Boston Flora

Tag: Atlantic Monthly

  • Saturday, April 15, 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm – Thoreau and the Language of Trees

    Richard Higgins will speak at Tower Hill Botanic Garden on Saturday, April 15 beginning at 12:30 on his new book, Thoreau and the Language of Trees. Free with admission. pre-registration requested at www.towerhillbg.org. Trees were central to Henry David Thoreau’s creativity as a writer, his work as a naturalist, his thought, and his inner life. His portraits of them were so perfect, it was as if he could see the sap flowing beneath their bark. When Thoreau wrote that the poet loves the pine tree as his own shadow in the air, he was speaking about himself. In short, he spoke their language.

    In this original book, Richard Higgins explores Thoreau’s deep connections to trees: his keen perception of them, the joy they gave him, the poetry he saw in them, his philosophical view of them, and how they fed his soul. His lively essays show that trees were a thread connecting all parts of Thoreau’s being-heart, mind, and spirit. Included are one hundred excerpts from Thoreau’s writings about trees, paired with over sixty of the author’s photographs. Thoreau’s words are as vivid now as they were in 1890, when an English naturalist wrote that he was unusually able to “to preserve the flashing forest colors in unfading light.” Thoreau and the Language of Trees shows that Thoreau, with uncanny foresight, believed trees were essential to the preservation of the world.

    Richard Higgins is a former longtime staff writer for the Boston Globe whose writing has appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, Christian Century, and Smithsonian. He lives in Concord, Massachusetts.

  • Wednesday, June 24, 4 – 5:30 pm – Propagation by Cuttings Workshop

    From 1916 to 1979, Long Hill was the summer home of noted author and editor of The Atlantic Monthly, Ellery Sedgwick, and his first wife, Mabel Cabot Sedgwick, an accomplished horticulturist, gardener, and author of The Garden Month by Month. The Federal-style house was completed in 1925 and contains original woodwork from the ca.1812 Isaac Ball House in Charleston, South Carolina.

    Mrs. Sedgwick designed and planted the original gardens. After her death in 1937, Mr. Sedgwick’s second wife, the former Marjorie Russell, herself a distinguished gardener and propagator of rare plants, added many plants to the gardens, including unusual species and varieties of trees and shrubs, some introduced by the Arnold Arboretum.

    Today the gardens reflect the collective interests and tastes of both women. Five acres of cultivated grounds are laid out in a series of separate garden “rooms” surrounding the house. Each area is distinct in its own way and is accented by garden ornaments, structures, and statuary. The gardens are flanked on all sides by more than 100 acres of woodland as well as an apple orchard, meadow, and agricultural fields.

    Grow Long Hill’s signature plants from your own cuttings. Experienced propagators demonstrate setting up a propagation box, caring for your cuttings, and transplanting rooted plants. All materials provided.  $15 to Members of the Trustees of Reservations, $20 non-members. To pre-register, call 978-921-1944, x4018, or email needucation@ttor.org.