Traditionally for this website, New Year’s Day features one final holiday wreath from the Garden Club of the Back Bay’s annual wreath sale, and today is no exception. This beauty traveled to the snowy Berkshires. Wishing you all happiness and health in the coming year.
Join Historic New England at Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm, 5 Little’s Lane in Newbury, to celebrate the end of the holiday season with our annual Old Newbury Christmas Tree Bonfire. Roast s’mores, enjoy food and drinks from your favorite local vendors, tour the first floor of the Manor House, and watch the fire roar as thousands of Christmas Trees burn into the night. Pre-purchase your parking ticket for a guaranteed spot in the parking field. https://my.historicnewengland.org/20312/bonfire
Parking Ticket: $25.
Please call 978-462-2634 for more information, or if you are interested in the environmental and air pollution impact of the fire. Event is Rain or Shine. Please print your ticket with barcode at home prior to the event. Enter the event via Little’s Lane and show your ticket to the parking attendant. Parking tickets are non-refundable. A limited number of cash-only parking tickets will be available for purchase at the gate.
Accessibility Considerations: Please call for information on reserved parking. Walking on an unpaved and uneven path is required to access the agricultural field where the bonfire takes place. Please dress for the weather and wear good shoes.
A warming climate and increasing environmental pathogens pose an existential threat to the Arnold Arboretum’s collection of some 16,000 woody plants, trees and shrubs that are able to survive in our climate. This one hour walk on January 4 at 11 am will highlight the impact of climate change and increasing pathogens on key species in the Arboretum’s collection, describe some of the research initiatives underway to mitigate the effects of global warming and new pathogens, and identify the challenges and opportunities we face in improving our urban canopy. This tour covers slightly over 1 mile in distance over terrain of asphalt, crushed granite, and mulch. Please be sure to dress for the weather and wear comfortable, closed toe footwear you don’t mind getting dirty.Meet at the Hunnewell Visitor Center. Register at www.arboretum.harvard.edu
I wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving. For two years, Boston Flora has been running as an independent, advertisement-free website publicizing live and virtual horticultural, environmental, and culinary educational events happening in New England and beyond. I encourage my readers to sign up for daily emails with the latest posts – click the Follow button at the end of any post – and to follow Boston Flora on Facebook (@BostonFlora) and Instagram (@Bostonflorablog) for the latest, last minute additions to the calendar. For me, maintaining the website is a labor of love, and today I give thanks for the opportunity to do so. Image courtesy of Real Simple.
Love and peace,
Francine Crawford
Berkshire Botanical Garden’s 2024 Art/Garden series continues with “90 Years Young: Berkshire Botanical Garden 1934-2024,” an exhibition featuring historical photos, film and other artifacts that trace the garden’s growth and elevation.
The exhibition continues through December 2, in the Leonhardt Galleries in West Stockbridge.
From its auspicious founding (as the Berkshire Garden Center) by a large group of civic-minded local organizations, Berkshire Botanical Garden has remained a community resource like no other. The Harvest Festival, begun in 1935 to raise much-needed funds, quickly became the quintessential Berkshire marker of fall. Our display and trial gardens, along with dedicated educators, have inspired generations of gardeners and garden lovers. And over the decades, our buildings and grounds have changed to meet the needs of our community. In this exhibit, we honor our long history and the people who made BBG what it is today.
Berkshire Botanical Garden’s Leonhardt Galleries are open seven days a week, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. until Oct. 31. From Nov. 1 to Dec. 2, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. For more information visit https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/90-years-young-berkshire-botanical-garden-1934-2024
COGdesign matches landscape architects and landscape designers with community initiated projects located in Eastern Massachusetts with a focus on Greater Boston. For 25 years COGdesign has facilitated open and inclusive community meetings so every project is informed by as many neighborhood voices as possible. All the work is pro bono. All projects are based on need. The concept drawing is an essential tool both for fundraising and for community building.
Join us for this spooktacular celebration, where wild creatures and Halloween fun come together, at the Franklin Park Zoo on October 26 & 27. Wander through our animal habitats and collect terrifyingly tasty treats on our trick-or-treat trail, and get creative at our arts and craft stations. Be sure to bring your own treat bags. Keep an eye out—some of our animals might be getting into the spirit too! And don’t forget to show off your Halloween style in our kids’ costume contest!
SUSTAINABLE SWEETS
This Halloween (and every day) look for candy made with certified sustainable palm oil. Palm oil plantations are wiping out animal habitats, and from snacks to soap, palm oil is the most widely consumed vegetable oil on the planet. Check out Cheyenne Mountain Zoo’s palm-oil friendly candy guide(opens as a PDF) for some sustainably sweet treats for your tricksters.
For more information visit www.zoonewengland.org/engage/zoo-howl/
The Fall-o-Ween Festival invites you find your way out of the Haunted Fun House Maze, hop on the train, and make your way over to our glow in the dark play space for some nighttime fun featuring LED illuminated swings, seesaws, cornhole and lots more, on October 18 starting at 5 pm at the Boston Common Parade Ground at the corner of Beacon and Charles Streets on the Boston Common.
Adults and children are encouraged to wear Halloween costumes and participate in a wide range of free, fun, and spooky family-friendly activities. Free. The Fall-o-Ween Children’s Festival is presented by the Boston Parks and Recreation Department in partnership with the Skating Club of Boston. Key sponsors are HP Hood LLC and more to be announced. Additional support is provided by LEGO® Discovery Center Boston and more to be announced.
For more information, please call the Boston Parks and Recreation Department at (617) 635-4505 or visit www.facebook.com/bostonparksdepartment or www.boston.gov/parks.
Through an exploration of drama, diaries, novels and magazines, this Gardens Trust Wednesday five part series will examine how writers have used gardens and plants to evoke memories, capture ideas of taste and fashion, satirize attitudes, champion social change and give deeper meaning to the world. The chosen authors cover almost four centuries of literature and, through examining their words, we can gain new understandings of the roles, meanings and emotive power of historic landscapes and horticulture. This ticket link https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/gardens-and-the-written-word-tickets-930348275737 is for the entire series of 5 talks, or you may purchase a ticket for individual talks, costing £8 via the links on that page. (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 5 for £26.25). All purchases are handled through Eventbrite.
Ticket holders can join each session live and/or view a recording for up to 1 week afterwards. Ticket sales close 4 hours before the first talk. Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days (and again a few hours) prior to the start of the first talk (If you do not receive this link please contact us), and a link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 1 weeks.
On Wednesday, October 23, Dr. Laura Meyer will speak on Jane Austen. 2017 marked two hundred years since the death of Jane Austen, at the age of 41, on 18 July 1817. Just like the English landscape garden, her novels have become one of Britain’s greatest cultural exports and made her one of the world’s most celebrated authors. Austen is justly famous for her sharp social satire, however, as this lecture will demonstrate, she was also highly attuned to the shifting sensibilities surrounding landscape.
Nature and landscape – whether real or imagined – and her characters response to these inform all of Austen’s novels, from Pride & Prejudice’s wickedly funny take on the Picturesque, to the lampooning of Humphry Repton in Mansfield Park. She was, after all, a writer who recognized that ‘to sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment’.
Dr Laura Mayer is an independent lecturer, writer and researcher, with an MA in Garden History and a PhD in eighteenth-century patronage. She has published extensively – particularly on Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, and Jane Austen’s contemporary, Humphry Repton – and works as a consultant for the National Trust and Land & Heritage. Laura shares Elizabeth Bennett’s appreciation of Gilpin’s Picturesque, as well as her talent for tramping about a garden inappropriately shod. She lectures regularly for Cambridge University Botanic Gardens and has been known to pen the odd limerick about Fitzwilliam Darcy.
