Through treaty violations, struggles for food and water security and protection of sacred sites, Native people have resisted environmental injustice and land incursions for hundreds of years. Join Indigenous researcher and activist Dina Gilio-Whitaker online on September 23 at 6:30 pm to explore this history and discuss how modern environmentalists can look to Indigenous resistance for new approaches. Dina Gilio-Whitaker (Colville Confederated Tribes) is the policy director and a senior research associate at the Center for World Indigenous Studies and teaches American Indian Studies at California State University San Marcos. She is the coauthor, with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, of All the Real Indians Died Off and 20 Other Myths About Native Americans. She lives in San Clemente, California.
This Tower Hill Botanic Garden lecture and Q & A will be held virtually. The book is available for purchase through Tower Hill’s online Garden Shop. A link to the Zoom webinar will be sent after registration in the confirmation email. Author Talks will only be available live. They will not be recorded. $10 for Tower Hill members, $15 for nonmembers. Register at www.towerhillbg.org
Enjoy a Berkshire Botanical Garden online lecture and Q&A sessionon September 11 at 6 pm with author Jennifer Jewell, about her new book The Earthin Her Hands: 75 Extraordinary Women Working in the World of Plants, available for purchase through BBG’s online shop. Focus in a wholly unique way on how horticulture intersects with our everyday world and on women whose work has enriched and expanded these intersections in the last 25 years. The Earth in Her Hands explores and celebrates how the plant world is improved by greater representation of women and by diversity amongst those women. It chronicles how working in the world of plants is a more viable and creative career path for women than ever before and how the plant-work world is demonstrating greater social and environmental responsibility, in large part due to women’s contributions. These profiles of women from a half a dozen different countries, doing innovative work in all horticultural fields, point to larger issues and shifts in our world. These women’s diverse backgrounds and identities challenge preconceived notions of what horticulturalists and gardeners look like, while their work illustrates how many challenges of our world can be met through cultivating an interdependence with plants.
Jennifer Jewell is the creator and host of Cultivating Place, an award-winning public radio program and podcast on natural history and the human impulse to garden.
Join author Kathryn Aalto online on August 13 at 6:30 pm to discuss her new book Writing Wild. Who are the pioneering and imaginative women who dared … to take simple walks without the chaperone of men? To pick up a pen and write under their own names? To record their protests, poetry and prose? To change history? In Writing Wild, Kathryn Aalto lyrically profiles 25 women, both historical and current, whose influential nature writing has deepened our connection to and understanding of the natural world. This Summer Author Series presentation, co-sponsored by Tower Hill Botanic Garden, Timber Press, and Berkshire Botanical Garden , is $15 for members of sponsor organizations and $15 for nonmembers. Books are available to purchase online through the Tower Hill Garden Shop. To register visit www.towerhillbg.org.
On July 23 at 6:30 pm, enjoy a Berkshire Botanical Garden lecture and Q&A session with author Marta McDowell about her new book, Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life. In addition to writing poetry, The Belle of Amherst was a gardener. She cultivated flowers on her father’s property and in the glass conservatory that he added to the Homestead. This lecture explores Dickinson’s gardens through excerpts from her letters and poems and historic and modern images of her garden. The book is available for purchase through the BBG online shop. Our Summer Author Series is presented in collaboration with Tower Hill Botanic Garden and Timber Press. $10 for sponsor members, $15 for nonmembers. Register at https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/events/summer-author-series-marta-mcdowell-emily-dickinsons-gardening-life-online
Marta McDowell teaches landscape history and horticulture at the New York Botanical Garden and consults for private clients and public gardens. Her latest book is Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life, published by Timber Press, who also published The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder,New York Times bestselling All the Presidents’ Gardens and Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life, now in its seventh printing. Marta is working on a new book about The Secret Garden and its author, Frances Hodgson Burnett, due out from Timber Press in 2021. She is the 2019 recipient of the Garden Club of America’s Sarah Chapman Francis Medal for outstanding literary achievement.
On July 9 at 6:30 pm, enjoy an online Berkshire Botanical Garden lecture and Q&A session with author Daryl Beyers about his new book, The New Gardener’s Handbook, available for purchase through the BBG online shop. Novice or experienced, all gardeners learn something new every time they step into a garden to check on a plant, dig in the soil or harvest the fruits of their labor. Daryl Beyers, author of The New Gardener’s Handbook, shares the why-dos of the how-tos that help gardeners grow beautiful and bountiful gardens. Daryl will discuss the fundamentals of how plants grow, the importance of soil, how to sow seeds, watering and weeding. New gardeners will come away with a foundation to help their gardens flourish, and accomplished gardeners will learn expert insights and some new tips and tricks. Our Summer Author Series is presented in collaboration with Tower Hill Botanic Garden and Timber Press. $10 for members of sponsoring organizations, $15 for nonmembers. Register at https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/events/summer-author-series-daryl-beyers-new-gardeners-handbook-online
Daryl Beyers is author of The New Gardener’s Handbook: Everything You Need to Know to Grow a Beautiful and Bountiful Garden, available from Timber Press. As gardening certificate program coordinator at the New York Botanical Garden, Daryl helps guide the program’s curriculum and teaches the popular Fundamentals of Gardening course and courses on container gardening and garden design. He has more than 25 years of professional landscaping experience, specializing in residential garden design and development. As a staff writer, photographer and editor for Fine Gardening magazine, Daryl authored two special issues on garden design, and he served as contributing garden editor for Martha Stewart Living. His articles on gardening and garden design have also appeared in Horticulture and HGTV Magazine.
As we are moving through these uncertain times, Nantucket Lighthouse School’s Board of Trustees has made the tough decision to postpone the 2020 Nantucket Garden Festival to July 13-15, 2021.
Tjeu are grateful that they will be able to offer the unparalleled line-up of events that was announced for this year next summer, and look forward to welcoming you then. They are thinking about you and your families and hope that you are all well and safe.
The line up will include keynote presenter Christin Geall. Christin Geall is a Canadian floral designer, writer, gardener, photographer, and author of the book Cultivated: Elements of Floral Style (Princeton Architectural Press, 2020). Trained in horticultural at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, she completed a BA in Environmental Studies & Anthropology and a MFA in nonfiction before becoming a gardening columnist for Gardenista, a professor, and designer. Through her company, Cultivated, she teaches floral design in the UK, US, and Canada. Her writing and floral work focuses on the intersections of nature, culture, and horticulture.
A second keynote presenter is Stephen Orr, the Editor-In-Chief of Better Homes and Gardens and Author of The New American Herbaland Tomorrow’s Garden. Orr will be joining us to explore the versatility of herbs in all their beauty and variety.
Orr has been a regularly featured gardening expert on “The CBS Early Show,” “The Martha Stewart Show,” and “The Today Show.” In addition he was a segment producer for the PBS television series “Cultivating Life” and edited two cookbooks by British author Sarah Raven for Rizzoli.
Orr is a featured speaker across the country for organizations such as The Garden Conservancy, The Garden Club of America, the Garden Writers Association, and a variety of national programs.
A third presenter, Jennifer Jewell is the creator/host of Cultivating Place, an award-winning public radio program & podcast on natural history and the human impulse to garden. Her first book, The Earth In Her Hands, 75 Extraordinary Women Working in the World of Plants, centering women transforming horticulture around the world, is published by Timber Press.
Jewell’s writing and photography have been featured in publications including Gardens Illustrated, House & Garden, and Pacific Horticulture. From 2008 – 2016 Jewell created, wrote and hosted the weekly, regionally-focused In a North State Garden on North State Public Radio. From 2010 -2017 she worked as the curatorial assistant to the director and the curator of the native plant garden at Gateway Science Museum on the campus of CSU, Chico in Chico, CA.
Finally, Peggy Cornett is the Historic Gardener and Curator of Plants at Monticello and received the SGHS Flora Ann Bynum Medal for exemplary service in the garden history field and the Garden Club of America’s Zone VII Horticultural Commendation for Horticultural Expertise.
In addition to managing the historic plant collection, Cornett oversees educational programs at Monticello including the Garden and Grounds tour and the Garden Tasting Tours as well as natural history walks, lectures, and horticultural workshops throughout the year. She is the co-director of the Historic Landscape Institute, a unique one-week educational experience in the theory and practice of historic landscape hosted at Monticello.
Cornett also shares her knowledge in horticulture as a frequent guest on NPR and PBS. She also writes articles and lectures nationwide on vegetable gardens and historic plants.
From 1886 to 1936, Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka applied their artistic talents and knowledge of natural history to create an exquisite collection of glass models of plants to support the botanical education of Harvard students and the public. This May 21 Harvard Museum of Natural History program will explore the history, conservation, and relevance of the Glass Flowers in the twenty-first century, and introduce the publication The Glass Flowers: Marvels of Art and Science at Harvard, a compendium of new photographs that captures the beauty and magnificent detail of the models. Featured speakers are Jennifer Brown, Collection Manager, Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants, Natalja Kent, Photographer, Scott E. Fulton, Head Conservator, Ware Collection, and Donald H. Pfister, Asa Gray Professor of Systemic Botany and Curator of the Farlow Library and Herbarium of Cryptogamic Botany. The program is free and open to the public, with a book signing and exhibit preview to follow.
Author Bill McEvoy explores the history of Rainsford Island in Boston Harbor. His talk will take place at the Boston Public Library Central Branch in Copley Square on April 22 at 6 pm. Beginning with private ownership from 1636 to 1736, the island then was owned by the Province of the Massachusetts Bay, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and finally the City of Boston. The island’s complex history is best told by segmenting its various periods. Until 1854, it was occasionally a place of quarantine, as well as a summer resort for the wealthy. In 1854, while under the ownership of the Commonwealth, the island’s use took a turn, beginning sixty-six years as an off-shore repository for Boston’s unwanted. Its inmates were victims of poverty, lack of health care, mental illness, senility, addiction, lack of proper housing, poor sanitary conditions, inability to pay a small fine, men unable to find work, incarcerated as paupers, and unwed pregnant women.
We note two heroes: Alice Lincoln and Louis Brandeis. Their efforts resulted in the City ending Rainsford Island as a warehouse for the poor, the unwanted, and the mentally ill. Rainsford entered its final 26 years as the Boys’ House of Reformation. Further examples of inept management, cruelty, neglect, and death, of “Unfortunate” boys ages eight to eighteen are documented. Sentences ranged from playing ball on Sundays to murder. Those boys were commingled on the 11 acre island.
His book is dedicated to the memory of all who were sent to Rainsford Island, especially those who remain buried there, still neglected but now not forgotten. This book dedicates a chapter to those who never left the island and are buried in unmarked graves, including a War of 1812 sailor, 9 Civil War soldiers who died on active duty, and 108 Veterans of the Civil War who died between 1873 and 1893. Fourteen of those Veterans were African American, – one was a member of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment.
Bill McEvoy is a US Army Veteran (1968-1971). He earned a BA from Bentley University, MBA from Suffolk University, and MA in Political Science from Boston College. While at BC he had the privilege of participating in a semester long colloquium with Dr. Thomas H. O’Connor, the Dean of the History Department.
He retired as a Massachusetts District Court Magistrate in 2009. He
has volunteered for eight years with the No Veteran Dies Alone program
at the Bedford Veterans Hospital where he is still glad to be actively
working, as well as performing pro bono work as a Magistrate, one day
per week, for ten years until this past fall.
Since his first month of retirement, he has performed many large-scale cemetery research projects, several as a volunteer at Mount Auburn Cemetery (MAC). In addition to Rainsford Island he performed a four year study of the 23,000+ people (primarily Irish immigrants or their first generation descendants) buried from 1854 to 1920 at the Catholic Mount Auburn Cemetery (CMAC), Watertown, MA. He is presently writing a book about the cemetery, as well as the people buried there.
Join Doug Tallamy at 6 pm at Garden in the Woods in Framingham for a talk and book signing for his newest publication, Nature’s Best Hope. Recent headlines about global insect declines, the impending extinction of one million species worldwide, and three billion fewer birds in North America are a bleak reality check about how ineffective our current landscape designs have been at sustaining the plants and animals that sustain us. Such losses are not an option if we wish to continue our current standard of living on planet Earth. The good news is that none of this is inevitable. Tallamy, author of the acclaimed Bringing Nature Home, will discuss simple steps that each of us can—and must—take to reverse declining biodiversity and explain why we, ourselves, are nature’s best hope. The talk will be followed by a book signing. $30 for Native Plant Trust members, $36 for nonmembers. Register at http://www.nativeplanttrust.org/events/natures-best-hope-talk-and-book-signing-doug-tallamy/
A comprehensive and highly practical study of growing flowers, Mastering the Art of Flower Gardening presents expert advice and guidelines on growing many of today’s favorite flowers. Author Matt Mattus has curated a selection that ranges from the most common of flowers, like zinnias and dahlias, to uncommon or challenging flowers like primroses and sweet peas. Learn about old-fashioned biennials and the finest perennials as well as beloved flowers that grow as shrubs, bulbs, or vines. Organized seasonally, there is even a winter chapter featuring flowers for cool, indoor windowsills or a backyard greenhouse. Mattus shares what he’s learned over decades of first-hand experience as a horticulturist, testing techniques in his own garden and greenhouse. Whether you’re interested in raising a small cut-flower garden, enhancing your flower border or containers, or figuring out how to grow the best Bread Seed Poppies next year, Mattus has it covered.
Active in many horticultural leadership roles, Matt’s day job is quite different. Professionally Matt works as a Principal Designer at toy and entertainment giant Hasbro, Inc. (Pawtucket, RI), but that doesn’t preclude his deep involvement in many plant societies and botanic gardens. Matt has been involved with horticulture throughout his career. By age 10 he was exhibiting as a ‘junior exhibitor’ in the many plant society shows held at Worcester County Horticultural Society’s Horticultural Hall in Worcester, MA throughout the 1970’s. He is the author of the award-winning gardening blog Growing With Plants. His greenhouse and gardens have also been included in many popular magazines, blogs and books including Martha Stewart Living (Nov. 2016 – Chrysanthemums), House & Garden (Nov 2016, South African Bulbs), and Better Homes & Gardens, to name a few.
This Tower Hill Botanic Garden talk and book signing will take place April 2 from 6:30 – 8:30, and is $15 for Tower Hill members, $20 for nonmembers. Register at www.towerhillbg.org.
