Boston Flora

Monday, November 18, 1:00 pm Eastern- An Afternoon with Jacques Pepin, Live and Virtual

GBH Boston invites you to attend an exclusive virtual event on November 18 with legendary French chef Jacques Pépin – author, television personality, and educator. Jacques will be live in the GBH Studios on Western Avenue in Boston. The wide-ranging conversation, led by James Beard award-winning chef and restauranteur Jody Adams, will touch upon Jacques’s career and culinary experiences cooking in some of the finest French restaurants in the world. Guests will learn more about their friendship with chef and GBH television personality Julia Child, and Jacques’s involvement in a dozen PBS television programs and much more!

The event will be moderated by Callie Crossley, host of Under the Radar with Callie Crossley, correspondent and co-host of The Culture Show and commentator on Morning Edition.

Guest have a few ticket options:

The In-Studio Experience (in-person) from (1-3pm ET)

$100 (in-person) ticket (1-3pm ET) includes the post-reception meet and greet with Jacques Pépin and an autographed hardcover Cooking My Way book
$50 (in-person) ticket (1-2pm ET) includes the Yawkey Theater program with Jacques and a post-reception with cookies and coffee

The virtual event from (1-2pm ET)

Free ticket (1-2pm ET) livestream the conversation with Jacques Pépin and Jody Adams in Zoom Webinar. Event registration required.

$75 (virtual) ticket (1-2pm ET) includes an autographed hardcover copy of Cooking My Way OR Art of the Chicken book

To register visit www.wgbh.org

Thursday, November 7, 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm Eastern – Adventures in Ecological Horticulture, Online

Who doesn’t love butterflies? Habitat cultivation is a vital component of creating ecologically healthy landscapes, particularly in urban settings. But traditional landscaping practices rarely take biodiversity into consideration, and there aren’t yet guidelines to follow. For ecological horticulturist Rebecca McMackin, biodiversity is central to landscape management. In her 10 years as Director of Horticulture at Brooklyn Bridge Park, Rebecca oversaw 85 acres of diverse, organic landscapes, all managed to support birds, butterflies, and soil microorganisms. Join us to learn how to use ecological insight and experimentation to develop new management strategies – and why careful observation and documentation of the insects, birds, and other wildlife in your gardens is crucial to their success. Rebecca will speak online in an American Horticultural Society talk on November 7 at 7 pm Eastern. $15 for AHS members, $20 for nonmembers. Register at www.ahsgardening.org

Rebecca McMackin is an ecologically obsessed horticulturist and garden designer. She is Arboretum Curator for Woodlawn Cemetery, managing one of the best tree collections in New York. She spent a decade as Director of Horticulture of Brooklyn Bridge Park, where she managed 85 acres of diverse parkland organically. Their research into cultivating urban biodiversity and ethical management strategies has influenced thousands of people and entire urban parks systems to adopt similar approaches. McMackin writes, lectures, and teaches on ecological landscape management and pollination ecology, as well as designs the rare public garden. She has been published by and featured in the New York Times, the Landscape Institute, on NPR and PBS, and somehow gave a TED talk. She holds MScs from Columbia University and University of Victoria in landscape design and biology and recently completed the Loeb Fellowship at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Tuesdays, October 29 – November 19, 5:30 pm – 8:30 pm Eastern – Soil and Soil Amendments, Online

This Berkshire Botanical Garden online course on Soil and Soil Amendments will explain how plant growth is affected by soils, from drainage to pH and nutrients. Learn how to evaluate soils, improve those that are less than ideal, and amend soils for specific garden uses. Fertilizers, soil amendments, making and using compost, moisture management, and the pros and cons of mulching will be covered. Students need to get a soil sample before class and bring the results to the first class. This course meets for 4 weeks on Tuesdays, October 29 – November 19, 5:30 – 8:30 pm Eastern.

Taught by Monique Bosch, trained in landscape design, horticulture and soil biology, who is a community leader focused on healthy soil/healthy food. In the last 15 years she has worked with volunteers and students to build over 40 edible school and community gardens, and a two-acre urban farm in Bridgeport CT. These days she works as a Soil Health Program Manager for CT NOFA, and runs a worm composting business with her son Justin. She also teaches Soil Management for Brooklyn Botanic Garden. In 2023 Monique worked with staff and students at Bard College at Simon’s Rock, to launch a Food and Resilience center. She studied ‘The Soil Food Web’ under Dr. Elaine Ingham, and teaches microscopy, soil health and composting to farmers and organizations. Through microscopy and test trials, Monique explores the relationship between living soil and healthy, nutritious food.

BBG Members: $215, Non-Members: $240. Register online at www.berkshirebotanical.org

Tuesday, November 5, 5:00 am – 6:30 am Eastern (but recorded) – 18th Century Gardens: Early Landscape Gardens, Online

The Georgian era is often seen as the pinnacle of garden design in England, as the formal, baroque style of the late 17th century gave way to the looser, more naturalistic designs of what became known as the English Landscape Movement. It was a style that spread around the world.

This Gardens Trust online series will trace the development of the landscape style, beginning with early examples full of decorative garden buildings and classical allusions, and then the impact of England’s most famous landscape designer, Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, who laid out vast parklands with rolling lawns, serpentine lakes and clumps of trees. As we’ll see, the century ended with a clash between the wild, rugged aesthetic of the Picturesque and the start of a return to formality and ornamentation in garden-making.

As well as examining individual gardens and designers, we will explore some of the myriad social and economic influences at work on Georgian design. These included political upheaval, changing land use, foreign trade and the lure of exoticism, alongside the impact of the European ‘Grand Tour’ undertaken by wealthy men, which instilled an admiration for classical art and poetry, and for French and Italian landscape painting.

The first of the series of five lectures begins Tuesday, November 5 with Oliver Cox. Often presented as a dramatic shift, the change from baroque designs to the landscape style, in reality, happened gradually over many years. Early glimpses of irregular layouts and whimsical features started to appear alongside the blurring of boundaries between gardens and the wider rural landscape. With wars in Europe and shifting political values at home, there was perhaps a desire for a less grandiose, more patriotic garden style, and so stiff baroque geometry slowly softened into gentler glades, serpentine lakes, irregularly placed garden buildings and allusions to classical and British myths and legends. Designers such as Charles Bridgeman and William Kent (who memorably ‘leaped the fence and saw that all nature was a garden’) were among the leading figures in the emerging naturalistic style.

Many significant 18th-century gardens – Chiswick House, Rousham, Castle Howard, Studley Royal, Stowe and Stourhead – remain today as well-loved visitor attractions, and their stories have much to tell us about the values, influences and aesthetics of the early landscape garden-makers.

Dr Oliver Cox is a historian by training and received his undergraduate, masters and doctoral degrees from the University of Oxford. His recent publications include contributions to The Country House: Past, Present and Future (Rizzoli International Publications, 2018); Sport and Leisure in the Irish and British Country House (Four Courts Press, 2019), and journal articles including the challenges of interpreting eighteenth-century spaces for twenty-first-century visitors. He also writes regularly for Apollo and is a frequent contributor to television and radio programs. Currently, he is Head of Academic Partnerships at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A).

This ticket link is for the third series of 5 talks in our History of Gardens Course at £35 or you may purchase a ticket for individual talks, costing £8 via the links found at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/a-history-of-gardens-3-tickets-1011314337407. (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 5 for £26.25).

Ticket holders can join each session live and/or view a recording for up to 2 weeks afterwards. Image below: Coplestone Warre Bampfylde, The Grotto, Stourhead, 1753. Copyright the Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license

Wednesday, October 30, 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm Eastern – Marcell Proust and the Gardens of the Belle Epoque, Online

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 October 30, Ben Dark will speak on Marcell Proust. Real and remembered gardens weave through the seven volumes of In Search of Lost Time. This talk will shake some of them loose, blossom hopefully intact, and examine what makes Proust the greatest ever writer on plants and the feelings they evoke.

In doing so we will explore the Pré Catelan Garden in Illiers (Proust’s Combray), the Bois de Boulogne, the hôtels of the Faubourg Saint-Germain and the seaside villas of the Côte Fleurie, examining how their unique treatments provide a window on changing attitudes to garden space in nineteenth and early twentieth century France. We’ll finish with a guide to planting your own Proustian Garden — one capable of provoking involuntary memories in visitors’ decades after they once called round for tea.

Ben Dark is an author, head gardener, broadcaster and landscape historian. He studied Horticulture at Capel Manor, before completing a traineeship at the Garden Museum and an MA in Garden and Landscape History at the Institute of Historical Research. As a gardener he has worked for embassies, cemeteries, heritage bodies and oligarchs. He hosts the award-winning Garden Log and Dear Gardener podcasts, while his book The Grove: A Nature Odyssey in 19 1/2 Front Gardens (Mitchell Beazley, 2022) contains stories of life, death, love and flowers told by the plants of a single street. In 2022 he won the Journalist of the Year award from the Garden Media Guild. Image below: Le Déjeuner (1873), Claude Monet, public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Garden Club of The Back Bay Wreath Sale

The shop is open for the 2024 Garden Club of the Back Bay wreath sale. Please place your order before November 30. You have almost limitless choices for customization. There are two available sizes – standard wreaths fluff out to between 22″ – 24″ wide, and large wreaths are a generous 31″ wide. The fresh balsam wreaths are enhanced with extra greens for texture and even more fragrance. Bows come in many colors, and are wired. You can specify tones or patterns in the notes while purchasing online. Perhaps you prefer a bright Christmas red, or a brick red, or a purplish red but not quite burgundy: just tell the Club, and they will do their best. The fully decorated wreaths, available in standard size only, are works of art. Best of all, every wreath purchase helps keep the neighborhood trees healthy and happy. To order, visit https://gardenclubbackbay.org/store. Once you click onto a size or style you prefer, more details will be revealed. The wreaths can be delivered in the Back Bay, Beacon Hill, and the South End December 3 – 5, or picked up at The First Lutheran Church of Boston, on the corner of Marlborough and Berkeley Streets.

Thursday, October 31, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm – Bas Smets: Changing Climates

The Harvard Graduate School of Design exhibition Changing Climates explores how built environments can be transformed into urban ecologies. Producing an enhanced micro-climate, each of these ecologies has the capacity to augment the resilience of the urban condition under the challenges of the climate crisis.

A city can be understood as the juxtaposition of many artificial micro-climates. Buildings change wind patterns and sunlight exposure, while streetscapes modify runoff and soil permeability. For each man-made micro-climate, a comparable natural condition can be found. The study of its living organisms informs the introduction of vegetation as an agent of change into the artificial environment.

The city thus becomes a second nature and an active laboratory. Similar to plants that have gradually transformed their environment, and life in general that has been shaping the form of the earth, these urban ecologies have the force to transform the very nature of the city into a living organism. The built environment becomes an intelligent interface between an uncertain meteorology and an underused geology. Positioned between the above and the below, cities develop into a true zone of life.

In this October 31 lecture in the Piper Auditorium of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Bas Smets will explore how these new urban ecologies can be conceived and constructed through a selection of projects featured in the exhibition. Varying in both scale and program, these projects show how to develop solution-based design through science-based research.

A reception will follow in the Druker Design Gallery. Free and open to the public. Complete information may be found at www.gsd.harvard.edu.

Friday & Saturday, November 7 & 8, Live & Online – Reawakening Materials: American Arts, Empire, and Material Histories in Historic Deerfield’s Collection

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.

Tuesday, October 29, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm – Restoring Nature, Rebuilding Community

On Tuesday, October 29 at 6:30 pm in the Piper Auditorium of Gund Hall at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Anne Whiston Spirn will present the Frederick Law Olmsted Lecture Restoring Nature, Rebuilding Community. The lecture is free and open to the public. Complete information is available at www.gsd.harvard.edu.

What would it mean for a city to be ecologically robust and socially just? What would such a place be like? Through what means might such a vision be accomplished? And how might change be created and sustained? These are not questions to be explored in the abstract. They call for action research, for testing ideas in practice, and engaging with real people in actual places to make discoveries from which principles can be drawn.

For the past four decades, Anne Whiston Spirn’s research and teaching have demonstrated how to combine concerns for environment, poverty, race, social equity, and educational reform, and how university resources can be leveraged to address environmental and social challenges that confound society. These initiatives have resulted in projects and programs in partnership with community residents, and contributed to a revolution in water-quality management, represented by Philadelphia’s landmark, billion-dollar “green” infrastructure project.

Anne Whiston Spirn is the Cecil and Ida Green Distinguished Professor of Landscape Architecture and Planning at MIT. The American Planning Association named her first book, The Granite Garden: Urban Nature and Human Design (1984), as one of the 100 most important books of the 20th century and credited it with launching the ecological urbanism movement. Since 1987, Spirn has directed the West Philadelphia Landscape Project (WPLP), an action research project whose mission is to restore nature and rebuild community through strategic design, planning, and education programs. Spirn’s second book, The Language of Landscape (1998), argues that landscape is a form of language. She continued to develop the subject of visual literacy and visual thinking in her award-winning book, Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange’s Photographs and Reports from the Field (2008), and The Eye Is a Door: Landscape, Photography, and the Art of Discovery (2014). Prior to MIT, Spirn taught at Harvard University and at the University of Pennsylvania. Spirn’s work has been recognized by many awards, including Japan’s International Cosmos Prize for “contributions to the harmonious coexistence of nature and mankind,” and the National Design Award for Design Mind, for “a visionary who has had a profound impact on design theory, practice, or public awareness.” Spirn’s homepage is a gateway to her work and activities.

Tuesday, October 29, 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm – Laurel Circle Lecture Series: Horticulture and Climate Change

For the final 2024 installment of Mt. Auburn Cemetery’s Laurel Circle Lecture Series, Vice President of Horticulture & Landscape Ronnit Bendavid-Val will provide an in-depth look at the current effects of the changing climate on our landscape and what to anticipate in the future. Among a host of relevant topics, Ronnit’s discussion will focus on ways that horticulturalists can adapt to changes in the environment.

The event starts with a catered reception in Bigelow Chapel at 5:30 with the lecture following at 6:30. For more information, please contact Matt Tufts, Special Events and Sponsorships Manager, at 617-540-0076 or mtufts@mountauburn.org.

Space is limited, register today!