Embark on a birdwatching walk in the Arboretum’s landscape with birder and wildlife photographer Michael Bryant, AKA Nature Man Mike. This two-hour walk on January 13 at 8 am is suitable for beginners as well as more experienced birders. Binoculars will be available to borrow on a first-come-first-serve basis, but you are encouraged to bring your own! To get on the waitlist, click HERE. Below: White-Throated Sparrow. Photo by Michael Bryant.
What is there to see at the Arboretum after all of the leaves have fallen and before spring flowers start to bloom? Bark! Shaggy bark, mottled bark, striped bark: the Arboretum has it all. Join Horticulturist Rachel Lawlor at 11 am on January 7 to see some beautiful bark highlights, learn how to identify some trees by their bark, and learn why that bark looks the way it does. Accessibility: Participants will walk over paved roads, woodchip paths, and mowed grass. Parking: There is limited parking outside of Centre Street Gate, and additional parking on Arborway near Forest Hills Gate (a 10 minute walk from the meeting point).
In the event of inclement weather, registrants will be notified via email. If you have questions, please email publicprograms@arnarb.harvard.edu or call the Visitor Center desk between 10:00am and 4:00pm at (617) 384-5209. Register at https://arboretum.harvard.edu/events/event-signup/?id=82442
The Arnold Arboretum is known for its towering trees, but if you look closer you will see asters and goldenrods springing up amongst the oaks and the maples. What is the role of these spontaneous plants and how do staff encourage them through horticultural practices like no-mow areas? Join Horticulturist Ryan Devlin on September 12 for a free walking tour to get answers to these questions and more. Sign up at https://arboretum.harvard.edu/events/event-signup/?id=77946
Join Arnold Arboretum docent Kevin Schofield for a tour of Peters Hill on Sunday, September 10 at noon, as part of the Arboretum’s Second Sundays events. Learn about the history of this lesser-known corner of the landscape and the uniqueness of the plants that grow here, including white pines, dawn redwoods, bamboo, ginkgoes, larches and a truly magnificent crabapple collection. Free. Learn more at https://arboretum.harvard.edu/events/event-signup/?id=77994
This tour will be on paved roads and will include some moderate hills. In the event of inclement weather, registrants will be notified. For more information, please call (617) 384-5209.
Join editor Susan Barba at the Arnold Arboretum on Wednesday, September 6 at 5:30 pm for an outdoor poetry reading of her new literary anthology, filled with classic and contemporary poems and essays inspired by wildflowers. Instead of sitting in a lecture hall, you will meander through the wildflowers of the Arboretum and hear beautiful poems and prose while surrounded by the wildflowers that inspired them. The group will stop at different wildflowers highlighted in the book and listen as Barba reads passages about sunflower, chicory, or goldenrod. Learn more at https://arboretum.harvard.edu/events/
Join editor Susan Barba for a mobile landscape reading of her new literary anthology, American Wildflowers: A Literary Field Guide, filled with classic and contemporary poems and essays inspired by wildflowers. What is a mobile landscape reading, you ask? Instead of presenting in an Arnold Arboretum lecture hall, Barba will bring participants through the wildflowers of the Arboretum to hear beautiful poems and prose among the wildflowers that inspired them. We will stop at different wildflowers highlighted in the book and listen as Barba reads passages about fireweed, chicory, or Solomon’s seal.
You will receive a Zoom link upon registering. To register for the virtual event, click here.
This event will also be presented in-person in the Arboretum landscape. To sign up for the in-person event, click here.
Photographer Vaughn Sills brings her exquisite still lives of Arnold Arboretum plants—whether in flower or fruit, burnished fall foliage or shimmery bud—to this exhibition. Each stem is a wonder of composition and color—prominent, yet sublimely connected to a background of a distant and ethereal landscape. The images are Still Lives, from inside Sills’ studio, and include the outside—her images of nature and wide expanses of land and water. Combined, these seemingly disparate elements convey the importance of two ways of looking, close up and far away.
Sills was able to obtain live plant material for this project with staff permission and accompaniment: each stem was carefully collected with Arnold Arboretum Visitor Engagement staff. With a few specimens at a time, Sills returned to her studio and posed branches for portraits against her previously photographed vistas—landscapes from Prince Edward Island, her place of origin. As an immigrant herself, the international collections of the Arnold spoke eloquently to her. It’s a place where plants from different countries can live in an environment that brings spiritual enjoyment to visitors, as part of the Boston Park System. At the same time, the Arboretum is also a place of conservation, education, and research as part of Harvard University. Again, the dual objective of pleasure and science, like Close up and Far Away, or inside and outside. This exhibition brings together the artist and her art—the aesthetic of the medium of photography—with the Arnold Arboretum’s collections as subject, and the broader and distant landscape and nature as complements.
Vaughn Sills website: http://www.vaughnsills.com/
All rights of the images reside with the artist. To view the images, visit https://arboretum.harvard.edu/art_shows/still-lives-plants-of-the-arnold-arboretum-close-up-and-far-away/ Below: Rudoulf Flowering Crabapple, 2022, photograph copyright Vaughn Sills
The Arnold Arboretum has been collecting plants from around the world for 150 years, but plant exploration today looks very different than it did in the 1800s. From changes in collecting practices to an evolving relationship between the Arboretum and its international partners, a lot has changed in the last century. Join Head of the Library and Archives Lisa Pearson and Keeper of the Living Collections Michael Dosmann on March 23 at 6:30 pm in the Weld Hill Research Building, 1300 Center Street in Boston, to learn what these trips were like in the days of yore, and what they are like now. To register for the in person program, click here.
Parking is available on-site at the Weld Hill Research Building. Find directions here.
This event will also be livestreamed to YouTube. To sign up for the virtual livestream instead, click here.
The Berkshire Botanical Garden presents a personal introduction to the design principles of Piet Oudolf — one of the world’s leading naturalistic landscape designers. His work includes New York’s High Line, Chicago’s Lurie Garden, the Oudolf Meadow at Delaware Botanic Gardens, and Oudolf Garden Detroit. Deborah Chud’s five years of research on Oudolf’s gardens led to her own Oudolfian garden and the only known database of his plant combinations. Part 1 of this class traces her discovery of Oudolf’s work, her research on his plant combinations and her use of that research to create a garden in his style. Part 2 explores the historical context in which he emerged as a landscape designer. Part 3 provides an introduction to his design principles, particularly his concept of structure and the special balance he creates between coherence and contrast. At the end of the talk, participants will enjoy some practical Oudolfian “do’s and don’ts” for solving the problem of excessive contrast. Co-hosted with New England Botanic Garden. $12 for BBG and NEBG members, $15 for nonmembers. Register at https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/events/birth-new-perennial-garden
Deborah Chud is a retired Massachusetts physician turned garden maker, consultant and educator. Her five years of research on Piet Oudolf have generated the most comprehensive database of his plant combinations. In the fall of 2020, she presented her work at an international event organized by Oudolf’s co-author, Noel Kingsbury, under the aegis of gardenmasterclass.org. Deborah has also presented to members of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum, the United States Botanical Garden in Washington, D.C., the Ecological Landscape Alliance, the Northwest Perennial Alliance, Toronto Botanical Garden, and Delaware Botanic Gardens. The latter two public gardens contain Oudolf-designed sections.
The City of Boston recently released a new Urban Forest Plan that aims to grow the city’s urban forest equitably. In this hybrid talk on January 24 co-sponsored by the Brighton Garden Club and the Friends of Faneuil Library, David Meshoulam, Executive Director of Speak for the Trees, Boston, will introduce the idea of tree equity and discuss its critical importance in a rapidly changing climate. The organization has been examining how the distribution of trees has been shaped by race, politics, and history, and works to grow the city’s forest as a tool to build resilient communities.
The live presentation will be held in the New Balance Room, Presentation School Foundation Community Center, 640 Washington Street in Boston. This is a free event.
This event will also be livestreamed to YouTube. To sign up for livestream, click HERE
