The Garden Club of the Back Bay’s March meeting will take place Monday, March 22, at 11:00 am in the 4th floor Seminar Room in Michael VanVolkenberg’s LuLu Wang Campus Center, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts.  Marie Stella will present an illustrated lecture entitled “Going Green: Constructing an Environmentally Engineered Home and Landscape”, co-sponsored with The Wellesley College Friends of Horticulture, the Arnold Arboretum and the New England Wild Flower Society.

The Renaissance ideal of the harmony of art and technology drives the design of systems for Marie’s new teaching site and landscape laboratory “Beaver Lodge.”  The objectives address environmental awareness, low energy consumption, the promotion of sustainability and innovative uses of plant material.  An ecological approach is outlined in the use of rain gardens, buffer zones, vegetated roof, and green architecture.  She will highlight the integrated process of building an energy efficient, sustainable house and seamlessly blending it into a responsibly managed landscape.  She questions how we can reduce energy consumption, conserve resources and intelligently choose healthy green materials.  Is the art and technology of our own Shangri-La within reach?

Marie Stella, MA, MS, is a landscape historian and designer with Graduate Certificates in Landscape Design and Landscape Design History from Radcliffe College, Harvard University. Her firm, Kirin Farm Design specializes in environmental landscapes and in initiatives to foster the preservation of open space. She lectures frequently and leads local and foreign Garden History Tours. Marie teaches in the graduate program at The Landscape Institute, Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University and currently is an adjunct faculty instructor in landscape design at The New York Botanical Garden, and Tower Hill Botanical Garden. Her ongoing design projects include a 3/4 acre environmental New York City Park, “El Jardin del Paraiso,” a Teaching Herb Garden at the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, Wellesley, MA (see below), and a master plan study for the new regional headquarters of the American Red Cross, Worcester, MA. She is a Gold Medal winner at the New England Flower Show, and has exhibited at The Urban Center, New York City, and the National Conference of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers.

This lecture is free to Garden Club of the Back Bay members, $15 for members of the New England Wild Flower Society, the Wellesley College Friends of Horticulture, and the Arnold Arboretum.  $18 general public admission.  For more information, log on to www.newfs.org.