Boston Flora

Tag: Apples of New England

  • Thursday, January 22, 7:00 pm – Apples of New England

    Porter Square Books, located in the Porter Square Shopping Center at 25 White Street in Cambridge, will host Russell Steven Powell on Thursday, January 22, beginning at 7 pm, who will speak about his new book Apples of New England. This fascinating and helpful guide will offer practical advice about rare heirlooms and newly discovered varieties, chapters on the rich tradition of apple growing in New England and on the fathers of American apples Massachusetts natives John Chapman (Johnny Appleseed) and Henry David Thoreau. Apples of New England will present the apple in all its splendor: as biological wonder, super food, work of art, and cultural icon.

    Apples of New England will also be an indispensable resource for anyone identifying apples in New England orchards, farm stands, grocery stores or their own backyard. Photographs of the more than 200 apples discovered, grown, or sold in New England will be accompanied by notes about flavor and texture, history, ripening time, storage quality, and best use.

    Russell Steven Powell has worked for the apple industry for nearly 20 years, most of that time as executive director of the nonprofit New England Apple Association. As its senior writer, he currently writes the weblog newenglandorchards.org.

    In addition to his two books about apples, Apples of New England (Countryman Press, 2014) and America’s Apple (Brook Hollow Press, 2012), Powell was founding editor and publisher of New England Watershed Magazine, named Best New Publication of 2006 by the Utne Reader. He produced and directed Shack Time (2001), an award-winning video documentary program about the artist shacks in the dunes of the Cape Cod National Seashore. His oil paintings and prints were exhibited in New York City and Cape Cod in 2014.

    A native of New England, he lives in western Massachusetts.  For more information about this lecture and book signing visit www.portersquarebooks.com.

  • Weekends, September 20 – October 13 – Tower Hill’s Bountiful Harvest Season

    Weekends, September 20 – October 13 – Tower Hill’s Bountiful Harvest Season

    Harvest season is approaching and that means Tower Hill Botanic Garden, 11 French Drive in Boylston, will be buzzing with four weekends of family activities celebrating summer’s bounty of plants, arts, and food.

    The special programming begins Sept. 20 and 21 with an appreciation of fall foliage and flowers. Activities will include fall crafts, an apple heirloom apple tasting tour, and a show and sale of stunning begonias and gesneriad flowers, such as the African violet.

    Local foods and flavors are the focus on the weekend of Sept. 27 and 28 with food and farm vendors on site both days, along with a display of vegetables grown at Tower Hill. On Saturday a youth garden workout, fall crafts, and apple tasting tour are all free with admission. Sunday features a garden tour as well as a wild edibles talk and walk.

    Oct. 4 and 5 is Artisan Weekend at Tower Hill with vendors selling handmade creations all weekend. Saturday’s highlights include an apple tasting tour, wreath making, a chamber group featuring baroque favorites, and the opening of internationally renowned designers Patch NYC’s latest show. On Sunday, join in with Russell Powell, author of Apples of New England, for a free talk and apple tasting, listen in with Susan Guagliumi, author of Handmade for the Garden, for creative do-it-yourself techniques, or sign up for a workshop to learn how to make a “Mountain High Apple Pie.”

    Tower Hill’s harvest weekend finale is Oct. 11 through 13. Activities include making leaf rubbings on a story walk, participating in a gardening book swap, creating fall crafts, joining a hay ride, sampling apples on a tasting tour, and learning about wild plants in the not-so-wild garden. Backyard chicken expert Terry Golson will host story time with her book Tillie Lays an Egg and Mass Audubon will conduct a Birds of Prey program.

    Harvest season means enjoying autumn views of Tower Hill’s 132-acre landscape and Mt. Wachusett, exploring the sustainable – and exquisitely designed – vegetable garden before it yields to winter, and discovering Tower Hill’s rare collection of heirloom apples, including 238 trees and 119 pre-20th century varieties.

    For more information on events presented by the nonprofit Tower Hill Botanical Garden at 11 French Drive in Boylston, Mass., please call 508-869-6111, visit towerhillbg.org, or email rburgess@towerhillbg.org.

    Home of the Worcester County Horticultural Society, Tower Hill Botanic Garden is less than an hour’s drive from Boston, Providence, Springfield, and Hartford and is nationally recognized as one of the finest gardens in the Northeast with more than 80,000 annual visitors and 6,000 active members.

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