Boston Flora

Tag: Barbara Millen

  • Wednesday, October 30, 6:00 pm – Massachusetts Horticultural Society Honorary Medals Dinner

    The Board of Trustees of Massachusetts Horticultural Society (MHS) has announced its 2024 Honorary Medals recipients. The 7 winners will be celebrated at the 121st Honorary Medals Dinner at the Garden at Elm Bank in Wellesley, MA on October 30, 2024. This year, MHS will continue a 193-year tradition of awarding medals to individuals and organizations for their contributions to excellence in horticulture for the public good.


    Douglas W. Tallamy will be awarded the George Robert White Medal of Honor, MHS’s highest honor, for eminent
    service in the field of horticulture, and will deliver the keynote speech during the ceremony. A New York Times bestselling
    author, his books, including Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard (2020) and The
    Nature of Oaks: The Rich Ecology of Our Most Essential Native Trees     (2021), have delivered the importance of horticultural
    conservation to homes across the world. As a professor in University of Delaware’s Department of Entomology and
    Wildlife Ecology, he advocates for smaller lawns, native plants, and habitats for native species. His advocacy work is echoed
    through his founding of Homegrown National Park, a grassroots organization that encourages everyone to grow native
    plants.


    Matthew Cunningham will receive the Thomas Roland Medal for exceptional skill in horticulture and lectures.
    Founding Principal of Matthew Cunningham Landscape Design LLC, he is an award-winning and nationally recognized
    landscape architect.


    Gold Medals for eminent horticultural accomplishments will be awarded to David Barnett (President and CEO
    Emeritus, Mount Auburn Cemetery) and Tom Ryan (Senior Principal and Owner, Ryan Associates Landscape Architecture
    and Planning). Patrick Chassé (landscape architect), Dr. Barbara E. Millen (Board Chair, Center for Plant Conservation;
    Trustee, Massachusetts Horticultural Society and a long time Board Member of The Boston Committee of the GCA), and Murphy Westwood, PhD (Vice President of Science and Conservation, The Morton Arboretum) will receive Silver Medals for their noteworthy service in horticulture. More details about each awardee and their recognition will become available at https://www.masshort.org/honorary-medals/.


    The 121st Honorary Medals Dinner will take place Wednesday, October 30, 2024 at 6 pm at Massachusetts
    Horticultural Society’s Garden at Elm Bank. The dinner will be preceded by a day-long symposium, featuring lectures by
    medal winners Doug Tallamy, Matt Cunningham, Tom Ryan, and Murphy Westwood. Tickets for the awards ceremony
    including dinner and drinks are $180; symposium tickets are $250 for General Admission and $200 for Boston Society of
    Landscape Architects and MHS members. Proceeds benefit excellence in horticulture at MHS. For event information and
    to purchase tickets when they are released, please visit https://www.masshort.org/honorary-medals/

  • Thursday, September 14, 7:00 pm – Kate Orff

    Join The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum for its annual series of engaging and inspirational presentations from leading voices in the field of landscape architecture. Internationally renowned designers present their recent work articulating landscape as a medium of design for the social, cultural, and ecological life of the city.

    On Thursday, September 14, the 2017/2018 season kicks off with a lecture by Kate Orff. Kate Orff is the founder and design director of SCAPE, a firm focusing on landscape architecture, broadly construed. She has designed projects across the United States and internationally. She lectures widely in the U.S. and abroad on the topic of urban landscape and new paradigms of thinking, collaborating and designing for the anthropocene era. A recent TED talk on Reviving New York’s Rivers with Oysters has been viewed over 300,000 times. Kate sees the oyster as an agent of urban change. Bundled into beds and sunk into city rivers, oysters slurp up pollution and make legendarily dirty waters clean — thus driving even more innovation in “oyster-tecture.” Orff shares her vision for an urban landscape that links nature and humanity for mutual benefit.

    Landscape Lectures begin at 7 pm in Calderwood Hall. Lectures include Museum admission and require a ticket; tickets can be reserved online, in person at the door, or by phone: 617 278 5156. Museum admission: adults $15, seniors $12, students $5, free for members. Landscape and Horticulture public programs are supported by the Barbara E. Millen and Markley H. Boyer Endowment Fund. These programs also are supported in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, which receives support from the State of Massachusetts and the National Endowment for the Arts.  Photo courtesy of www.architecturaldigest.com.

  • Through November 30 – Chrysanthemums at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

    Dozens of varieties of chrysanthemums appear in the courtyard in late October. Japanese-style single-stem chrysanthemums mix with traditional types in an explosion of color and texture.

    To create this unique exhibit, Museum gardeners and volunteers work from June to October using Japanese cultivation methods to create a single stalk and a single flower on each specimen plant. Over the spring and summer, each plant is pinched weekly (this is called disbudding) and fertilized at specific intervals. This style, which produces a large single bloom, is called ogiku.

    The Japanese technique of training chrysanthemums became popular in the West around the turn of the century. Within Isabella Gardner’s lifetime, many chrysanthemums were grown on her Brookline estate, Green Hill, and won awards at the Massachusetts Horticultural Society’s fall flower shows. The Museum later won top awards from the Massachusetts Horticultural Society for its chrysanthemums in 1934 and 1936.

    Chrysanthemums were first cultivated as an herb in ancient China and arrived in Japan in the 8th Century. Cultivation of the flower was originally permitted only in the gardens of the emperor and the nobility. They were introduced to the western world in the 17th Century. Today, sumptuous festivals are held in celebration of the flower throughout Japan.

    The Chrysanthemums display is made possible in part by the Barbara Millen and Markley H. Boyer Endowment Fund for Horticulture. The Museum thanks Longwood Gardens and the Botanic Garden of Smith College for their generous donations of single-stem chrysanthemum cuttings for the 2014 Chrysanthemums display.

    The Courtyard features plants that are actively growing and constantly changing. Courtyard images include plants that are representative of each display, but plants will be added or replaced over the life of the display. For more information visit www.gardnermuseum.org.