Boston Flora

Wednesday, November 7, 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm – Chef’s Whim: Farmer’s Market Squashes

Join Cambridge Center for Adult Education’s Celebrity Chef Master Class series with, you guessed it, celebrity chefs, for an unforgettable cooking and learning experience. Roll up your sleeves and learn cooking techniques side-by-side with local culinary stars. On Wednesday, November 7, from 6 – 9, Tony Maws, chef and owner of Craigie On Main and The Kirkland Tap and Trotter, presents Chef’s Whim: Farmer’s Market Squashes. One of Tony’s favorite fall finds at the farmers market is the large variety of colorful and delicious squash. Tony will lead us in hands-on learning as he shares secrets of seasonal squash in all its shapes, sizes and colors, and teach us various ways to cook this fall favorite. This is a perfect primer before Thanksgiving too! Class will be held at 42 Brattle Street in Cambridge.

One of the country’s most respected chefs, Tony Maws is a champion of our local farmers markets and sustainable practices. As chef/owner of the acclaimed Craigie On Main in Cambridge and The Kirkland Tap & Trotter in Somerville, Tony prepares fresh local vegetables as stars of the plate at both his restaurants. A James Beard award winner, Tony has traveled the world in pursuit of food and wine knowledge, and shares his experiences through culinary gems at both Craigie On Main and The Kirkland Tap & Trotter. $120. Register online at https://ccae.org/masterclass

There will be two additional master classes, one on November 14 with James Salomone, Executive Chef of Parsnip, entitled Italian Cuisine: Handmade Fresh Pastas, and another on December 5 with Michael Pagliarini, chef and co-owner of Giulia and Benedetto, on Seasonal Ingredients: Cooking with New England Seafood. You may register for these classes at the link above. We are publicizing these classes rather early because spaces are limited and they are sure to sell out quickly.

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Sunday, October 28, 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm – 15th Anniversary Celebration of the Boston Women’s Memorial

This October marks the 15th anniversary of the Boston Women’s Memorial, commemorating the lives of Phillis Wheatley, Abigail Adams, and Lucy Stone.

Dedicated in 2003, the Boston Women’s Memorial is the newest sculpture on the Commonwealth Avenue Mall, donated with funds raised by the Boston Women’s Commission. Initially proposed to address Boston’s under-representation of women in public statues, the effort began in 1992 when Mayor Thomas M. Menino reserved the Fairfield-Gloucester block as the site for a memorial honoring women. The commission worked for ten years to select the subjects, choose the artist, raise the money, and oversee construction and installation of the memorial. The bronze figures, by New York artist Meredith Bergmann, are at ground level, not on top of pedestals. The women are shown in casual poses, writing and thinking.

The three women honored share a Boston connection, a place in national history, and a passion for social justice. Abigail Adams (1744-1818) was the wife of the second president of the United States and mother of the sixth, whose letters established her as a strong voice for women’s advancement. Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784), a slave brought from Africa to Boston, became a literary prodigy whose poems were the first book published in America by an African writer. Lucy Stone (1818-1893) was an ardent abolitionist and suffragist, a renowned orator, and a leading figure in the struggle for women’s rights, inspiring Susan B. Anthony and others.

The Boston Women’s Heritage Trail will be celebrating the 15th Anniversary of the memorial on October 28th, from 1:00-3:00pm on the Fairfield-Gloucester block of the Commonwealth Avenue Mall. This is a free event, touching on the history of Boston’s signature female-focused memorial, and the significance of its subjects.

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Tuesday and Wednesday, November 6 and 7, 9:30 am – 3:30 pm – Festive Fruits: A Studio Focus

The Friends of Wellesley College Botanic Gardens will hold a two day class in the Cheney Classroom at the Massachusetts Horticultural Society on November 6 and 7 from 9:30 – 3:30. Celebrate the changing seasons with Sarah Roche. Taking your inspiration from seasonal fruit, capture their rich colors and textures in a watercolor image on paper or vellum, which you could use on holiday cards. Friends price $195, nonmembers $245. Vellum is not included in the price. Bring your own or purchase it in class. To register, call 781-283-3094 or email wcbgfriends@wellesley.edu. Image below by Denise Walser-Kolar.

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Wednesday, October 31, 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm – Keeping Carbon in the Ground: A Scientific Exploration of Climate Change and Soil Health

The Ecological Landscape Alliance is sponsoring a webinar on Wednesday, October 31 at 12:30 on Keeping Carbon in the Ground: A Scientific Exploration of Climate Change and Soil Health. Soils rich in carbon are healthy soils. However, climate change and poor management practices can degrade soil carbon stores and, consequently, the soil itself. Dr. Kristen DeAngelis will explain why keeping carbon in the ground is important, and how carbon sequestration factors into maintaining healthy soils. She will also discuss the changes that were observed over a 26-year period in a long-term climate change field experiment in which soils were heated 5 degrees C above ambient temperatures. Along with a look at the science, Dr. DeAngelis will suggest ways in which we can make changes in our practices to increase carbon storage in the soil.

Kristen DeAngelis, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Microbiology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She has trained in soil microbiology and soil ecology at the University of California Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, and has worked on tropical rainforest, temperate forest, and grassland soils.

$10 fee – register at https://www.ecolandscaping.org/event/webinar-keeping-carbon-in-the-ground-a-scientific-exploration-of-climate-change-and-soil-health/

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Saturday, October 20 – Sunday, October 21 – The Cultural Landscape Foundation’s 14th Annual Silent Auction

Here’s your chance to get rare watercolors by Lawrence Halprin, drawings by Laurie Olin, and a superb Roberto Burle-Marx lithograph; plus artwork by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Mo Money, Dan Tague and Pat Pickett. These items and more – including the Ken Smith limited edition yellow traffic cones “NORMAL” and “HARDCORE” – are featured at TCLF’s annual silent auction of artwork by award-winning landscape architects, artists, photographers, and allied professionals. This event is guaranteed to be a highlight of the ASLA Annual Meeting and EXPO at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, October 20-21. As in recent years, the auction is being presented online, giving those who will not be able to attend the ASLA Annual Meeting the opportunity to bid.

Bidding is now live—REGISTER AND BID AT https://tclf2018.auction-bid.org/microsite/ Proceeds benefit the Pioneers of American Landscape Design Oral History Project, an ever-growing, award-winning series of videotaped first-person interviews with significant practitioners. TCLF is grateful for the generous support of our auction donors and our Annual Sponsor, the ASLA. Their continued commitment to this project ensures that the funds raised go directly to support TCLF’s programming. In 2003, TCLF launched the Pioneers of American Landscape Design initiative in partnership with the ASLA, with the goal of documenting, collecting, and preserving the unique, first-hand perspectives of renowned landscape practitioners.

If you have any questions about the bidding process or would like to learn more about the auction, please contact Ayla Mangold at ayla@tclf.org, or (202) 483-0553.

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Monday, November 5, 8:00 am – 4:30 pm – Season’s End Summit: The Sensory Garden – Elements to Enrich Every Landscape

As designers we aspire to create remarkable landscapes for ourselves, landscapes primarily measured in terms of visual, ecological, and functional appeal. Yet all of our senses are engaged as we experience the space and weigh the merits of the landscapes we enter. With planning, a sensory garden can deliver elements that involve all of the senses and ultimately deepen our connections with the space. In a culture dominated by technology, professional and amateur landscape designers have a unique opportunity to provide a rich experience for clients so that once disconnected from work, screen, headphones, and device, they can enjoy a multi-faceted garden that engages all of the senses and reconnects the soul.

The Ecological Landscape Alliance invites you to slow down for one day on November 5 to contemplate a sensory-inspired journey into landscape design. Attend ELA’s 9th Annual Season’s End Summit as we explore sensory design elements, not just for specialty gardens but for every garden. Challenge the status quo, learn new approaches, reconnect with colleagues, and get inspired to embrace sensory dimensions in your next designs.

Tovah Martin – The Garden in Every Sense and Season
Gain inspiration for your next design as nationally known and celebrated Tovah Martin shares advice and ideas to deeply enhance the gardening experience for you and your clients. Tovah explores the garden on all levels by attuning your nose to the scents and training your ears to listen. Learn to garden with eyes wide open, ears to the ground, and hands outstretched as Tovah leads us on an odyssey of exploration to awaken the senses and arouse our abilities of perception on all levels.

Ellen Sousa – Savor the Fragrance and Feast on the Bounty

The sense of smell merges delightful sensory experience with lasting associative memory. It is easy to incorporate fragrances into a garden through blooms or aromatic foliage. Ellen will discuss how and when plants release their fragrance, provide placement suggestions for greatest impact, and share design tips for overlooked plants that offer floral, spicy, and fresh fragrances. But it is not just about the aroma. As we catch the scent of ripening fruit, the taste-buds begin tingle with anticipation of mouth-watering edibles. Ellen will inspire us with design options that satisfy the sense of taste from vegetables, herbs, and spices to fruits, nuts, edible flowers, and more.

Trevor Smith – Tap into Your Inner Child

Children touch everything to fully engage with their surroundings, a well-planned sensory garden invites visitors of all ages to experience this enjoyable sensation. In the sensory garden there are many textural options to invite interaction. Trevor encourages designers to incorporate plants featuring smooth, rough, waxy, hairy, silky, spiny, and even sticky elements and shares some favorite plant options. Of all of the senses, incorporating sound is where Trevor’s designs excel. Sound elements in the garden create a sense of calm and serenity. There are several ways to incorporate sounds by including: plants that rustle in the breeze; enhancing habitat features to invite wildlife bringing chirping, buzzing, and birdsong; adding man-made features such as wind chimes; or integrating a water feature to provide the most soothing of sound of moving water. Trevor will share ideas and address questions as we channel our inner child in the sensory garden.

After lunch, all of the Summit speakers will join in a lively panel discussion. Panelists will answer questions to help address some challenges posed by sensory gardens. And regardless of a landscape’s design theme, there is a checklist of strategies at the core of any successful, ecological landscape. Panelists will discuss issues and provide tips for putting these principles and practices to work in any landscape.

The day long event will take place at the Community Harvest Project Barn, 37 Wheeler Road in North Grafton, and is $119 – $129. Visit www.ecolandscaping.org for registration and complete information.

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Thursday, November 1, 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm – Winter Branchlet Identification Webinar

This New England Wild Flower Society webinar on November 1 from 1 – 2 details the features needed to identify trees, shrubs, and vines during the dormant season, when most have shed their leaves. Using examples from the New England landscape, Arthur Haines’s presentation focuses on terminology to prepare students for using various guides to winter branchlet identification. $10 for NEWFS members, $13 for nonmembers. Register at www.newenglandwild.org.

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Friday, November 2, 7:30 pm – American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic

Family doctor and friend to both Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, and attending doctor at the famous duel, David Hosack is today a shadowy figure; the great achievements of his life forgotten. In this Smith College Chrysanthemum Show Opening Lecture on November 2 at 7:30 in the Campus Center Carroll Room, featuring her book, American Eden, Victoria Johnson rescues Hosack from obscurity and highlights his significant contributions to botany and medicine.

In 1801, on twenty acres of Manhattan farmland, Hosack founded the first botanical garden in the new nation, amassing a spectacular collection of medicinal, agricultural, and ornamental plants that brought him worldwide praise from the likes of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander von Humboldt. Hosack used his pioneering institution to train the next generation of American doctors and naturalists and to conduct some of the first pharmaceutical research in the United States. Today, his former garden is home to Rockefeller Center.

Victoria Johnson is an Associate Professor of Urban Policy and Planning at Hunter College in New York City. She earned her undergraduate degree in philosophy from Yale University and her PhD in sociology from Columbia University. Before joining Hunter College, she taught at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor for thirteen years. Her first book, Backstage at the Revolution, a history of the Paris Opera under the Old Regime, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2008. In the 2015-2016 academic year, she was a Fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and in the summer of 2016 she was a Mellon Visiting Scholar at the New York Botanical Garden, where she conducted some of the research for her new book, American Eden. The lecture is free and open to the public, and will be followed by a reception, book signing, and view of the Chrysanthemum Show at the Lyman Plant House. For more information visit www.smith.edu/garden/

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Thursday, October 25, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm – Frederick Law Olmsted Lecture: Michael Van Valkenburgh

Michael Van Valkenburgh is the founder of the landscape architecture firm Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, with offices in Brooklyn, New York and Cambridge, Massachusetts. The firm works at all scales, from large urban green spaces like Brooklyn Bridge Park to intimate gardens like the Monk’s Garden at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Other recent projects include Dorothea Dix Park in Raleigh, The Obama Presidential Center in Chicago (rendering below), A Gathering Place for Tulsa, and master planning and design for a new neighborhood at the mouth of Toronto’s Lower Don River.

Michael earned a Bachelor of Science in Landscape Architecture from Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and a Master of Fine Arts in Landscape Architecture from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Currently the Charles Eliot Professor Emeritus in Practice of Landscape Architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, Michael is a registered landscape architect in more than 25 states. On Thursday, October 25 at 6:30 pm in the Piper Auditorium at Gund Hall at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Michael will deliver the Frederick Law Olmsted Lecture, free and open to the public. For more information visit http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/event/michael-van-valkenburgh/

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Saturday, October 27, 9:30 am – 2:30 pm – Lichen Diversity

This New England Wild Flower class on October 27 from 9:30 – 2:30 at Garden in the Woods begins with a morning in which participants compare lichen collections to study the features that distinguish species. An afternoon visit to a local site offers an opportunity to study the diversity of lichens commonly found growing on rock walls and the factors that influence lichen colonization and growth. Lichenologist Elizabeth Kneiper leads the session. $66 for NEWFS members, $80 for nonmembers. Register at www.newenglandwild.org.

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