Spend the evening with Anthony Archer Wills on Friday, August 27, beginning at 7 pm, for an illustrated lecture entitled “The Art of Water in the Garden,” sponsored by Garden Design School.  The event will take place at Elm Bank, home of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society in Wellesley, and will be a terrific “prequel” to The Garden Club of the Back Bay’s “Water” themed lecture series for 2010/2011.   Mr. Wills is a world-renowned water garden designer, true artisan, and pioneer.  Anthony Archer-Wills works earth and water to create environments that indulge the imagination, and delight the senses.

Inspired as a schoolchild watching water well up from the ground in the woods, and influenced by Roberto Burle Marx of Brazil, who used architectural materials, curving water shapes and mass plantings on a large scale to “paint the landscape,” Anthony began designing water gardens in the 1960s.

A true pioneer and artisan, he developed new water gardening techniques while completing his first large-scale projects for Safari Parks in England, and Bear Park in Scotland. By the mid-1970s, his techniques were adopted worldwide as the industry standard for building water gardens.

Anthony has gone on to create more than 2,000 water features in Great Britain, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Switzerland, South America, Argentina and Turkey, as well as the United States.

He is the author of The Water Gardener, Water Power and Designing Water Gardens, which have been published in five languages. Pre-registration is required.  Admission is $75.  For more information, or to register, call 513-867-0437, email info@gardendesignschool.com, or log on to www.gardendesignschool.com.