passed. These will be prepared by Guida Ponte, a chef at Verrill Farm in Concord, assisted by some of the Newbury culinary students. The cost is $25, and the event will take place in Mitton Hall. You may purchase tickets by sending a check made out to AIWF Boston, c/o Jerry Dreher, 1284 Beacon Street, #701, Brookline, MA 02446, or on line at http://www.aiwf.org/boston/chapter_calendar/event.html?calendarevent_id=3266&date=2011-10-18&.

  • Wednesday, October 5, 7:00 pm – Isabel Wilkerson: The Warmth of Other Suns

    This post has virtually nothing to do with horticulture, but we thought our readers would like to be alerted to the appearance of author Isabel Wilkerson on Wednesday, October 5 at Gasson 100 at Boston College. Isabel Wilkerson, Professor of Journalism and Director of Narrative Nonfiction at Boston University, was the first black woman to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize in journalism and the first black American to win for individual reporting. She received a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship to complete the research for The Warmth of Other Suns, her epic account of the Great Migration, which also won the Mark Lynton History Prize. Free admission.

  • Saturday, October 22, 2:00 pm – Wicked Bugs: The Louse that Conquered Napoleon’s Army and Other Insect Monstrosities

    In a follow up to her very successful New York Times bestseller Wicked Plants, Amy Stewart tackles the insects, worms, and spiders that have tormented humankind for centuries. With wit and style, Stewart will reveal some of her discoveries. Books will be available for purchase and signing. Fee $5 sponsoring member, $15 nonmember.  Offered by the Arnold Arboretum,  Roslindale Green and Clean and Wellesley College Friends of Horticulture, and held on Saturday, October 22 beginning at 2 pm, at Weld Hill, 1300 Centre Street in Boston.  Register at www.arboretum.harvard.edu.

  • Tuesday, October 4, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm – Places for the Spirit: Traditional African American Gardens

    Gardens and Spirit: The Power of Landscapes to Transform, is a series offered by the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University and Trinity Church in the City of Boston.  The first of this year’s lectures will take place Tuesday, October 4, from 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm at Trinity Church in Copley Square.  Vaughn Sills, Associate Professor of Photography, Simmons College, and Lowry Pei, Professor of English at Simmons College, will speak on their new book,  Places for the Spirit: Traditional African American Gardens. Places for the Spirit is a stunning collection of over 80 documentary photographs of African American folk gardens — and their creators — in the Deep South (Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina). These landscapes have a unique historical significance due to the design elements and spiritual meanings that have been traced to the yards and gardens of American slaves and further back to their prior African heritage. These deceptively casual or whimsical foliage arrangements are subtle and symbolic reminders of the divine in everyday life, the cycles of nature, and implied right and wrong ways to live. In the spirit of “outsider” art traditions, blues musical roots, and other such folk manifestations, these gardens have a unique aesthetic and cultural significance. Over 20 years in the making, this is the first collection of fine art photography to document this subject and, as such, it adds greatly to our understanding and appreciation of this disappearing element of African American culture. Fee is $15 for Arboretum members, $20 for non-members.  Register on-line at http://my.arboretum.harvard.edu/.

  • Sunday, September 18, 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm – Fabulous Fungi of New England

    Join the Arnold Arboretum and avid mycologist Lawrence Millman on this talk and walk Sunday, September 18 from 1 – 3 at Weld Hill, 1300 Centre Street in Boston, in search of New England fungi species. Be prepared to walk on and off trail, on uneven terrain and up steep slopes. Millman’s new book, Fascinating Fungi of New England, will be available for purchase and signing. Fee $15 member, $20 nonmember.  Register in advance at www.arboretum.harvard.edu.

  • Thursday, August 11, 12:00 noon – 2:00 pm – Susie Middleton

    Susie Middleton of Martha’s Vineyard is a food writer, magazine consultant, chef, and recipe developer with an expertise in vegetable cooking. She is the author of two cookbooks-Fast, Fresh & Green, a collection of delicious vegetable side dishes published by Chronicle Books in 2010, and Fresh & Green for Dinner, which will be published by Chronicle Books in Spring, 2012. Susie blogs regularly about vegetable cooking and growing on her website, www.sixburnersue.com, and she blogs about sustainable issues and home cooking on the Huffington Post, www.huffingtonpost.com/susie-middleton. She will appear on Thursday, August 11, from 12 – 2 at the Dewey Square Farmers Market, South Station, Boston, so plan to stop by and chat.

  • Wednesday, July 20, 7:00 pm – Sue Reed on Energy-wise Landscape Design

    Tomorrow night, Wednesday, July 20, drive out to the Massachusetts Horticultural Society’s Elm Bank for an engrossing lecture on Energy-wise Landscape Design, beginning at 7 pm.  You spend thousands of dollars each year to heat and cool your home. You spend hundreds of hours maintaining (or thousands of dollars paying someone to maintain) your landscaping. It’s possible to lower both expenses through environmentally conscious landscaping.

    Environmentally conscious landscaping is the use of the right trees and plants in the right places to ensure that your heating and cooling systems don’t have to work overtime to keep your home comfortable. It’s using rain water runoff intelligently to use less water while gardening. And it’s choosing plants that can get by on what Mother Nature provides.

    Sue Reed, a landscape architect and author, will offer practical ways you can save money, time and effort while making your landscape more environmentally healthy and energy efficient. You’ll leave with a head full of ideas of how to make your landscape ‘green’ in a very different way. She’s an engaging speaker with an infectious manner.

    All ‘Wednesday Evening at Elm Bank’ presentations begin at 7 p.m. and end when the last question is answered. The price for Mass Hort members is $10, the cost to non-members is $15. Refreshments are always served. Presentations are held in the Education Building. Reservations are not required.

  • Thursday, August 4, 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm – Forest Hills: An Early American Garden Cemetery

    Anthony Mitchell Sammarco, author of Forest Hills Cemetery: 1848 – 2008, discusses the history of the cemetery and explores the rural cemetery movement of the nineteenth century on Thursday, August 4, from 5:30 – 7:30 at Historic New England’s Otis House in Boston.  The reception, co-sponsored with The Victorian Society in America, NE Chapter, begins at 5:30, with the talk commencing at 6:30.  $10 for HNE and Victorian Society members, $12 non-members.  Registration is recommended – call 617-994-5934, or visit www.historicnewengland.org.

  • Thursday, July 14, 4:00 pm – The History of Greenhouses in America

    Join art historian Arete Warren at the Berkshire Botanical Garden in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, on Thursday, July 14, at 4 pm, for a transparent look at the magnificent glass houses of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in America. Learn how the development of the functional greenhouse for growing tropical plants was expanded into glasshouses, orangeries, and conservatories becoming increasingly ornamental and an indicator of great wealth in American society. This illustrated lecture will include fine examples of these crystal palaces and their associated historical head houses and potting sheds.

    Arete Warren is an art historian with an inclination towards architecture and decorative arts. She is the president of the Millbrook Garden Club and served as national chair for the Garden Club of America’s Garden History and Design Committee. She co-authored with May Woods, Glass Houses: A History of Greenhouses, Orangeries and Conservatories. You may register on line at www.berkshirebotanical.org. BBG member price: $22, nonmember price: $27.

  • Wednesday, July 13, 7:30 pm, and Thursday, July 14, 9:00 – 12:00 noon – Gardening with Native Plants

    Join author and native plant enthusiast Carolyn Summers for an evening lecture (Wednesday, July 13, 7:30 pm)  and morning workshop (Thursday, July 14, 9 – 12) on designing and gardening with native plants.  Based on her book Designing Gardens with the Flora of the American East, Ms. Summers will show how to increase biodiversity in our gardens, for beautiful, sustainable results which also benefit wildlife.  The events will be held in the Far Barn at the Polly Hill Arboretum in West Tisbury, Martha’s Vineyard, and the cost to attend the Wednesday evening talk is $5 for PHA members, $10 for nonmembers, and the Thursday seminar will be $30 for PHA members, $35 for nonmembers.  For more information, log on to www.pollyhillarboretum.org.