Registration is now open for the 2025 American Public Gardens Association Conference, Elemental. Hosted by the Denver Botanic Gardens June 2 – 5, celebrate and help shape the Elemental role public gardens play in today’s increasingly inter-connected world. Early Bird Deadline April 4, Regular Rate April 5 – May 16, and onsite Registration on June 1. Register HERE
Join the Boston University Food & Wine department on Wednesday, April 16 from 1 – 2 for a cooking demonstration with Irene and Mei Li in celebration of Earth month. Learn how to turn scraps into delicious dishes. Free, but reserve your spot through Eventbrite HERE. This event is part of the Spring 2025 Pépin Lecture Series and will take place at 808 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 124.
Local advocacy is more important than ever. The Charles River Watershed Association and Ipswich River Coalition hope to see you at the Water Coalition Lobby Day on Thursday, April 3!
Join us at the Massachusetts State House, Room 437, to connect with legislators, gain co-sponsorship support, and make waves in your community.
The Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife (founded in 1976) is pleased to announce the subject of its 2025 gathering, Recalling the Revolution in New England, to be held June 27–28 at Historic Deerfield. The conference keynote will be provided by Dr. Zara Anishanslin of the University of Delaware, author of the forthcoming book The Painter’s Fire: A Forgotten History of the Artists who Championed the American Revolution.
On September 11, 1765, political leaders in Boston attached a plaque to a majestic elm and named it “Liberty Tree” to honor its role in an anti-Stamp Act protest the previous month. New Englanders thus started to commemorate the events of the American Revolution even before they had any idea there would be such a revolution. Over the following centuries, people from New England shaped the national memory of that era through schoolbooks, popular poetry, civic celebrations, monuments, and more.
On the 250th anniversary of the outbreak of the Revolutionary War in 1775, the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife will address the broad range of ways the people of New England have looked back on the nation’s founding—and what they forgot, or chose to forget, in the process.
The annual Dublin Seminar is a meeting place where scholars of all kinds—academics, students, museum and library professionals, artisans and craftspeople, educators, preservationists, and committed avocational researchers—join in deep conversation around a focused theme in New England history, pooling their knowledge and exchanging ideas, sources, and methods in a thought-provoking forum.
For registration and details, visit https://dublin-seminar.org/our-2025-conference-recalling-the-revolution-in-new-england/ Image: “Tercentenary, Paul Revere’s ride.” September 15, 1930. Boston Public Library.
As small, herbaceous plants begin to pop out of the soil and carpet the landscape, early spring is a great time to learn what some of these plants are and how to identify them. Join Arnold Arboretum Manager of Adult Programming and Events Sarah Nechamen for a plant ID walk in the landscape and learn how to identify plants like chickweed, creeping charlie, stinging nettle, and more.
Accessibility: This program will traverse flat, gravel paths. Meet on April 12 at 10 am in front of the Hunnewell Building. Participants will be notified via email at least one day in advance if a program needs to be cancelled due to inclement weather, and will be notified by phone if a program must be cancelled with less one day’s notice. Click here to view our full inclement weather policy. If you have questions about the status of a program, please email publicprograms@arnarb.harvard.edu (inbox monitored on weekdays) or call the Visitor Center desk between 10:00am and 4:00pm at (617) 384-5209. You can register for the wait list at https://arboretum.harvard.edu/events/herbaceous-plant-identification/?occurrence=2025-04-12
Join WBUR on April 23 online for an evening with six-time James Beard Award winner Ruth Reichl who will reminisce about her long career and share her perspectives on how restaurant culture and food publishing is changing.
Reichl is a New York Times bestselling author of five memoirs, two novels (Delicious!; The Paris Novel) and the cookbook My Kitchen Year. She served as restaurant critic for the Los Angeles Times in the 1980s and The New York Times in the1990s before becoming editor in chief of Gourmet magazine in 1999 until it shuttered a decade later. Despite holding some of the most prestigious jobs in food writing, Reichl has always written in the voice of the ordinary cook and embraced an outsider persona.
Tania Ralli, WBUR assistant managing editor of arts and culture and graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York City, will moderate the conversation. Seats for the live event are sold out but register ($5) for the online feed HERE
Thomas Woltz, Senior Principal and Owner of Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects, will use the firm’s just-released monograph to reflect on the complex histories that are held in the land and how the firm reveals and engages them. NBW is one of the leading firms working in landscape architecture today, with major commissions across the United States and abroad. Hear about how, through the firm’s research-based process, ecological and cultural histories are revealed and integrated into meaningful public experiences.
The Land Is Full: Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects is a collection of twelve major parks that illustrate the power of design to create vital public realms at the heart of communities. The Land Is Full features projects that engage exceptionally sensitive sites, including those that hold the vital histories of enslaved peoples, the rich cultures of indigenous peoples, and natural habitats that have been threatened by infrastructure and construction.
THOMAS WOLTZ is the Principal and Owner of Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects. He received his Master of Architecture and Landscape Architecture from the University of Virginia and holds an honorary doctorate from SUNY ESF. He was recognized with the Land for People Award by the Trust for Public Land in 2019 and serves on the Board of Directors of the Cultural Landscape Foundation. Over the past two decades of practice, NBW has developed a unique approach to design using ecological and cultural research as the foundation for creating meaningful landscapes that inspire connection to place.
Note: You will receive the webinar link directly from Zoom. This Garden Conservancy webinar will take place Tuesday, April 1, and is $5 for Conservancy members, $15 for nonmembers. Register at https://www.gardenconservancy.org/events/the-land-is-full-nelson-byrd-woltz-landscape-architects-with-thomas-woltz
The Emerald Necklace Conservancy invites you to join them for this year’s Muddy River Cleanup on Saturday, April 26. The cleanup will take place at multiple locations: Charlesgate Park, Back Bay Fens, Riverway, Olmsted Park, Jamaica Pond, and two sites at Franklin Park. All volunteers will be required to wear a face covering and practice social distancing during the event. We advise that volunteers who feel ill within 72 hours of the event do not participate. All volunteers will be required to sign a COVID-19 volunteer waiver, along with our standard volunteer waiver, in order to participate.
The Muddy River Cleanup is a part of the Annual Earth Day Charles River Cleanup; this event takes place throughout the Charles River Watershed and builds on a national effort as part of American Rivers’ National River Cleanup® which, to date, has removed over 25 million pounds of trash from America’s waterways. From 2016 to 2019, the Annual Earth Day Charles River Cleanup was recognized by American Rivers for the Most Pounds of Trash Collected and Most Volunteers Mobilized.
The Charles River Cleanup brings together over 3,000 volunteers each year to pick up litter, remove invasive species and assist with park maintenance along all 80 miles of the Charles River. Residents are drawn to the popular Charles River Cleanup from a desire to give back to their community while enjoying the beauty and wildlife along the river. Volunteers hold onto the connections they establish during this day of stewardship by returning to the Charles to exercise, play and enjoy nature throughout the year. Register for this year’s cleanup at emeraldnecklace.org
Bid high and bid often! The Preservation Society of Newport County’s Spring 2025 online auction offers amazing opportunities for an experience you’ll treasure forever. One example is a Floral Fair dinner experience following the 2025 Newport Flower Show Opening Night Party, in the Ballroom at Rosecliff. All bids support the Preservation Society’s mission to protect, preserve, and present an exceptional collection of house museums and landscapes in one of the most historically intact cities in America.
Please see the Auction Rules before submitting your bids. Visit https://www.newportmansions.org/events/exclusive-experiences-online-auction/
Grow Native Massachusetts is delighted to host a conversation with New York Times Opinion writer and bestselling author Margaret Renkl on April 13. We will be delving into her book The Comfort of Crows, which tells the story of the creatures and plants observed in her backyard over the course of a year.
Moving through the seasons—beginning with a crow spied on New Year’s Day, its resourcefulness and sense of community setting a theme for the year—what develops is a portrait of joy and grief. Joy at the ongoing pleasures of the natural world: “Until the very last cricket falls silent, the beauty-besotted will always find a reason to love the world.” And grief at a shifting climate, at winters that end too soon, at songbirds growing fewer and fewer.
Along the way, we also glimpse the changing rhythms of a human life. Grown children, unexpectedly home during the pandemic, prepare to depart once more. Birdsong and night-blooming flowers evoke generations past. The city and the country where Renkl raised her family transform a little more with every passing day. How can one person make a difference amid such destabilizing changes?
Exploring Renkl’s observations and themes of change, personal action, and hope, this intimate brunch chat will span topics from taking time to notice and appreciate nature right outside your door, to preserving and restoring wildlife habitat, addressing climate change, and making other difficult systemic changes in the way human beings live.
Our venue, Bull Run, is a farm-to-table restaurant and function hall situated in a historic tavern at 215 Great Road in Shirley, MA. You can enjoy their delicious brunch buffet before or during the discussion with Margaret, included as part of your ticket.
The Comfort of Crows and its companion journal Leaf, Cloud, Crow, will be available for purchase and signing at the event, courtesy of Little Bee Bookshop in Ayer.
Doors open at 10 am – book signing prior to discussion. Discussion begins at noon. Grow Native members $50, public $60, including brunch. Register at www.grownativemass.org
