This Berkshire Botanical Garden demonstration on November 12 from 10 – 1, led by Jake Levin, will take you through the process of curing at home. It begins with a brief history of curing/salting meat, including an explanation of the three products and basic techniques we will be making that day. We discuss what cuts and types of meat are best suited for different kinds of curing techniques, and why. You will get a basic overview of what curing does and why. We will discuss the three basic curing techniques and why, when, and how to use them: brining, applying a rub (generally used for smoking meats) and dry-curing. We will then go through each technique doing a hands-on demonstration for each technique with a different product (brined chicken, rubbed pork tenderloin and dry-cured salmon). We will talk about how to think about what ingredients to include when curing and how that changes for each of the three techniques. Jake will explain the ratios for salt and other ingredients. He will explain frameworks to come up with one’s own recipe by thinking about other classic spice combinations or by using recipes from other meat dishes. At the end, we will sample some of the products we made.
Jake Levin lives in the southern Berkshires with his wife and daughter on the land where he grew up. He is a whole-animal-butcher, writer and artist. When Jake is not working in his outdoor kitchen, he is on the road teaching people how to slaughter, butcher and cure meats as the “Roving Butcher.” BBG members $55, nonmembers $65. Register at https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/events/intro-home-curing
As gardeners, our work extends beyond the soil, rippling out to communities of every type. From our human neighbors, to pollinators and beyond, what and how we grow has an indelible effect on the world around us. This year, Berkshire Botanical Garden’s Rooted in Place symposium speakers will consider the impacts of the way we garden on the world around us. Both in person and online options will be available. The event takes place November 13 from 10 – 5 at the Duffin Theater in Lenox, or online. Registration ranges from $45 – $110. Visit https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/events/8th-annual-rooted-place-ecological-gardening-symposium-seeding-community-garden
Wambui Ippolito: Growing In Weeds: So many children grow up with sterile green spaces designed with their safety in mind — structured spaces that don’t allow for exploration, imagination and the sense of danger that fuels curiosity. How can landscape designers, gardeners, parents, and communities approach design and create new spaces that bring a new vitality into children’s green spaces? How do these spaces help our children to be emboldened explorers and better stewards of landscapes they inhabit?
Wambui Ippolito is a horticulturist and landscape designer and a graduate of the New York Botanical Garden’s School of Professional Horticulture. She develops programming for museums, public gardens and parks exploring the broader context of horticulture, focusing on the intersections between migration, culture, history and science. She lectures both in the USA and internationally and is the principal designer of her New York-based landscape design firm. In her former career, Wambui worked as a Development & Democracy Consultant. She is multilingual, fluent in five languages. Wambui is the founder of the BIPOC Hort Group, a multicultural organization with membership from the African American, Asian, African, Latin American and Caribbean public and private professional ornamental horticulture community.
Bringing Meadows into the Garden: With global warming and energy conservation in mind, let’s cut down on mowing and blowing and replace some of our lawns with higher grass. Page Dickey will discuss a wide range of examples showing how beautifully meadows — however small — and meadow plants can be incorporated into our gardens.
Page has been passionately gardening since her early 20s and writing about gardening, as well as designing gardens for others, for the last three decades. She has written eight books and edited another. Most of her books concentrate on aspects of garden design, such as creating gardens that reflect their settings (Gardens in the Spirit of Place and Breaking Ground) or planning gardens as extensions of our homes (Inside Out), in each case illustrated by exceptional examples around America. Duck Hill Journal and Embroidered Ground are about Duck Hill, where she lived for 34 years, about the process of making the garden there, and her thoughts on gardening in general. Page was the editor of the book Outstanding American Gardens, celebrating 25 years of the Garden Conservancy with photographs by Marion Brenner. Her new book, Uprooted: A Gardener Reflects on Beginning Again, describes leaving a beloved garden of 34 years, finding a home in the northwest corner of Connecticut and falling in love with its land. Page lectures around the country about plants and garden design. She has written many articles over the years, including in House and Garden, House Beautiful, Architectural Digest, Horticulture, Elle Décor, Garden Design, and The New York Times. The garden at Duck Hill has been featured in a variety of periodicals. She is a director emeritus of the Garden Conservancy and is one of the two founders of its Open Days Program. She also serves on the boards of Stonecrop Garden, in Cold Spring, N.Y.; Hollister House Garden, in Washington, Conn.; and The Little Guild, in Cornwall, Conn. She and her husband, Bosco Schell, are both members of the Friends of Horticulture at Wave Hill. Page was recently elected as an Honorary Member of The Garden Club of America. In 2015, Page and her husband moved to Falls Village, Conn., to an old church with 17 acres of fields and woods and a view of the Berkshire foothills. They are off on a new gardening adventure.
Agriculture as Conservation: Lessons for the Landscape: Our increasingly complex and dire environmental challenges can’t be met by wildland preservation alone. It has become abundantly clear that we must also radically change our approach to intensively human-managed landscapes. Since 2018, Stone Barns Center has been managing over 350 acres of former traditionally managed pasture land (now predominantly part of a state park preserve) using holistic regenerative methods focused around intensive, multi-species rotational livestock grazing. These efforts have been coupled with a comprehensive ecological monitoring program measuring responses in our soil health, plant biodiversity, bird biodiversity, insect biodiversity, and water quality. This presentation will share some of our preliminary discoveries from listening closely to the landscape and how those lessons could be applied by stewards of a variety of human-impacted landscapes, including the landscaping and gardening community.
Elijah Goodwin is the ecology and GIS manager at Stone Barns Center. He first joined the organization in 2019, monitoring bird populations on the pastured grasslands managed through the Conservation Action Plan with Rockefeller State Park Preserve. He previously conducted a four-year study on the wood thrush populations within the Park Preserve. Since starting an expanded role with the organization in 2020, he has been working to build out the ecological monitoring program and create and implement an ArcGIS-based database system to collect, manage, synthesize, and present the vast array of monitoring and management data collected from across the farm and the Center. Elijah has been working as a research scientist and/or science educator for over 25 years. While his primary training is as an ornithologist, he has experience working with soil, plant communities, and DNA technology . His scientific experience includes banding hawks and owls during migration in New Jersey; surveying beaver activity and bird populations in the Adirondacks; and studying bird song learning all over the Eastern Seaboard and Mexico. He holds a B.S. in wildlife biology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, an M.S.T in biology education from Boston College, and a Ph.D. in organismic and evolutionary biology, also from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. On the side: Elijah enjoys time spent in the outdoors with his wife, Katherine, and child, Spirit. He is an award-winning nature and night/light painting photographer and owns a small photography, education and ecological consulting business, Whimbrel Nature. He has served as president and a board member for the Color Camera Club of Westchester and is a science advisor for ⅔ For The Birds.
Ecosystem Approaches to Landscape Design: Building Resiliency Through Community: Today’s gardeners are faced with more challenges than ever before—a changing climate, more pressure from invasive plants and pests, and more decisions about what to put into and how to manage our landscapes. Annie White is striving to create a new culture of gardening where we move away from carefully curated gardens, work more with rather than against nature, and become better stewards of the ecosystems within and around our gardens. Annie will share her ecosystem approach to landscape design that helps build resiliency through community. Sharing case studies of her successes and failures, Annie’s talk will open your eyes to the myriad of naturally occurring processes in the landscapes and how we can steward these to create both beautiful and ecologically significant landscapes.
Annie White (below) is an Ecological Landscape Designer and the owner of Nectar Landscape Design Studio in Stowe, Vermont. She is also a full-time Lecturer of Sustainable Landscape Horticulture + Design at the University of Vermont. Annie earned an MS in Landscape Architecture from the University of Wisconsin—Madison in 2005 and a PhD in Plant & Soil Science from The University of Vermont in 2016. She is passionate about designing cutting-edge and science-based ecological landscapes at all scales—from urban backyards to rural agricultural landscapes.
Join Berkshire Botanical Garden for a tour of Mountaintop Arboretum in Tannersville N.Y on October 13 from 10 – noon. We will receive a private tour at the height of fall color. Not only will the trees be putting on a show, but fall asters will also be in their full glory. Transportation from Berkshire Botanical Garden is provided. Mountain Top Arboretum is a public garden in the Catskills dedicated to displaying and managing native plant communities of the Northeast, in addition to curating its collection of cold-hardy native and exotic trees. Its mountaintop elevation of 2,400 feet, overlooking the New York City watershed, creates a unique environment for education, research and pure enjoyment. The Arboretum trails and boardwalks connect 178 acres of plant collections, meadows, wetlands, forest and Devonian bedrock. BBG members $20, nonmembers $25. Register at https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/events/field-study-mountaintop-arboretum
Resources and time in the garden are limited, so choosing plants that offer more than one attractive feature is a smart strategy. In this October 1 Berkshire Botanical Garden class, we will discuss the best plants for late and multi-season interest and their application in the landscape. Perennials and shrubs don’t have to be done doing their job once their blooms have gone. We will explore perennials that have stunning seed heads, grasses that always offer interest and shrubs that provide berries after their blooms. The class is $20 for BBG members, $25 for nonmembers. Register at https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/events/plants-pay-their-way
Robert Clyde Anderson found his way to the Hudson Valley after a New York City career in illustration and book design. A native of Louisiana, he is a lifelong gardener and has designed and maintained gardens in nearby Columbia County as well as serving as right-hand man for eight years at the former Loomis Creek Nursery in Claverack, N.Y. From 2012 to 2017, Robert served as creative director for Pondside Nursery in Hudson, N.Y., where he helped launch the business and was the buyer for perennials, annuals, tropicals, and hard goods. He continues to serve as a client consultant and writes about plants and gardening on his personal blog, Sempervivum, at robertclydeanderson.com.
Learn how to capture the splendor of the Garden with the deep pigments that can only be found with pastels. This Berkshire Botanical Garden two part class is appropriate for beginners to intermediate students. A materials list will be provided upon registration. Students will work en plein air, learning the fundamentals of this medium before using it to render the late summer garden in all its glory. The class takes place September 29 and 30 from 10 – 3:30. Register at https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/events/garden-pastel-0
Cheryl Moore is an artist and educator who specializes in watercolor and oil pastel. With more than 40 years of teaching experience working with children and adults, she holds a BA from Rhode Island School of Design and has trained in botanical art with Janet Walsh, Charles Reid and Jack Flynn.
Autumn is a great time to assess your woody plants for shape, structure and health. This Berkshire Botanical Garden October 1 demonstration/workshop will focus on pruning, including when, why and how to shape, renovate, train, or rejuvenate your woody plants. Learn about pruning tools, timing and specific techniques available to the home gardener. Pruning techniques for both evergreen and deciduous hedges will be covered. Dress to be outside, and bring pruners. The class runs from 10 – 1, and is $20 for BBG members, $28 for nonmembers. Register at https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/events/fall-pruning
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.
This September 24 Berkshire Botanical Garden class will focus on the identification features, ecological impacts and population trends of many of the invasive trees, shrubs, vines, and herbaceous plants that grow in forests, fields and wetlands in Berkshire County. The class will include a morning presentation and an afternoon in the field investigating invasives in a variety of habitats. We will look at both widespread and less common species of invasives.
Ted Elliman worked for many years for Native Plant Trust as a staff botanist, invasive species program manager and as an instructor of botany, ecology and conservation. His book, The Wildflowers of New England, an identification guide to much of the region’s native flora, was published in 2016 by Timber Press. In the 1980s, Ted started and directed an environmental education and wilderness adventure center in the Berkshires. Since the mid-1990s, he periodically has led natural history tours to southwest China, where he worked for two years as a teacher and forest ecologist.
For many gardeners, nothing is more fulfilling than planting bulbs in the fall for spring bloom. In this Berkshire Botanical Garden class on September 24 from 10 – noon, garden writer and horticulturist Lee Buttala plumbs the depths of the geophyte kingdom, highlighting major and minor bulbs, from snowdrops, crocuses and daffodils to species tulips, hyacinths and fritillaria, that bring the spring garden into full focus. This class explores not only the classic techniques for using bulbs in the garden, but it also shows new approaches that pair bulbs with perennials and other plantings that complement them or that take the main stage as the bulb show comes to an end. This class will explore planting methods, post-bloom care for bulbs and how to select varieties best suited to naturalizing.
Lee Buttala is the former executive director of Seed Savers Exchange, an heirloom vegetable genebank that is the only non-governmental organization storing seed at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. He has also worked for BBG and the Garden Conservancy, and currently serves as chair of the Historic Landscapes Committee of the APGA. Lee won an Emmy award for his role as a garden television producer for “Martha Stewart Living” and was the creator of PBS’s “Cultivating Life.” He is the editor of the award-winning book The Seed Garden: The Art and Practice of Saving Seed, writes a weekly garden column for The Berkshire Edge and serves on the board of Hollister House Garden in Washington, Conn. Lee studied garden design at the Chelsea Physic Garden, the New York Botanical Garden and the Kyoto School of Art and Design. He lives in Ashley Falls, Mass.
Come join Adam Wheeler, Horticulture and Container Production Manager at Broken Arrow Nursery for this fun-filled, hands-on workshop focused on the propagation of plants from stem cuttings. Participants will be given a brief lecture that examines the techniques and skills required to grow plants from cuttings. Following the lecture, participants will construct their own home propagation systems and stick a selection of cuttings. The class will take place September 24 at Hollister House Garden, 300 Nettleton Hollow Road in Washington, Connecticut (Berkshires).
Adam started work at Broken Arrow in 2004 after completing his BS degree in Urban Forestry and Landscape Horticulture at the University of Vermont. Adam manages plant propagation, container production and the acquisition and development of new plants. He is a past recipient of the Young Nursery Professional Award from the New England Nursery Association. He loves to share his passion for plants through photography and educational outreach. As a result, he lectures widely on a variety of subjects and is also an adjunct lecturer at Naugatuck Valley Community College and the Berkshire Botanical Garden. With his spare time he enjoys cultivating his eclectic collection of rare and unusual plants, rock climbing and competitive giant pumpkin growing.
Advance registration required.Limited to 15 participants. HHG members $40 Non-members $50 Register HERE.
At the end of the summer, what do you do with all those special patio plants that you have fussed over for the summer months? This September 17 Berkshire Botanical Garden class will give gardeners tricks of the trade to protect their tender perennials, house plants, woody potted specimens, and succulent collections and encourage them to thrive during the winter season. Taught by Jenna O’Brien, the class will include cultivation, fertilizing, watering, and healthcare. Learn by doing, and take home some plant companions.
Jenna O’Brien, lifetime resident of the Berkshires and owner/founder of Viridissima Horticulture & Design and the blog Berkshire Garden Style, has been working in Berkshire gardens for 25 years. Jenna specializes in container gardening, perennial garden design and care and country estate garden management.
