Boston Flora

Thursday, September 28 – Saturday, September 30 – America in Bloom Symposium and Awards Program

Greenwood and Spartanburg, South Carolina will host the 2023 America in Bloom Symposium and Awards Program September 28 – 30. Thursday activities will include a tour of the Biltmore Estate & Gardens. Nestled within 8,000 acres of pristine Blue Ridge Mountain beauty, the Biltmore Estate is a one-of-a-kind destination. You will discover the estate’s origin and its evolution from the country home of the Vanderbilt family to beloved national treasure. This audio-guided tour spans three floors and the basement of the luxurious home, and then you can explore the historic gardens designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, the father of American landscape design. You will be in horticultural paradise experiencing the indoor and outdoor gardens! This tour includes transportation and admission to the house and gardens. Lunch options are available at the Biltmore for all budgets and styles. This tour requires walking. The cost for this tour is $149. Seating is limited so register early. Later, catch up with old friends and make new ones at the Opening Night Reception followed by dinner, awards presentations, and silent auction.

Friday morning’s Keynote Presentation is Protecting the Life that Sustains Us – Conserving Pollinators, with Ann Barlow, Clemson University Master Gardener. Research has shown significant global declines in native pollinator population sizes and ranges. Fortunately, correct landscape practices can help to build thriving, diverse native pollinator populations. In this presentation, you will learn how to galvanize your community to sustain pollinators by increasing the abundance of native plants, providing nest sites, and more. Ann will show how volunteers can be involved, mosquito prevention programs and pest control practices to implement, how to educate the residents, and more. More talks and a networking lunch will be followed by a community tour of Greenwood, which will present a look at Greenwood’s rich history with tours of the Railroad Historical Center and the Benjamin E. Mays Historic Preservation Site. Your learning tour will continue as you walk through the city center and explore pollinator gardens, recent commercial and residential development, and the vibrant Arts and Cultural District. You will learn about Greenwood’s renowned SC Festival of Flowers’ Signature Topiary Display, including where they live and how they are created. The showstopping topiaries will be displayed throughout the walking tour, so make sure you’re prepared for numerous photo opportunities. In the evening A Taste of the South dinner is hosted by the City of Greenwood. Dinner will be served in the City’s Uptown Farmers’ Market that architecturally continues the rich railroad tradition in its “depot” design. Enjoy an ultimate Southern buffet complete with all the “fixins.” Dessert will be provided by the Career Center’s Culinary Arts Department, all in a true Southern setting complete with Southern flora and fauna. The fun won’t stop there, as the Greenwood in Bloom Committee has prepared a special and fun end to the evening.

Saturday is filled with optional sessions and showcases, ending with the Evening in Bloom America in Bloom Awards Banquet. For complete information, registration, and discounted hotel information visit https://americainbloom.org/about/

Saturday, July 22 – Sunday, July 23, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm – York County Open Day

The Garden Conservancy will sponsor an open day tour of Braveboat Harbor Farm, 110 Raynes Neck Road in York, Maine, and a Cape Neddick Garden on Saturday, July 22 and Sunday, July 23, from 10 – 4.

This Braveboat Harbor Farm garden has been evolving over the last seventy-five years. It surrounds and complements a Georgian-style stone house. There are formal and informal borders, a vegetable garden, orchards, and collections of various flowering trees and shrubs. Apples and pears are espaliered on the house and along the walls of the formal front garden. Water features include a newly expanded pond in the woodland garden, a farm pond with rustic bridge, and the Atlantic Ocean. This treasure is protected by a sculpted arborvitae hedge on the northwest, a mature stand of hickory on the northeast, and an extensive screen of old lilacs on the south. New projects include expanding the collection of magnolias and rhododendrons, introducing hydrangeas, an espaliered pear fence, a woodland walk, and a summerhouse with views to the pond and the sea.

Directions: Located off Route 103 South and Braveboat Harbor Road to end of Raynes Neck Road. Please park in field below house.

In the Cape Neddick Garden, stroll down a curving, sylvan drive with wooded hills on the right and ferns or lower plants as an offset to the woods and a vernal pond area on the left. Take one of the foot trails to find a path along a marsh and the pond. Return to the drive and find rolling lawns and gardens. Then pass between the house and a lily pond on the way to a rocky Maine coast. Walk along the rocks or stay on the lawn in front of the house to pass through a gate onto a grassy walkway bordered by a stone wall, flowers, and shrubs. Ahead and on your right, you will discover a rock-rimmed swimming pool nestled in a grotto below a rocky promontory. Walk around the pool to climb some stairs, or meander up a grassy promenade toward the house, to find the drive once again. Leave the property the way you entered. (NOTE: this property is only open Saturday, July 22)

For tickets ($5 Garden Conservancy members, $10 nonmembers) and more information, visit www.gardenconservancy.org. Prior registration is required – tickets will not be sold at the properties.

Tuesday, July 11 – Thursday, July 13 – Nantucket Garden Festival

The 14th Annual Nantucket Garden Festival highlights the unique and beautiful garden ecosystems on Nantucket and focuses on the importance of sustainability, conservation and gardening ethics for the long-term health of the island. Scheduled for July 11th-13th, the festival celebrates gardening through creative lectures and workshops, exquisite garden tours, and children’s activities.

Presenters this year include New England based event designer and floral artist Tori Samuel. Also speaking are Nick and Allison McCullough. Based in Ohio, he and his team at McCullough’s Landscape & Nursery create and maintain plant-centric gardens in and around the Midwest that are both ecologically sensitive and family-forward. The Keynote Speaker is Roy Diblik. Inspired by the diversity of plants and their relationships in remnant prairies and woodlands, his design practice is placing plants together encouraging tight plant communities that live well with each other while pursuing compatible and thoughtful stewardship practices. Roy is co-owner of Northwind Perennial Farm located in Burlington, Wisconsin. He has been growing traditional and native perennials since 1978. His garden designs emphasize plant relationships to maintenance strategies and costs. Roy’s design and planting projects include the Louis Sullivan Arch for the Modern Wing at the Art Institute of Chicago and the lakeside plantings for the Oceanarium at the Shedd Aquarium and recently the perennial plantings for Scott Byron’s new garden design for the Chicago History Museum. His book The Know Maintenance Perennial Garden highlights his perennial gardening practice.

Tickets are on sale now at https://www.ackgardenfestival.org/tickets

PRODUCED BY AND SUPPORTING

Saturday, July 8, 12:30 pm – 3:30 pm Eastern – Milkweeds and Dogbanes, Online

Milkweeds (Asclepias) are some of the most attractive and fragrant wildflowers, in addition to being magnets for butterflies and pollinators. Learn about their special relationship with monarch butterflies and their complex flower structure, ingenious pollination strategy, and protective chemical arsenal. This class will help you identify the common and rare species and recognize their surprising range of habitats. You will also learn tips for milkweed cultivation and discuss the dangers that threaten this native plant. The Native Plant Trust webinar on July 8 from 12:30 – 3:30 will be led by Neela de Zoysa. $45 for NPT members, $54 for nonmembers. Register HERE.

Please note: We do not make video or audio recordings of classes or programs available after the fact, because NPT believes education is interactive, with instructors and students building a community and culture of learning. Some programs may be recorded strictly for instructor-training purposes. Please visit this page to review this and other FAQs about our policies.

Friday, June 30, 6:30 pm – Dorchester Weather: A Play About Climate and Change

Dorchester Weather is an original play about climate and change, led by Dorchester resident, theater artist and educator Jaronzie Harris, in partnership with the Environment Department of the City of Boston. It is the culmination of a year long process that engages Dorchester residents in an exploration of environmental issues that are disproportionately impacting the community. There will be food, music, and interactive activities. Come share your thoughts and ideas on June 30 at 6:30 pm, on the corner of Norfolk and Woodrow, and dive deep into the implications of climate change in Dorchester. Admission is free. Learn more and register today!

Thursday, September 7 – Sunday, September 10 – What’s Out There Weekend: Cleveland

What’s Out There® Weekend (WOTW) Cleveland will bring to light the local character of the city as reflected by its publicly accessible parks, gardens, plazas, cemeteries, memorials, and neighborhoods. The region boasts more than 24,000 acres of publicly accessible green space, including a National Park, several scenic reservations, seminal landscapes designed by the Olmsted firm, A.D. Taylor, Ernest Bowditch, and others, and exciting contemporary projects enlivening the city’s center. In addition to significant works of landscape architecture, the area possesses a rich diversity of cultural landscapes, including several sites included in the National Park Service’s Underground Railroad Network to Freedom, such as Lake View and Erie Street Cemeteries.

Working in collaboration with myriad local partners, The Cultural Landscape Foundation will make visible and instill value in the places that make the region unique, and engage the public to promote their sustained stewardship. WOTW Cleveland will engage a large and diverse audience (typically 1,000+), offering two days of free, expert-led tours of up to 30 sites, encouraging participants to discover the little-known design history of places they may pass every day. For more information, and registration, visit https://www.tclf.org/whats-out-there-weekend-cleveland

Wednesday, July 26, 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm Eastern – Foodways Book Club: An Exploration of How Food Connects Us Beyond the Table, Online

The Foodways Book Club, sponsored by the Boston Public Library, will have its next online discussion on Zoom on Wednesday, July 26 at 6:30 pm. The next book to be discussed is Fatty Fatty Boom Boom: A Memoir of Food, Fat, and Family by Rabia Chaudry. Copies of the book have been set aside at the BPL, and of course it’s available at bookstores and as a Kindle and Audio Book.

According to family lore, when Rabia Chaudry’s family returned to Pakistan for their first visit since moving to the United States, two-year-old Rabia was more than just a pudgy toddler. Dada Abu, her fit and sprightly grandfather, attempted to pick her up but had to put her straight back down, demanding of Chaudry’s mother: “What have you done to her?” The answer was two full bottles of half-and-half per day, frozen butter sticks to gnaw on, and lots and lots of American processed foods.

And yet, despite her parents plying her with all the wrong foods as they discovered Burger King and Dairy Queen, they were highly concerned for the future for their large-sized daughter. How would she ever find a suitable husband? There was merciless teasing by uncles, cousins, and kids at school, but Chaudry always loved food too much to hold a grudge against it. Soon she would leave behind fast food and come to love the Pakistani foods of her heritage, learning to cook them with wholesome ingredients and eat them in moderation. At once a love letter (with recipes) to fresh roti, chaat, chicken biryani, ghee, pakoras, shorba, parathay and an often hilarious dissection of life in a Muslim immigrant family, Fatty Fatty Boom Boom is also a searingly honest portrait of a woman grappling with a body that gets the job done but that refuses to meet the expectations of others. Chaudry’s memoir offers listeners a relatable and powerful voice on the controversial topic of body image, one that dispenses with the politics and gets to what every woman who has ever struggled with weight will relate to.

The book discussion is a free event. Registration required at https://bpl.bibliocommons.com/events/6451659f65e9014900d433f8. Questions? Contact Alea Stokes at astokes@bpl.org.

New England Camera Club Council Inter-Club Winners

More than thirty camera clubs and groups throughout New England compete in New England Camera Club Council competitions. For rules and more information click HERE. Below is a winning submission, Bee on Dahlia, from our friend Vicki Saltonstall of the Chestnut Hill Garden Club. Vicki is a past President of The Boston Committee of the GCA, and most importantly, a Garden Club of the Back Bay wreath customer.

Saturday, July 8, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm – Mosses for Beginners

This full-day New England Botanic Garden class on July 8 is a systematic approach to identifying mosses in the field. Through activities both indoors and out, you will learn how and what to observe in the field, filtering what might be possible, how to make a guess and confirming that guess. Please bring a 7-10x hand lens and a notebook for drawing.

Instructor: Susan Williams

Sue Williams is an independent naturalist and bryologist instructor with more than 30 years of experience. She is the author of Ecological Guide to the Mosses and Common Liverworts of the Northeast, an essential introduction to identifying mosses and common liverworts found in the northeastern United States and Canada.

$80 Member Adult; $95 Adult (includes admission to the Garden). Register at nebg.org.

On Demand – Gardens of the Excalibur Estate

The Garden Museum is pleased to share with you a film celebrating the gardens of the Excalibur Estate in Catford, South London, directed by Peter Kindersley and presented by Matthew Wilson, garden designer, and writer.

The Excalibur Estate is an estate of prefab bungalows begun in 1946 for families bombed out of their homes. For many it was a chance to make a garden; seventy years later, the Excalibur Estate is as rich in horticulture and biodiversity as any hectare of London. But the Excalibur is being demolished and the gardens vanishing.

Matthew Wilson’s Uncle Jim was one of the first residents. Last month he visited Excalibur to record the gardens, and look for traces of a favourite uncle. Along the way he met a few of the residents who shared the stories of their beloved gardens.

The film is 20 minutes long, and free to watch. And please share – https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/film-library/gardens-of-the-excalibur-estate-catford/