Monday, January 6, 6:00 pm Eastern – Houseplants 101, Online

Join Historic New England on January 6 at 6 pm Eastern on Zoom for a conversation with Lynn Ackerman, greenhouse manager at the Lyman Estate Greenhouses in Waltham, Massachusetts. Lynn will present a virtual talk sharing the best growing strategies for house plants and tips on how to keep your plants healthy. You will learn the proper cultural conditions needed to have success growing your houseplants and which ones to choose for growing conditions in your home. Be ready to ask questions about your own house plant to get a personalized answer during the question and answer segment.

Mark your calendar for the Houseplant and Begonia Sale on Saturday, January 18, 9:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Members Free; Nonmembers $5. Log in or Join now to access member pricing.  Advance tickets required. Please call 617-994-6678 for more information.

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Tuesday, January 14, 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm Eastern – Bringing Organic Certification to Native and Ornamental Plant Nurseries, Online

Most people are familiar with certified organic foods. But what about ornamental plants in our built environments, and so-called “native” or “pollinator friendly” plants meant to provide wildlife benefit? The ornamental plant industry includes both floriculture (cut-flowers) and horticulture (nursery plants). In both industries, most plants are produced using high levels of synthetic pesticides and herbicides, with little regulatory oversight. Some growers promise “spray free,” “neonic free,” or “pesticide free” stems or plants, but these are informal promises that have no process for verifiability.

In this January 14 Xerces Society webinar, Matthew Dell, owner and general manager of Treadlight Farm, discusses why organic certification makes sense for ornamental plant production, especially for native plants, and the opportunities and challenges organic certification presents.

The project is a collaboration between Xerces Society and Treadlight Farm and is supported by the Carroll Petrie Foundation. This event is intended for ornamental plant, native plant, and retail nurseries but anyone with an interest in the topic is welcome!

This January 14 webinar will be recorded and available on our YouTube channel. Closed Captioning will be available during this webinar. Learn more and register today!

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Wednesday, January 15, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm Eastern – Plant Communities: Functional Plant Roles for Restorative Gardens, Online

When designing a planting, we are creating an ecological community that will co-evolve over time. We want to give the community the ingredients – the various roles needed – to survive and hopefully thrive. Holly Greenleaf of Greenleaf Design, LLC will detail how to design for the functional roles of plants in addition to their aesthetic beauty. This Grow Native Massachusetts webinar will be held Wednesday, January 15 from 7 – 8:30 pm Eastern. $28 for Grow Native members, $38 for nonmembers. Register at grownativemass.org

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Wednesday, January 22, 5:00 pm – 8:00 pm – The Native Plant Trust Herbarium: Writing the Unknown

The Native Plant Trust herbarium–an assemblage of dried, pressed plants with details about time and place of collection–contains more than 6,000 specimens, many of which are scientifically interesting, beautiful, and more than a century old. Drawing on our backgrounds in natural history, literature, and interdisciplinary writing, Native Plant Trust staff members Kate Wellspring and Giffen Maupin will facilitate a conversation about some of our herbarium’s most thought-provoking specimens. Workshop participants will then write in response to these specimens. Our writing experiments will focus on strategies for engaging with botanical texts where information is missing and questions abound. The session takes place at Garden in the Woods in Framingham on January 22 from 5 – 8, and is $51 for NPT members, $60 for nonmembers. Register at https://www.nativeplanttrust.org/events/the-native-plant-trust-herbarium-writing-the-unknown/

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Thursday, January 16, 6:00 pm Eastern – How Your Voice Can Help Make the Charles River Swimmable

The Charles River Watershed Association will host a virtual public meeting on Thursday, January 16 at 6 pm on making the Charles River Swimmable. The 1972 Clean Water Act promised “fishable, swimmable” rivers by 1983, yet we still cannot safely swim in the Charles River.

However, the US Environmental Protection Agency is trying to force polluters to curb their stormwater runoff – the largest source of pollution in the river – and your voice is needed to make it a reality. Will the EPA continue to pursue its strategies during the next four years without public involvement?

Join the webinar to learn about what’s prevented the Charles from being swimmable and how you can support the EPA proposal that will clean up the river. Register at https://www.crwa.org/events/reducing-phosphorus-pollution-in-the-charles-river

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Tuesday, January 28 – Sunday, February 2 – Laser Cutting: The Layered Laser Cut with Sarah Pike

North Country Studio Workshops in Bennington, Vermont offers five-day intensive workshops for artists and craftspeople, in an atmosphere of discovery, energy, collaboration, and inspiration. Discover the art of laser cutting through layered imagery in this hands-on workshop. You’ll gain experience operating a laser cutter, expand your creative possibilities by fine-tuning settings, and learn insider techniques for cutting paper and wood. You’ll design three personalized projects using Inkscape: play with color in a layered paper design, craft a three-dimensional hand-colored shadow box, and transform your paper shadow box into a wooden box. While experience with programs like Photoshop or Procreate is strongly recommended, no laser-cutting experience is necessary. Instructor is Sarah Pike Application fee $60. Resident charges ($1,555) includes tuition, fees, room and board Tuesday dinner through Sunday lunch. Commuter charges ($1,255) includes tuition, fees, lunch and dinner Tuesday dinner through Sunday lunch. Register and learn more at https://ncsw.org/laser-cutting

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Monday, January 9, 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm Eastern – Western Butterflies and Lost Species in the Anthropocene, Online

Monitoring is essential to our understanding of insects in the modern era, the Anthropocene, and monitoring comes in many different forms and serves different purposes. Join Matt Forister, professor in the Biology Department at the University of Nevada, Reno, on January 9 as he discusses working with North America’s longest-running butterfly monitoring project across Northern California, and presents major findings with respect to the impacts of climate change and pesticides on butterfly populations. He will also talk about data from projects supported by community scientists, which are going to be of increasing importance in the coming years. Finally, Matt will discuss new efforts to organize information on species that appear to be lost, but, with effort from scientists and the public, might be found again.

Matt Forister is a professor of biology and insect ecology in the Biology Department at the University of Nevada, Reno. He has studied butterflies and other insects in the western US for the last 20 years, and has published more than 100 journal articles and book chapters on issues that include insects adapting to exotic plants and butterflies responding to a changing climate. One of the main concerns for Forister and his graduate students is the collection of data at sites in the Sierra Nevada that have been studied for almost 50 years, a project originally started by Art Shapiro of UC Davis.

This webinar will be recorded and available on our YouTube channel. Closed Captioning will be available during this webinar.

Learn more and register today!

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Thursday, January 9, 1:00 pm Eastern – Winter Sowing Workshop, Online

Did you know that you can sow seeds outdoors, in containers, in the dead of winter, and they’ll germinate with more ease and success than they will in a flat on your windowsill? Many of us didn’t.

Elaine Williamson Conway School ’11, our resident Master Gardener, is here to change that. She’s been using the Winter Sowing technique for many years, and swears by it, for the following reasons:

  • Simple, low-tech, low-cost process
  • Low maintenance
  • Avoids common indoor sowing pitfalls such as legginess and damping off
  • Seeds germinate at optimal times for growth
  • It’s fun!

Elaine leads a Winter Sowing Workshop for our students as part of Conway’s curriculum. This year she’s offered to lend her expertise to anyone in our community who wants to try it!

If you’d like to learn how to successfully winter sow your seeds, please join us for an upcoming Online Winter Sowing Workshop on Thursday, January 9, 2025 at 1pm EST. Attendance is free and registration is required. We’ll send registrants a confirmation email with a list of materials to collect if you’d like to follow along with Elaine’s demonstration. We’ll finish with a short Q&A session where participants can ask specific questions about the process.

If you’re unable to attend, we will record the workshop and share the recording online for folks to watch. Register at https://csld.edu/2024/12/winter-sowing/

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