Wednesday, November 6, 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm – Hors D’Oeuvre Party at Whole Foods

Small plates, tapas, piattini – whatever your pleasure, let’s take a new look at the old scene with the Massachusetts Horticultural Society on Wednesday, November 6, from 6 – 7 at the Whole Foods Market on River Street in Cambridge (340 River Street.) Small plates restaurants are all the rave, but they are also the beginning of many events, maybe your upcoming holiday party? Why can’t yours be the talk of the town? $15 for Mass Hort members, $20 for non-members. Sign up by contacting Lisa Kamer at 617-933-4943 or email her at lkamer@masshort.org.

---

Thursday, November 14, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm – Airport Landscape Keynote Lecture

Adriaan Geuze is founder and principal of West 8, an international urban design and landscape architecture practice whose designs are informed by contemporary culture, urban identity, architecture, public space, and engineering. West 8 has done landscape projects for Schiphol Airport (below) since 1992 and has won international design competitions for the Toronto Waterfront (2006), Governors Island in New York (2007), Playa de Palma in Mallorca (2008), and the master plan for Yongsan Park, Seoul (2012). Among his many awards, Geuze was the 2002 recipient of the Veronica Rudge Green Prize for Urban Design. He was curator of the 2005 International Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam. In 2012 he received a lifetime achievement award from the Dutch government. Mr. Geuze will give the Airport Landscape Keynote Lecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Piper Auditorium, Gund Hall, 48 Quincy Street in Cambridge, on Thursday, November 14 beginning at 6:30 pm. The lecture is free and open to the public. For more information email events@gsd.harvard.edu.

---

Sunday, November 10, 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm – Understanding Botanical & Horticultural Names

In this Arnold Arboretum and New England Wild Flower Society workshop on plant nomenclature, to be held at Garden in the Woods in Framingham on Sunday, November 10 from 1 – 4, students will have the opportunity to sort out the confusion associated with plant names. We will discuss common names, binomial scientific names, and the history of nomenclature since Linnaeus. The current rules of nomenclature will be reviewed, and we’ll see why and how plant names sometimes change.  The instructor is Judith Sumner, PhD, Botanist and author of American Household Botany: A History of Useful Plants 1620 – 1900. Fee for members of the sponsoring organizations is $46, nonmembers $54.  Register at www.arboretum.harvard.edu or at www.newfs.org.

---

Thursday, November 14, 6:00 pm – Illustrating Thoreau’s Maine Woods: A Photographer’s Journey

On Thursday, November 14, beginning at 6 pm at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, Scot Miller will discuss his seven-year project photographing northern Maine for his new book, The Maine Woods: A Photographic Journey Through an American Wilderness. Miller combines contemporary imagery with text from Henry David Thoreau’s classic essay collection, The Maine Woods (first published 150 years ago). He will also screen The Unexpected Journey, a short documentary about the making of the book.Free and open to the public. Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street. Free event parking is available in the 52 Oxford Street Garage after 5:00 pm.  Members-only gallery preview and reception to follow in the exhibition gallery. RSVP to members@hmsc.harvard.edu or call (617) 496-6972.

---

Saturday, November 2, 9:30 am – 3:00 pm – Ikenobo Ikebana Society Newcomer Workshop

On Saturday, November 2, from 9:30 am – 3 pm at the Chapel in the Espousal Center, 554 Lexington Street, Waltham, Gail Bartlett will teach a morning workshop on arranging Fuji mums, and Masako Yatsuhashi will conduct an afternoon session on Moribana.  For the morning session, bring a shoka container, pebbles and kenzan, scissors, cloth for under scissors, bucket to hold flowers, and brown paper bag for trash, along with a bag lunch.  Coffee and tea will be provided.  In the afternoon, you will need a suiban or other low container suitable for moribana and kenzan.  The Ikenobo Ikebana Society of Boston will provide the other materials for the morning, and some materials for the afternoon.  Please bring several stems to make your arrangement unique.  Arrangements will be corrected by the teacher.  $40 for the day.  Reserve now by calling Mimi at 617-332-6136 or email moimoiritt@gmail.com.

---

Monday, November 4, 12:30 pm – 1:45 pm – Road to Paris via Warsaw

The Fletcher School of Tufts University will hold a panel discussion on key issues in the lead up to the Warsaw Climate Change Conference.  The event will take place Monday, November 4, from 12:30 – 1:45 in Mugar 200 at The Fletcher School, and is hosted by CIERP’s Energy, Climate and Innovation Program.  The panel includes Kelly Sims Gallagher, chair, Director and Associatie Professor of Energy and Environmental Policy at The Fletcher School. Sivan Kartha, Senior Scientist at Stockholm Environment Institute, Gilbert Metcalf, Professor of Economics at Tufts University, and Mukul Sanwal, Visiting Scholar at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and former Advisor to the Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC.  A light lunch will be served. For more information visit http://fletcher.tufts.edu/CIERP/Events.

---

Saturday, November 9, 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm – Tissue Culture Techniques

The New England Carnivorous Plant Society’s November meeting on Saturday, November 9, beginning at 12:30 pm at Roger Williams Park Botanical Center, 1000 Elmwood Avenue in Providence, will feature Steve Sardina speaking on Tissue Culture Techniques, an explanation of the process and equipment used in the tissue culture of plants. Those interested in this process are urged to visit the following sites for reference information before the presentation date: http://www.hometissueculture.org/, http://www.planttccases.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Main_Page,  and http://www.phytotechlab.com/Technical-Info.aspx#Tissue%20Culture%20Techniques.  The meeting is free and open to the public, who are warmly welcomed.

---

Wednesday, November 13, 1:00 pm and 6:30 pm – America’s Romance with the English Garden

Author Thomas Mickey will speak on his new book America’s Romance with the English Garden in a program co-sponsored by The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, Friends of Wellesley College Botanic Gardens, and The Garden Club of the Back Bay. Through a grant from the Smithsonian’s Division of Horticulture Services the author spent a year in Washington exploring the archives at the American History Museum, the Natural History Museum, as well as the Department of Agriculture. The focus of his work was to study the connection between marketing and the garden in nineteenth century America. He began by looking at seed and nursery catalogs from that time, and he never left them. He couldn’t get enough of the catalogs. He loved the language the writers used and the images, but especially what the catalogs taught us about gardening.

The program will be given twice on Wednesday, November 13.  The first time will be at 1 pm at The Wellesley College Botanic Garden, and the evening session at 6:30 will be held at the Arnold Arboretum.  Garden Club of the Back Bay members will receive written notice and car pool information.  Others may visit the website of The Arnold Arboretum of Friends of Wellesley College Botanic Gardens (links above) to register.

---

Monday, November 18, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – The Lost Art of Finding Our Way

What is lost when modern technology substitutes for our innate capacity to find our way? Could you navigate out of a dense bank of fog or an unfamiliar forest using only environmental clues and simple instruments?

Long before GPS, Google Earth, and global transit, humans traveled vast distances, navigating by natural phenomena, but few could do so today without technology.

Spurred by a haunting tragedy, John Edward Huth began a self-imposed study of way-finding which culminated in his book, The Lost Art of Finding Our Way.

In this Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University lecture, to be held Monday, November 18 from 7 – 8:30 in the Hunnewell Building, 125 Arborway, Jamaica Plain, John will put us in the shoes, ships, and sleds of early navigators for whom paying close attention to the environment around them was, quite literally, a matter of life and death. $10 fee, free for Arnold Arboretum members and students. To register online, visit https://my.arboretum.harvard.edu/Info.aspx?DayPlanner=1259&DayPlannerDate=11/18/2013.

---

Holiday Wreath Deadline Alert – A Late Thanksgiving!

Ordinarily we don’t begin to worry about wreath orders until much later in the season, but this year we need to remind everyone that Thanksgiving is late – November 28, and that day is our wreath order deadline date.  Yes, if an order comes in on Friday we will certainly accept it, but the danger is that many people wait until Thanksgiving is over to begin thinking about Christmas or Hannukah, and this year that is not an option.  No extra week between Thanksgiving and wreath week means your orders must be in the mail before you carve that turkey.  We will be setting up for decoration on the Sunday following Thanksgiving, and decorating from Monday through Thursday, December 2 – 5.  We don’t accept orders for fully decorated wreaths during wreath week, so please click here and print your order form today.

 

---

---