Boston Flora

Tag: Berkshire Botanical Garden

  • Wednesday, December 6 – Friday, December 8, 10:00 am – 3:00 pm – The Language of Flowers on Vellum

    All flowers hold different meanings, often based on the flower type, the time of year in which they bloom, the flower’s color, or all of the above, but the same is true of the story that makes them so meaningful to us. This Berkshire Botanical Garden workshop, held December 6 through December 8, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., will work with seasonal plants such as tree nuts, winter berries, or mushrooms; since our substrate will be vellum (calf skin), our subjects need to be small. Dry brush is a watercolor painting technique used in traditional botanical illustration. The method involves a “skin” of dried paint on the palette and a small, slightly damp brush. We will also create botanical tints for the base layer, generating shape by adding a luminous shadow. Students will receive a photograph and an outline of the seasonal flora. This workshop will meet for three consecutive days, for five hours each session.

    Anastasia Traina, is a writer and botanical artist. Her illustrations were published in the children’s book, BITSY and RAFF written by David Caudle, highlighting the power of friendship and inclusion. She is a member of the American Society of Botanical Art, the Tri-State Botanical Artists of NYBG, the Writer’s Guild of America and the Dramatists Guild of America. Her most recent exhibition, “Alchemy and Innocents” was on display at the BBG’s Leonhardt Galleries in 2023. Commissioned for the Berkshire Botanical Garden to create Lucy’s Garden, featuring topiary animals and other ‘live’ structures on paper. Donated by Lucy and Nat Day. $245 for BBG members, $265 for nonmembers. Register at https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/events/language-flowers-vellum

  • Tuesdays, November 21 – December 19, 5:30 pm – 8:30 pm – Plant Healthcare

    Led by Ken Gooch, this Berkshire Botanical Garden program focuses on factors that affect plant health care, including insects, diseases, pathogens and abiotic influences. Basic diagnostic techniques will be taught. Learn to minimize potential problems through proper site preparation, plant selection and placement. Managing problems using biological, chemical and cultural techniques will be discussed with a focus on integrated pest management. The class will take place Tuesdays, November 21 – December 19, from 5:30 – 8:30 at the Garden. Ken Gooch is the former Forest Health Program Director for the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation. Additionally, he is a Massachusetts Certified Arborist and teaches arboriculture at the Garden. $185 for BBG members, $215 for nonmembers. Register at https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/events/plant-health-care-1

    Image courtesy of WBUR.

  • Saturday, November 18, 10:00 am – 3:00 pm – Rock Mosaics in the Garden

    Led by artist/educator Beth Klingher, students in this Berkshire Botanical Garden class on November 18 will create an outdoor rock mosaic to brighten their garden, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Learn how to cut glass, ceramic and other materials and to adhere them to a large garden rock or cement block using colored thin set cement. Your mosaic may represent a flower, a plant, a tiny animal, or an abstract design. These rock mosaics will weather the New England winters and provide a colorful spark for your garden regardless of the season. Bring your own rocks!

    Beth Klingher is an educator and an artist. Her primary medium is mixed-media art using mosaic glass, ceramic and stone. Her work includes both realistic and abstract art, with emphasis on natural landscapes. She has also completed a number of large-scale murals at hospitals, schools and with community groups. She works with schools all over the Northeast to integrate art into their curriculum. Beth’s studio and home are located in New Haven, CT. $75 for BBG members, $100 for nonmembers. Register at https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/events/rock-mosaics-garden-0

    2019 10″ x 10″ SOLD Broken Pottery, Mexican Smalti, Stone

  • Saturday, November 11, 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm – Add Spice to Your Life: Create an Herbal Delight

    Looking for ways to use those herbs you grew in the garden this summer? Join members of Berkshire Botanical Garden’s Herb Associates for this hands-on workshop and learn some of their culinary secrets on November 11, from 1 to 3 p.m. Add a bit of spice to your life by creating a delicious herbal salad dressing and exciting herbal dips for the holidays. All materials will be provided.

    The Herb Associates are volunteers who oversee a display garden and production garden, both located near the Center House at BBG. About 100 varieties of herbs are grown for display, with about 20 culinary herbs grown in the production garden used to make products for sale, including chives, parsley, sage, basil, dill, lovage and lavender.  Herbal products made throughout the growing season are available in the BBG gift shop, at festivals during the season, and online. BBG members $70, nonmembers $85. Register at https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/events/add-spice-your-life-create-herbal-delight Photo courtesy of Zestful Kitchen.

  • Saturday, November 11, 10:00 am – 12:00 pm – Establishing a Vineyard in Your Backyard

    This Berkshire Botanical Garden class with author J. Stephen Casscles on November 11 from 10 – 12 will cover how to establish and maintain a backyard vineyard. Topics covered include: identifying suitable fruit growing land or modifying your current backyard to grow grapes; how to layout and plant a home vineyard; selecting suitable grape varieties, including heritage grape varieties; trellising and training options; how to prune vines; and how to annually maintain a vineyard to produce bountiful amounts of grapes for wine, juice, or fresh consumption. Visit https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/events/establish-vineyard-your-backyard where you can also register. $25 for BBG members, $40 for nonmembers. At the end of our class, copies of his book Grapes of the Hudson Valley and Other Cool Climate Regions of the US and Canada, will be available for sale with the author’s signature.

  • Sunday, November 12, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm – Rooted in Place: Building Resiliency through Ecological Design and Landscape Management

    Join experts in the field of ecological design to learn about their varied approaches to building resilient landscapes and communities. This day-long symposium on November 12 at the Berkshire Botanical Garden will explore the breadth of what regenerative design and land stewardship means, featuring a range of speakers with experiences as diverse as landscape design, community outreach, pollination systems restoration, and farming. Participants will have the opportunity to work hands-on with the day’s speakers to design their own projects.

    Featured speakers include Evan Abramson, speaking on Beyond Pollinator-Friendly: Designing Landscapes and Corridors to Support Biodiversity and Climate Resilience — Farms, wildlands, sub/urban greenways, rural communities and large-scale solar developments provide immense opportunities for expanding regional biodiversity through the implementation of native pollination systems. What happens at the pollination scale has repercussions all the way through the food web to the largest predators and humans. Yet most efforts to restore pollinator habitat to date have increased the numbers of a few common species, rather than the range of wild pollinators needed for ecosystem resiliency. “Seeing lots of bees” does not necessarily mean that a landscape is pollinator-friendly.

    Evan Abramson is a results-driven designer and planner on a mission to rebuild biologically diverse ecosystems through pollinator-plant interactions. As Founder and Principal of Landscape Interactions, he works closely with project partners along every step of the process, from conception through design, implementation and maintenance. Since 2019, Landscape Interactions has been responsible for over 300 acres of habitat installed in the Northeast, specifically targeting at-risk bee and lepidoptera species for each project location. He holds a Master of Science in Ecological Design from the Conway School of Landscape Design, Certificates in Permaculture Design and Biodynamic Gardening, and is the author of numerous publications, including Pollinate Now; Lincoln Pollinator Action Plan; Egremont Pollinator Pathway; and Great Barrington Pollinator Action Plan.

    Also presenting is Jono Neiger on Regenerative agriculture and agroforestry: Food, soil health, and diversity on the farmscape — Commencing with an overview of regenerative agriculture and agroforestry practices and examples of farms and farmers using these approaches, participants will glean insight into the exciting potential and rising interest in combating habitat loss, soil degradation, and farm insecurity through this work.  Jono Neiger and his work at Regenerative Design Group work to support local farms in their transition to more regenerative systems through planning and design, technical support, soil health practices, and water and soil management.

    Jono Neiger leads the Regenerative Agriculture Wing at Regenerative Design Group (RDG). He has 30 years of professional experience in permaculture, site planning, agroforestry, conservation, and restoration. Jono teaches widely at colleges, workshops, and conferences. He has taught at The Conway School and was the founding Board President of the Permaculture Association of the Northeast. Before starting RDG, Jono worked as a land manager for Lost Valley Educational Center, a Conservation Officer for the Town of Palmer, MA and a Restoration Specialist with the Nature Conservancy. He holds a MALD from The Conway School and a BS in Forest Biology from S.U.N.Y. College of Environmental Science and Forestry. Jono is the author of The Permaculture Promise and the founder of Big River Chestnuts, a chestnut agroforestry farm in Sunderland, MA.

    An afternoon panel will be moderated by Elizabeth Keen with Marie Chieppo, Owen Wormser, and Jim Schultz. $85 for BBG members, $100 for nonmembers. Register at https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/events/rooted-place

  • Sunday, November 19, 4:00 pm – 6:30 pm – Film and Wine at the Garden

    Join Berkshire International Film Festival and Berkshire Botanical Garden for an afternoon of film and wine on November 19, 4 to 6:30 p.m. We will present a screening of Living Wine, directed by Lori Miller, followed by a wine tasting of organic and biodynamic wines. Ticket sales will help support both Berkshire International Film Festival and Berkshire Botanical Garden.

    Merging sweeping wine country footage with insightful interviews, filmmaker Lori Miller’s film showcases the dynamic natural wine movement that is transforming a growing number of northern California vineyards. BBG members $35, nonmembers $40. Register at https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/events/film-wine-garden

  • Through Sunday, November 19 – The Garden of Curiosity

    Berkshire Botanical Garden presents “The Garden of Curiosity” art exhibition, open now through Nov. 19, in its Leonhardt Galleries. The exhibit features works by Ann Getsinger, consisting primarily of oil paintings, mixed media drawings and sculptures.

    “Creating visual art is the closest I’ve ever come to having my life make any sense at all. It’s both indulgent and essential,” Getsinger says. “It’s about balancing freedom and discipline in order to explore this temporary existence, to consider the meaning and sensuality of nature and my personal connection to it. I’m always challenged to go deeper.”

    The New Marlborough artist presents carefully observed and freely rendered objects in a range of outdoor settings, times of day, seasons, and weather. Oscillating between real and imaginary, each completed work is a fresh invention. Referencing her deep interest in natural history, subjects such as bones, insects, plants, seashells, fruit, leaves, vegetables, or the artist’s signature choice of orange peels, are often centrally placed at or near eye level — and life size to inhabit the scene.

    The Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts are often referenced in the backgrounds along with occasional ocean sites inspired from the artist’s roots on the coast of Maine. The context presented between object and location becomes a question serving both artist and viewer as a starting place for curiosity to flow. Her work is lyrical, sensual, suggestive, scientific, romantic, conceptual, poetic, and ecological. This exhibit will also feature a small collection of Getsinger’s “odder work,” where subject and background lean towards a more overt metaphysical surrealism.

    “Subjects are chosen for their capacity to delight me for any number of intentionally unexamined reasons,” Getsinger says. “They are chosen often because of an oddness, or subconscious suggestion, maybe a frilly edge or an orb-shaped object the size of a human head, or something off balance, out of scale, smaller or larger than expected, a rutabaga’s waxy exterior, or an antler for its specific way of tapering into a beaded riffle where it attaches to the deer’s head or the beauty of the shadows it casts, as if the bones and shadows contain every motion of the creature they once were.”

    Ann Getsinger is a longtime collector of antique natural history prints and books. She enjoys finding resonance between seemingly different objects, scenes and subject matter. She says her inspiration comes from being in nature and through meaningful aspects and events of daily life. Her home and studio is in New Marlborough, Mass.

    Hours for Berkshire Botanical Garden’s Leonhardt Galleries are 9 to 5 p.m., seven days a week.

  • Saturday, September 30, 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm – Knockout Natives for Every Garden

    Great landscapes are brought to life with beautiful, high-performing plants that provide multi-season interest and simultaneously welcome wildlife into the garden. Discover a selection of native plants, from perennials and shrubs to small and medium-sized trees, that have strong ornamental appeal, regional adaptability, and great ecological value at the Berkshire Botanical Garden on September 30, from 1 to 3 p.m. 

    Duncan Himmelman earned his doctorate at Cornell University and taught horticultural science at the college level for 24 years. He recently retired as the education manager at Mt. Cuba Center, a public garden in Delaware devoted to native plant advocacy. He continues to enjoy teaching, designing landscapes and promoting ecologically focused gardening practices.

    $25 for BBG members, $40 for nonmembers. Register at https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/events/knockout-natives-every-garden

  • Saturday, September 30, 10:00 am – 12:00 noon – Native Evergreens

    Evergreens are an indispensable part of all home landscapes. They provide year-round color and textural interest, give structure to the garden, and offer shelter and food sources for birds. Learn the cultural requirements, ornamental qualities, and various uses of native conifers and broadleaved evergreens that will boost the aesthetic and ecological value of your property on September 30, from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m., at the Berkshire Botanical Garden.

    Duncan Himmelman earned his doctorate at Cornell University and taught horticultural science at the college level for 24 years. He recently retired as the education manager at Mt. Cuba Center, a public garden in Delaware devoted to native plant advocacy. He continues to enjoy teaching, designing landscapes and promoting ecologically focused gardening practices.

    $25 for BBG members, $40 for nonmembers. Register at https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/events/native-evergreens