Boston Flora

Tag: Anna Pavord

  • Saturday, February 18, 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm Eastern – Berkshire Botanical Garden’s 26th Annual Winter Lecture with Midori Shintani, Online

    Berkshire Botanical Garden presents Midori Shintani, head gardener of Japan’s famous Tokachi Millennium Forest, in its online Winter Lecture, “Discovering Tokachi,” on February 18, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.

    Midori will share how she and her team have nurtured the native forests and cultivated garden areas through the seasons. She will also explain how her gardening methods are rooted in the accumulated wisdom of the ancient Japanese belief of mother culture, and how she has built a solid partnership with garden designer Dan Pearson and her garden team.

    The Tokachi Millennium Forest is located at the foot of the Hidaka Mountains in Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan. The project was originally started in 1990 by a local newspaper company that acquired about 990 acres there to create a carbon-offsetting forest. Eventually this became a project to restore the natural forest ecosystems, to share with the public and be sustainable for the next 1,000 years. The garden project of the Tokachi Millennium Forest began in 1996. In 2008, the forest officially was opened to the public, and has continued to evolve. 

    Midori Shintani was born and raised in the Fukui Prefecture in central Japan, in the countryside surrounded by sea and mountains. Spending time with plants in this area rich with nature was an early influence. Midori trained in horticulture and landscape architecture at Minami Kyushu University, Japan. In 2002 she moved to Sweden and trained to become a gardener at Millesgården and Rosendals Trädgård. In 2004 she moved back to Japan and worked at a garden design and landscaping company and perennial nursery, gaining experience in both traditional and modern techniques to create her own gardening style. Since 2008 she has been the head gardener of Tokachi Millennium Forest, merging “new Japanese horticulture” into wild nature. She writes and lectures widely.

    Tickets for the Winter Lecture are $30 for members of Berkshire Botanical Garden and $35 for non-members and are available online at berkshirebotanical.org/events or by calling 413-320-4794. 

    Established in 1997, the Winter Lecture Series was initiated by the Berkshire Botanical Garden to bring inspiring and noted speakers to the region to talk about horticulture, landscape design and history, plants and plant exploration, and home gardening. Past speakers have included such luminaries as Tom Coward, Marco Polo Stufano, Dan Hinkley, Edwina von Gal, Penelope Hobhouse, Bill Cullina, Fergus Garrett, Debs Goodenough, Dr. Michael Dirr, Ken Druse, Anna Pavord, Thomas Woltz and Margaret Roach. Proceeds from ticket sales support the Garden’s education programs.

  • Thursday, October 6, 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm – The Seasonal Gardener, Online

    First published in 2001, and now fully revised and updated, acclaimed bestselling author Anna Pavord’s The Seasonal Gardener features 60 ‘star plants’ — from iris to hostas — each paired with two perfect partners: shrubs, herbaceous perennials, bulbs, and annuals that no garden should be without. This classic book reveals how best to group plants in a garden to create a year-long display. Ranging from hydrangeas, salvias, and ferns to dahlias, tulips and snowdrops, each star plant is paired with two partners, offering gardeners creative planting solutions to achieve stunning results, season by season. Anna Pavord is one of today’s most inspiring and much-loved garden writers and the author of globally bestselling The Tulip and The Naming of Names. Her gardening column in the Independent in the UK ran for 30 years from the paper’s launch in 1986 until the last print edition. Today, she writes for the Sunday Times and is an Associate Editor of Gardens Illustrated. Pavord lives in West Dorset and was awarded the Gold Veitch medal from the Royal Horticultural Society in 2001.

    On Thursday, October 6 at 2 pm Eastern Time, The Garden Conservancy will host a live webinar with Ms. Pavord. Conservancy Members $5 per person; General admission $15. A recording of this webinar will be sent to all registrants a few days after the event. We encourage you to register, even if you cannot attend the live webinar.

    Members of the Frank & Anne Cabot Society for planned giving have complimentary access to Garden Conservancy webinars. All Cabot Society members will automatically be sent the link to participate on the morning of the webinar. For more information about the Cabot Society, please contact Sarah Parker at sparker@gardenconservancy.org or 845.424.6500, ext. 214. To register visit www.gardenconservancy.org

  • Wednesday, March 31, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm Eastern Time – Unforgettable Gardens – Heale Garden, Online

    Wednesday, March 31, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm Eastern Time – Unforgettable Gardens – Heale Garden, Online

    The Gardens Trust out of Great Britain will host an online event on March 31 at 2 pm Eastern on Heale Garden. Heale, at Middle Woodford just north of Salisbury, is a glorious garden of nine acres, surrounding a house that remains largely unchanged since King Charles II hid here in 1651. The timeless atmosphere of the gardens at Heale is the result of the creative endeavors of Harold Peto, who originally designed the gardens in 1906 and many generations of the Rasch family, each who have left their mark. A chalk stream, well stocked with trout, runs through the gardens and under an authentic Japanese tea house. There is a varied collection of plants, shrubs, musk and other roses growing in the formal setting of clipped hedges and mellow stonework. Before her marriage, Frances Rasch worked as a restorer specializing in gilding, lacquer work and painted furniture. During her early years at Heale, Anna Pavord acted as Frances’s mentor, before she completed a course at The English Gardening School with Rosemary Alexander. Frances is currently a member of The RHS’s herbaceous committee. She is actively involved in promoting plants, judging at shows and working on the trials.

    Cost is five pounds ($7). Register on Eventbrite HERE. The Zoom link will be sent to registrants a few days before the talk.

  • Saturday, January 13, 2:00 pm – The New Shade Garden: Creating a Lush Oasis in the Age of Climate Change

    Berkshire Botanical Garden’s 2018 Annual Winter Lecture will take place Saturday, January 13 at 2 pm at Lenox Memorial High School in Lenox.

    Ken Druse plumbs the depths of shade once again – 20 years after the publication of his best seller, The Natural Shade Garden. This time, it’s to tackle the challenges that have arisen due to our changing climate. The low-stress environment of shade (lower temperatures, fewer water demands, carbon sequestration) is extremely beneficial for our plants, our planet, and us. Ken details new ways of looking at all aspects of the gardening process, in topics such as designing your garden, choosing and planting trees, preparing soil, solving the deer problem, and the vast array of flowers and foliage – all within the challenges of a changing climate, shrinking resources, and new weather patterns. Ken knows that the best defense is to create a cool, verdant retreat – he says, “The garden of the future will be in the shade.”

    Ken Druse is a celebrated lecturer, an award-winning photographer, and an author, who has been called “the guru of natural gardening” by the New York Times. He is best known for his twenty gar­den books published over the last twenty-five years. The American Horticultural Society listed his first large-format work, The Natural Garden (Clarkson Potter, 1988), among the best books of all time. His book, Making More Plants (Stewart Tabori & Chang, 2012) won the award of the year from the prestigious Garden Writers Association. That group gave Ken the 2013 gold medal for photography and the silver for writing. Also in 2013, the Smithsonian Institute announced the acquisition of the Ken Druse Collection of Garden Photography comprising 100,000 images of American gardens and plants.

    The Garden Club of America presented Ken with the Sarah Chapman Francis medal for lifetime achievement in garden communication.

    KenDruse.com is a blog with ten years of archived podcast interviews. He also appears monthly on Margaret Roach’s radio show, A Way to Garden.

    The Winter Lecture Series was begun by the Berkshire Botanical Garden in 1997 and was established to bring inspiring speakers to the region to talk about horticulture, landscape design and history, plants and plant exploration, and home gardening.

    Over the years, the Garden has invited such luminaries as Marco Polo Stufano, Anna Pavord, Joe Eck, Tovah Martin, Dan Hinkley, W. Gary Smith, Penelope Hobhouse, Ken Druse, Gordon Hayward, Lauren Springer and Scott Ogden, Bill Cullina, Fergus Garrett, Debs Goodenough, Margaret Roach, Michael Dirr, Glyn Jones, Louis Benech, Alan Power and Thomas Woltz to share their knowledge of plants, gardening, design and history with an interested audience of gardeners and horticulturists from the region. The series has proven to be a popular event in the region and is held annually in mid-winter. Proceeds from ticket sales are used to further the Garden’s education and horticulture efforts.

    Advance registration is highly recommended, but walk-ins are always welcome, space permitting.  Many thanks to the Winter Lecture sponsor: The Red Lion Inn. Register online at https://berkshirebotanical.org/see-and-do/winter-lecture-series/

  • A Gardening Reading List, Parts I – 3

    Susan Ashbrook alerted us to a very interesting blog, The Captive Reader, and three postings of gardening classics which are well worth examining.  Some listings and reviews will be well known to many, such as Anna Pavord’s excellent The Curious Gardener: A Year in the Garden, while others are ripe for discovery, such as Weeds: A Cultural History, and Four Hedges by Clare Leighton.  Find links to all three garden book installments at http://thecaptivereader.wordpress.com/2011/09/26/a-gardening-reading-list-part-iii/.