Here is yet another reason to head on over to the Garden Club of the Back Bay website and join if you are not already a member. A group led by Stephanie Fletcher, responsible for all the fabulous photos and posts on the Club’s Instagram page, will lead a stroll through the Back Bay to view holiday decorations, including some of the fabulous wreaths made last week.
Join the Charles River Watershed Association for its Winter River Advocates Workshop, designed for current advocates and anyone interested in learning more about the program. We’ll gather on December 14th at 11 am at First Church in Cambridge, 11 Garden Street, to discuss various advocacy issues affecting the Charles River watershed and explore opportunities to get involved with the Charles River Watershed Association. Lunch will be provided. We hope to see you there!
Members, join Historic New England this holiday season on December 13 for a very special evening at Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm. Enjoy holiday refreshments, listen to Irish folk group Killeeshil perform traditional Christmas music, and tour the first floor of the Manor House. Learn about how Christmas was celebrated and evolved throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Hors d’oeuvre and refreshments included.
Members $40. This event is only for members of Historic New England. Log in or join now and then refresh this page to register for this special program. Please call 978-462-2634 for more information. The Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm is located at 5 Little’s Lane in Newbury, Massachusetts.
This year, on December 5 on Zoom, the Mass Rivers Alliance is thrilled to welcome Professor Kostas Andreadis of UMass Amherst, who will explore NASA’s groundbreaking Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite mission and how it’s transforming our understanding of rivers, lakes, and the water cycle. Discover how this new technology measurements of water surface elevations and river widths help estimate river discharge as well as changes in river and lake storage. Don’t miss this chance to learn more about the future of hydrological science! Sign up on our website: massriversalliance.org.
Save the date, February 7, 2025 for the New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill’s Urban Tree Symposium. Details will be available soon at https://nebg.org/urbantreesymposium.
Join The Garden Club of the Back Bay on November 21 for a look at the history of Commonwealth Avenue presented by Past President Margaret Pokorny. Her presentation will cover the topographical developments of the creation of the Back Bay and how this design solution to the new land came about. It also covers some of the historical precedents for the “Mall” form, the changes in the Mall over time and the interesting controversies about the design and species choice.
Margaret will bring us up to date with a “State of the Mall” report, including current maintenance needs, additional species selections, statue lighting and conservation programs. She will also tell us about the extraordinary care of the turf and trees provided by the Friends of the Public Garden.
Margaret is a longtime advocate for Boston green spaces, particularly trees. She attended the Radcliffe Seminars Program in Landscape Design in the 1990s. Her thesis was entitled, “A History and Master Plan for the Commonwealth Avenue Mall.“ Margaret’s historical documentation and hands-on skills helped the City of Boston move forward with much of the revitalization of the Commonwealth Avenue Mall over the past 30 years.
Refreshments will be served. This is a members only event, but if you are not already a member you have time to join at https://bostonflora.com. If you are already a member click HERE. The talk will take place November 21 at the Chilton Club, which has a dress code. Women shall wear dresses, skirts, tailored pants, dress pants, or suits. Dresses and skirts must be longer than fingertip length. Leggings are acceptable but only if worn with an appropriate top of mid-thigh length such as a jacket, tunic, or elegant sweater. Denim of any color is not acceptable. Hiking sandals, crocs, sneakers, including designer sneakers, are only permitted if required for a medical condition. Gentlemen shall wear a jacket with a collared shirt or turtleneck.
As we celebrate National Native American Heritage Month this November, we’re thrilled to announce our next Monthly Meet-Up: a Potluck and Paint Night in collaboration with the North American Indian Center of Boston (NAICOB)!
Join us for a shared meal and a guided painting session with Geraldine Barney, an artist-in-residence known for her captivating work. Bringing a dish to the potluck is optional but encouraged—you’re welcome to enjoy the food even if you don’t bring anything. This event is for BHWOCC members. If you identify as a woman of color working in green or blue spaces, you’re invited to join us! To learn more about the Boston Harbor Women of Color Coalition, visit @bhwocc on Instagram or visit http://bhwocc.org
📅 Date: Monday, November 18, 2024
🕕 Time: 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
📍 Location: 105 S Huntington Ave, Jamaica Plain, MA
Historic New England is delighted to announce Earle G. Shettleworth Jr. as the recipient of our second Preservation Leadership Award for his lifelong dedication to promoting and protecting Maine’s history and architecture.
A native of Portland, Maine, Shettleworth attended Deering High School, Colby College, and Boston University. He has received honorary degrees from Bowdoin College, Colby College, and the Maine College of Art. His storied career includes a forty-year tenure as director of the Maine Historic Preservation Commission, from which he retired in 2015, and six terms (and counting) as Maine’s State Historian. Shettleworth’s visionary leadership stands as an inspiration not only to Mainers, but to all New Englanders who share his passion for and commitment to preserving the built environment, cultural landscapes, and our region’s history.
Earle G. Shettleworth Jr. will accept the Preservation Leadership Award at the 2024 Historic New England Summit in Portland, Maine. The Summit will take place November 14 and 15 at The Westin Portland Harborview in Portland, Maine, and will be livestreamed. There is a stellar list of presenters over two days, from Maurice Cox of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, to Jim Schachter, President and CEO of New Hampshire Public Radio, to composer Tod Machover of MIT Media Lab – there are too many to list here. For the complete schedule visit www.summit.historicnewengland.org
This November 7 & 8 colloquium will reinterpret Historic Deerfield’s collection by exploring the relationships between empire and materials of artworks in the collection, specifically asking how these art historical topics can be generative for recontextualizing Historic Deerfield’s place in the study of New England history, art, and culture. The program will engage with interpretations of settler colonialism through Historic Deerfield’s collection and ask how objects with their material histories broaden understandings of American empire, especially ones tied to the New England landscape and Indigenous histories.
The program will also workshop methods for telling these narratives and interpretive strategies through historic interiors, including objects tied to violence, trauma, and absence, and opportunities to bring in stories of joy and survivance. Our program reconsiders how empire and materials in Deerfield’s collection can be understood within a more complicated and entangled historical narrative, generating knowledge and new frameworks that can speak to the complexity of American art. The program includes invited scholars working in the fields of historical American art, African American and Diasporic Studies, Native American Studies, Conservation, and other allied fields. Speakers will investigate materials that reveal new ideas of empire, including: pastels, lacquer, birch, engravings on paper, and linen. Rather than limiting the discussion to traditional fine arts materials, scholars discuss material often neglected or forgotten in narratives of American art to uncover new ways we can reveal ideas of empire.
Complete details and registration information information is found at https://www.historic-deerfield.org/events/reawakening-materials-american-art-empire-and-material-histories-in-historic-deerfields-collection/. Online registration is $35 for Historic Deerfield members, $40 for nonmembers.
The Cactus and Succulent Society of Massachusetts breaks from tradition and combines its October and November meetings to present a special program with a renowned guest speaker – Panayote Keliadis. Panayote is a world famous plant explorer, garden writer, and public garden administrator at the Denver Botanic Gardens. In the 1990s, Panayoti helped to create Plant Select®, a partnership between Denver Botanic Gardens, Colorado State University, horticulturists, and participants from the landscape and nursery industries. Reading his professional profile from Denver Botanic Gardens, it’s easy to see why this gregarious gardener earned the title, Hero of Horticulture.
Panayoti has worked at Denver Botanic gardens for over 40 years, but his passion for plants has been with him for a lifetime. He grew up in beautiful Boulder, Colorado, just blocks away from Chautauqua Park at the base of the iconic Flatiron mountains. Growing up, he spent many days immersed in the unique wild landscape, as well as his family’s home garden, which he helped plant and maintain. His first endeavor in gardening was planting a rock garden with his brother-in-law when he was just 8 years old.
The event is open to the public and takes place at the Norfolk Public Library, 2 Liberty Lane, Norfolk, Massachusetts 02056, from 1 – 4 pm. For more information visit www.cssma.org
