Boston Flora

  • Thursday, March 14, 6:00 pm – Drinking Boston: A History of the City and its Spirits

    From the revolutionary camaraderie of the Colonial taverns to the saloons of the turn of the century; from Prohibition—a period rife with class politics, social reform, and opportunism—to a trail of nightclub neon so bright, it was called the “Conga Belt,” Drinking Boston pays tribute to the fascinating role alcohol has played throughout the city’s history. Includes book sale at the event, which will take place Thursday, March 14 beginning at 6 pm in the Rabb Lecture Hall of the Main Branch of the Boston Public Library, 700 Boylston Street in Boston.

    Stephanie Schorow serves up a remarkable cocktail representative of Boston’s intoxicating story: its spirit of invention, its hardscrabble politics, its mythology, and the city’s never-ending battle between personal freedom and civic reform—all told through the lens of the bottom of a cocktail glass.

    Stephanie Schorow wasn’t born in Boston, but the day she moved here in 1989, she knew she had come home. Ms. Schorow is the author of six books on Boston, including, with co-author Beverly Ford, The Boston Mob Guide: Hit Men, Hoodlums & Hideouts, published in December 2011, by the History Press and Drinking Boston: A History of the City and Its Spirits, published by Union Park Press on November 1, 2012.

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  • Wednesday, March 13, 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm – Easy Composting: How to Turn Garbage Into Gold

    Ann McGovern, Consumer Waste Reduction Coordinator from the Mass. Dept. of Environmental Protection will explain how to improve your soil while disposing of nearly half of your household waste at the same time. This lecture is the centerpiece of the Somerville Garden Club March meeting, to be held Wednesday, March 13, from 7 – 9 at the Tufts Administration Building, 167 Holland Street in Somerville.

    All SGC meetings are free and the public is invited to attend. Meetings include club announcements, a horticultural question and answer segment, and a raffle of donated plants and garden-related items.  Onsite parking is available and the building is a short walk from the Davis Square Redline T station. Meetings are held on the second floor, wheelchair accessible.  For more information, visit www.somervillegardenclub.org.

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  • Saturday, March 16, 1:00 pm – 3:30 pm – Late Winter Mushrooms

    Join mycologist Lawrence Millman on Saturday, March 16, from 1 – 3:30 at Garden in the Woods in Framingham to discover what fungi can be found in New England at the end of winter.  Learn about survival strategies of these species, then walk through the Garden in search of some of them.  The underside of a log is the equivalent of a nice cozy chair in front of the fire for many fungi.  Copies of the instructor’s new book, Fascinating Fungi of New England, will be available for purchase.  $21 NEWFS members, $25 nonmembers. Register at www.newfs.org.

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  • Wednesday – Friday, March 20 – 22, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm – Botanical Illustration with Graphite Pencil: Fruits and Seeds

    Draw the beauty of seeds, including pods, nuts, fruits and cones, and investigate the amazing variety of nature’s bounty. Discover the features and texture of these objects while building your drawing skills. This is a great Berkshire Botanical Garden class for beginners or more advanced students who get ‘stuck’ drawing. Learn to solve this problem and develop your drawing step by step, from sketch to finished nature drawing. There will be exercises in: training the eye through quick sketching; drawing plants in proportion; the essentials of perspective; and applying tonal values for visual depth. Whether your love is quick field sketching or rendering plant portraits, this inspiring class will give you confidence to draw and train you to look at nature more closely.

    Carol Ann Morley is an illustrator and dedicated teacher of botanical illustration working in Dover, NH. She founded the Botanical Art Illustration Certificate Program at the New York Botanical Garden and teaches illustration there and for other botanical gardens. The classes take place Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, March 20, 21, and 22, from 10 – 4, and cost $260 for BBG members, $290 for nonmembers.  Sign up at www.berkshirebotanical.org.

  • Thursday, March 7, 7:00 pm – Farm to Lectern Speakers Series: Brian Donahue

    In association with the exhibition, The Greatest Source of Wealth: Agriculture in Concord, the Farm to Lectern Speakers Series brings nationally-recognized agrarian activists to Concord.  On Thursday, March 7, 2013, the Concord Museum welcomes Brian Donahue, an environmental historian, farmer, and collaborator on the New England Good Food Vision 2060. Donahue is Associate Professor of American Environmental Studies at Brandeis University and author of The Great Meadow: Farmers and the Land in Colonial Concord and Reclaiming the Commons: Community Farms and Forests in a New England Town. He co-founded and for 12 years directed Land’s Sake, a nonprofit community farm in Weston, Massachusetts.  In his talk, Nourishing New England: A Vision for Local and Regional Farming and Healthy Food, Donahue shares a bold vision that calls for our region to build the capacity to produce up to 80% of clean, fair, just and accessible food for all New Englanders by 2060.

    The event will begin at 7:00 p.m. at the Concord Museum. The speakers series is free, but reservations are requested, 978-369-9763 ext. 216.

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  • Saturday, March 16, 9:00 am – 11:00 pm – Pruning Shrubs

    Knowing what and when to prune, and how to do so, are important as you manage your home landscape. Learn the basic techniques for pruning ornamental shrubs for optimum health and beauty. Jen Kettell, an ISA-certified arborist will address topics including pruning cuts and tools; thinning and reducing overgrown plants; shaping and encouraging new growth, in this workshop at the Arnold Arboretum on Saturday, March 16 from 9 – 11.  $20 Arboretum members, $30 nonmembers, registration at www.arboretum.harvard.edu.

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  • Friday, March 15, 1:30 pm – 4:00 pm – Wildlife in the Landscape

    Marion Larson, Chief of Information and Education with the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, will speak at the Arnold Arboretum on Friday, March 15, beginning at 1:30 pm, in a program co-sponsored by the Ecological Landscaping Association.  Whether trying to attract backyard wildlife, coping with the effects of wildlife damage in the managed landscape, or hoping to enhance habitat on a landscape scale, you must first understand the animals. Marion Larson will discuss the components of wildlife habitat; factors affecting wildlife populations; how to attract beneficial wildlife; and practices to consider which keep wild things wild. She will address the wildlife known to cause landscape damage and suggest strategies for preventing damage before it occurs, as well as legal options for removing or destroying wildlife when management fails. She will also share information about habitat management initiatives that the MA Division of Fisheries and Wildlife is promoting to managers and owners of larger properties.  $20 for members of the sponsoring organizations, $25 for the general public.  Register at www.arboretum.harvard.edu.

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  • Tuesday, March 12, 9:00 am coffee, 10:00 am program – Just For You

    Priscilla Styer, Blue Ribbon and Special Award winner at the Boston Flower Show 2012, and owner of “Just for You” will guide you through a fabulous floral design program, highlighting form function and color in floral design. She will create 7 or 8 arrangements to be raffled. The program is sponsored by the Community Garden Club of Duxbury and will be held at the Duxbury Bay Maritime School, 435 Washington Street in Duxbury. CGCD members free, public $5.

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  • Thursday, March 14, 6:00 pm – 8:30 pm – CitySprouts Dig It! 2013

    CitySprouts is raising $75,000 to bring our school garden program to two new partner schools in Boston: The Ellis School in Dorchester and The Mather School in Roxbury, connecting more children to garden-based learning in their schools.

    Since 2000, CitySprouts has made hands-on learning, environmental stewardship and the experience of growing food part of public education. CitySprouts program builds capacity in our partner schools to make the outdoor classroom garden a resource for teachers, parents and community. CitySprouts is currently serving 18 schools in the Greater Boston area: all JK-8 public schools in Cambridge, two Boston public schools and two Lynn public schools.  The Garden Club of the Back Bay supports CitySprouts.

    Dig It! 2013 is our annual fundraising event. This year’s party will be at the Liberty Hotel in Boston on March 14th from 6pm to 8:30pm.  Dig It! will feature a live auction and raffle. Live auction items include:

    o Signature CitySprouts cider pressing staffed by CitySprouts garden coordinators to the school of your choice
    o A private lamb butchering demonstration with Boston Chef Josh Lewin and dinner for 6 at the highly acclaimed Beacon Hill Bistro
    o Two matching custom built children’s chairs by artist Mitch Ryerson

    CitySprouts youth interns from the Cambridge Summer Youth Program will be at Dig It! to talk about their experiences of learning how to grow and cook food from the garden. To purchase tickets ($125 per person) on line, visit www.citysprouts.org.

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  • Wednesday, March 13, 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm – One Seed at a Time

    One Seed at a Time, a Reno Family Foundation Symposium at the Museum of Science, with Cary Fowler, PhD, special advisor and executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, will take place Wednesday, March 13, beginning at 7 pm. Tucked away beneath the snow of the Arctic Circle is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Sometimes called “the doomsday vault,” it’s nothing less than a backup of the planet’s horticultural biodiversity. Inside the vault, Dr. Cary Fowler and his team work with seeds from hundreds of crops that have nurtured humanity since our ancestors began tilling the soil. Their goal: to ensure that the world’s food supply can survive the dangers of disease, famine, climate change, and identical GMOs. Nearer the equator, documentary filmmaker Yung Chang shows us how intertwined we are with the fruits we eat in The Fruit Hunters. Guided by devoted exotic fruit lovers, he takes us on a cinematic odyssey through nature and commerce, changing not only the way we look at what we eat, but how we view our relationship to the natural world.

    Following the program, taste a selection of exotic fruits and enjoy a cash bar, featuring tropical Bellinis. Learn how to extract and save seeds, where to trade, exchange or swap, and make seed “bombs” for random acts of gardening–just throw and grow!  Funding provided by the Reno Family Foundation Fund.  $15 admission.  For more information, or to purchase tickets, visit www.mos.org/public-events.

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