Historic New England (www.historicnewengland.org) invites you to Castle Tucker, 2 Lee Street in Wiscasset,  Maine on Sunday, July 18, from 3 to 4:30 pm, when author Martha McDowell explores the development of an American landscaping style from the formal plans of the eighteenth century to the elaborate designs of Victorian high style.  The program is co-sponsored by the Maine Antiques Dealers’ Association.

Marta McDowell lives, writes and gardens in Chatham, New Jersey.  She shares her garden with her husband, Kirke Bent, her crested cockatiel, Sydney, and approximately 30,000 honeybees.  Her garden writing has appeared in popular publications such as Woman’s Day, Fine Gardening and The New York Times.  Scholars and specialists have read her essays on American authors and their horticultural interests in the journals Hortus and Arnoldia.

Following the relationship between the pen and the trowel led Marta to the poet Emily Dickinson.  Marta’s book, Emily Dickinson’s Gardens, was published by McGraw-Hill in 2005.  If you visit the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts, you can stroll the grounds with a landscape audio tour that Marta scripted in 2007.

Marta teaches landscape history and preservation at the New York Botanical Garden and Drew University.  She teaches gardening classes for the Chautauqua Institution.  A popular lecturer on topics ranging from design history to plant combinations, she has been a featured speaker at locations ranging from Wave Hill to the Garden Club of Philadelphia and the Cummer Museum of Art in Jacksonville, Florida.

Marta’s latest gardening adventure was a six-month working holiday in England.  She interned at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Rosemoor in Devon and at the Chelsea Physic Garden in London.

Her husband summed up Marta’s biography as “I am, therefore I dig.”

$5 for Members of Historic New England, $10 for non-Members.  Pre-registration is recommended.