Brooklyn Bridge Park

Saturday, October 12, 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm – Creating the Brooklyn Bridge Park

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On October 12 at 3 pm, enjoy a talk at The Polly Hill Arboretum Far Barn, 795 State Road in West Tisbury. Brooklyn Bridge Park, 1.3 miles long and more than 20 years in the making, has transformed an abandoned waterfront into a public landscape visited by 5 million people a year. Combining the perspectives of designer and horticulturalist, Michael Van Valkenburgh and Rashid Poulson will discuss the planning, realization, and stewardship of the landscape with a special focus on planting design and ecology, emphasizing the continued collaboration between the firm and park operations team. The conversation marks the arrival Brooklyn Bridge Park, a visual biography of the landscape by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates released by the Monacelli Press in early 2024. $20 ($10 for PHA members). Please pre-register at https://www.pollyhillarboretum.org/event/creating-the-brooklyn-bridge-park/?instance_id=2439

Thursday, April 21, 2:00 pm – Ecological Horticulture in an Evolving World, Online

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Horticulture is a practice that is as ancient as civilization. But modern ecological and political drivers demand we adapt to these changing times. Gardeners now want to help the environment with their practice, rather than dominate it; with that, many of our gardening techniques are falling into question. Why do we mulch? Why do we cut back in spring? And where do we learn new strategies for stewardship in a rapidly evolving world? On April 21, join the Garden Conservancy to find out more.

Rebecca McMackin has been trying to answer these questions as well as asking many more. Through her work at Brooklyn Bridge Park and in private practice, she works to develop and share techniques for ecological horticulture: a field which centers the dynamics among plants, animals, and fungi, while still creating and maintaining aesthetically stunning gardens. In this presentation, Rebecca will discuss the evolution of this work, as well as the new ways gardeners share knowledge in this rapidly developing field. Rebecca is an ecologically obsessed horticulturist and garden designer. She has spent the last decade as Director of Horticulture of Brooklyn Bridge Park, where she manages 85 acres of diverse parkland organically and with an eye towards habitat creation for birds, butterflies, and soil microorganisms.

DATE AND TIME
Thursday, April 21
2:00 p.m. Eastern

LOCATION
Live on Zoom

REGISTRATION
$5 Garden Conservancy Members
$15 General Admission 

A recording of this webinar will be sent to all registrants a few days after the event. We encourage you to register, even if you cannot attend the live webinar.

Members of the Frank & Anne Cabot Society for Planned Giving have complimentary access to Garden Conservancy webinars. All Cabot Society members will automatically be sent the link to participate on the morning of the webinar. For more information about the Cabot Society, please contact Sarah Parker at sparker@gardenconservancy.org or 845.424.6500, ext. 214.

Sunday, November 14, 10:00 am – 5:00 pm – 7th Annual Rooted in Place Ecological Gardening Symposium

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The 7th Annual Rooted in Place Ecological Gardening Symposium, Growing Resilience: The Climate Crisis, Our Gardens and Communities will be held at Berkshire Botanical Garden on November 14 from 10 – 5. BBG members $95, Nonmembers $115, and Students $65. Register at https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/events/7th-annual-rooted-place-ecological-gardening-symposium

Speakers and topics are detailed below:

How A Place-Based Garden Culture of Care Strengthens Places and Their People: This program will explore the philosophy of the Cultivating Place podcast that gardens/gardeners are powerful spaces and agents for potentially positive change in our world, helping to address challenges as wide ranging as climate change, resource use, habitat and biodiversity loss, cultural polarization/marginalization, and individual and communal health and being, as exemplified by the important guests on  Jennifer Jewell’s podcasts and the innovative place-based gardens that celebrate specifically western landscapes in the book Under Western Skies. Jennifer Jewell is the host of the national, award-winning weekly public radio program and podcast Cultivating Place: Conversations on Natural History and the Human Impulse to Garden. She is the author of award-winning The Earth in Her Hands, 75 Extraordinary Women Working in the World of Plants (Timber Press 2020), and Under Western Skies, Visionary Gardens from the Rockies to the Pacific Coast (Timber Press 2021). Her greatest passion is elevating the way we think and talk about gardening, the empowerment of gardeners, and the possibility inherent in the intersections between our places, our cultures, and our gardens. 

Lessons in Built Ecology Brooklyn Bridge Park, an 85 acre, organic park in the middle of New York City, was created with ecology in mind. The park’s award-winning piers include top-notch recreation and entertainment — from opera to outdoor films, all of it beautifully designed. But the piers also contain native woodlands, freshwater wetlands, salt marshes, and numerous meadows. These areas echo native ecosystems and are managed with an emphasis on wildlife habitat. This talk will encompass the many ecological strategies employed by the park’s designers, as well as the management techniques park staff have developed to cultivate biodiversity. Topics will include pragmatic strategies for encouraging ecologically beneficial landscapes. 

Rebecca McMackin is an ecologically obsessed horticulturist. She is Director of Horticulture at Brooklyn Bridge Park where she oversees 85 acres of diverse parkland. These meadows, forests, salt marshes and freshwater wetlands are managed with the dual purposes of cultivating, beautifying and encouraging biodiversity, all within the largest city in the country. In her imaginary free time, Rebecca lectures, writes, and designs the occasional garden. Her writing has been published in The New York Times, the Landscape Institute, and the Ecological Landscape Alliance. 

Sam Hoadley is the Horticultural Research Manager at Mt. Cuba Center. His work includes evaluating native plant species, old and new cultivars, as well as hybrids in Mt. Cuba’s Trial Garden. Using data collected and analyzed over a three-year period, a research report is published outlining top-performing plants for the Mid-Atlantic region. This information is designed to inform consumers and home gardeners as well as professionals in the horticultural and nursery industries about the ecological benefits and attributes of the native plants in our trials. His presentation will focus on knockout native species and cultivars researched at the Mt Cuba Center. Sam received a degree in Sustainable Landscape Horticulture from the University of Vermont.

Pete Grima is a Service Forester with the Massachusetts Department of Conservation & Recreation covering northern Berkshire County, where he helps landowners make informed decisions about their forests.  He is also an avid botanist responsible for many new and novel botanical discoveries in the Berkshires, and he is a co-author of the recently published Vascular Flora of Franklin County, Massachusetts. Using a recent landowner interaction from his Service Forestry work as a case study, Pete’s presentation will describe the process of envisioning a future forest to be planted in an old field, with a mind towards carbon storage and climate resilience.

Wednesday, April 15, 1:00 pm – Webinar: Pollinator Ecology

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On Wednesdays at noon, Ecological Landscape Alliance invites you on A Walk in the Garden, a virtual weekly diversion as we adjust to the restrictions that the COVID-19 virus has forced onto our lives.

Presented as free webinars to gardeners everywhere, these presentations invite garden and landscape experts to share gardening tips, beautiful images, and inspiration. We hope anyone who is isolating, quarantining, or sheltering-in-place will find comfort and collective strength with a communal walk in the garden.

On April 15 at 1 pm EDT, join Rebecca McMackin on a virtual walk on Pollinator Ecology. Many of the plants you grow have, at the very least, one pollinator partner who helped shape the evolution of their flowers and distribution. From bees, to butterflies, to birds, to bats, pollinating animals are responsible for much of the fruits and vegetables we rely on. On this virtual walk, you will learn the basics of pollination ecology as well as how to maximize food production by encouraging both native and exotic pollinators. Yes, we will discuss honey bees, but we will also cover the exciting world of tomato buzz pollination, the rotten world of fly pollination, and the beautiful life of the squash bee. By the end of the day, you will be able to “read” flowers and come to know the true desires of the organisms you cultivate. Register at www.ecolandscaping.org.

Rebecca McMackin is Director of Horticulture at Brooklyn Bridge Park in Brooklyn, NY. She is an ecologically obsessed horticulturist and garden designer. By day, she is the Director of Horticulture for Brooklyn Bridge Park, where she manages 85 acres of diverse parkland organically and with an eye towards habitat creation for birds, butterflies, and soil microorganisms. In her imaginary free time, Rebecca writes about landscape management and pollination ecology, as well as designs the occasional garden. She sits on the boards of Metro Hort Group and Ecological Landscape Alliance, and is a NOFA-certified Landcare Professional as well as an ISA-certified Arborist.

Friday – Saturday, September 23 & 24 – Horticultural Bright Lights: The Future of Gardening

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The JC Raulston Arboretum at NC State University’s 40th Anniversary Symposium will take a look forward to what the next 40 years have in store for the gardening world. From landscapes that are in harmony with the natural world and cultivating edibles native to our own woodlands to breeding and collecting plants suited to 21st century landscapes, we’ll hear from some of the brightest lights of the next generation of horticultural heavyweights including Matthew Pottage the youngest ever curator for the Royal Horticulture Society’s crown jewel garden— Wisley, one of the premiere display gardens not only in England but anywhere in the world.

Other speakers include cutting edge plant breeder, Hans Hansen; ecological designer, Rebecca McMackin; taxonomist/explorer, Aaron Floden; landscape designer, Claudia West; assistant professor, Jared Barnes, Ph.D.; and North Carolina’s own maple nuts, Matt and Tim Nichols.

One presentation is entitled Propagating Horticulturists: A Cultural Guide for Cultivating the Future of Horticulture.
Propagation is a cornerstone of horticulture. We are incredible propagators of plants, but a challenge we face is how do we propagate horticulturists? In this timely and lively talk, Jared Barnes, current horticulture professor at Stephen F. Austin State University, will discuss the similarities in how we sow seeds and how we expose youth to horticulture, in how we take cuttings and how we help amateur gardeners continue to take root, and in how we graft two different species together and how we bridge a connection between plants and other hobbies and interests. This NC State alumnus will also show in this talk that by using this language and mind-frame along with our understanding of the art, science, and craft of propagation, we can connect with more people and develop a cultural guide for propagating horticulturists.

Exploration, Discovery, and Bridging Botany and Horticulture is the topic of Aaron Floden, Ph.D. Explorations in eastern North America and the less-explored parts of Asia reveal novelties in the scientific realm from both regions with a strong focus on plants with horticultural interest. A strong focus will be Polygonatum and related genera, some North American natives, and numerous genera from Asia where we’ll visit the least explored part of the Himalaya in Arunachal Pradesh, India, the Dabashan in central China, and the north of Vietnam on the border with China.

International Maples of Mystery is next. Japanese maples selections are made all over the world. Matt and Tim Nichols will discuss unique Japanese maple selections made from all over the world with a focus on their most recent plant excursion to Japan which included wild collecting maples, visits of Tsukasa Maple, Kobayashi Nursery, Kobayashi Momiji En, World Maple Park, and much more.

Wisley — The New Chapter for the Flagship Garden of the Royal Horticultural Society is presented by Matthew Pottage. Wisley has been gardened for over 100 years and boasts the largest collection of cultivated plants in the United Kingdom. Attracting over one million visitors per year, Wisley is at the dawn of a new chapter with over £60 million pounds worth of investment planned over the next ten years, coupled with the appointment of Matthew Pottage, the youngest curator in the Society’s history.

Planting in a Post-wild World will explore how we live in a global city and few wild places remain in today’s world. Planting designers have the opportunity and responsibility to bring wildness and ecological value back into our landscape. This challenge requires a new form of planting design that works with natural principles and marries horticulture with ecology. Join Claudia West as we explore how native plants will fit into our future landscape and how plant community based design strategies can help you meet aesthetic and ecological goals during your next planting project.

Hans Hansen will speak on New Plant Development at Walters Gardens. Hans Hansen is the director of new plant development and plant breeding at Walters Gardens in Zeeland, Michigan (pictured below) – a position he ‘s had for seven years. Before Walters Gardens, Hans was the director of research and development at Shady Oaks Nursery in Waseca, Minnesota, for over 15 years. Hans ‘s current breeding projects include refining U.S. natives for more ornamental and useful urban garden use. His most extensive projects include Baptisia, Monarda, Phlox, ×Mangaves, Heuchera, and Hibiscus breeding programs.

Also on the program will be Rebecca McMackin, Director of Horticulture for Brooklyn Bridge Park, along with an auction and book sale. Call Chris Glenn at 919-513-7005 to register, and visit www.jcra.ncsu.edu. Program registration is $180, which does not include transportation or hotel. The event will be held in the Ruby C. McSwain Educatin Center, 4415 Beryl Road, Raleigh, North Carolina.

Wednesday, September 18, 7:30 pm – Brooklyn Bridge Park: Promoting Diversity in the Concrete Jungle

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Join Rebecca McMackin, Director of Horticulture for Brooklyn Bridge Park, at the Polly Hill Arboretum in West Tisbury on Wednesday, September 18 at 7:30 to learn about a park purposely created with ecology in mind. This 85-acre post-industrial waterfront site stretches 1.3 miles along Brooklyn’s East River edge, built in-part on old commercial piers. The park’s award winning piers include top notch recreation, from opera to outdoor films, expansive organic lawns, and fantastic food, all of it beautifully designed. But the piers also contain native woodlands, freshwater wetlands, salt marshes, and numerous meadows. These areas closely mimic native ecosystems and are managed with an emphasis on wildlife habitat.

McMackin will discuss the many ecological strategies employed by the park’s designers, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, as well as the management techniques currently in use to cultivate biodiverse parkland. Pragmatic strategies for encouraging ecologically beneficial landscapes will be enumerated.  $10/$5 for PHA members.

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Thursday, March 14, 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm – Brooklyn’s Resilient Edge: The Transformation of Industrial Waterfront into Brooklyn Bridge Park

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Brooklyn’s Resilient Edge: The Transformation of Industrial Waterfront into Brooklyn Bridge Park, is a lecture by Nate Trevethan, Senior Associate at Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates and senior design team member for Brooklyn Bridge Park, sponsored by the Friends of Fairsted, to take place March 14, 2013, with reception at 6:00 pm, lecture at 7:00 pm, at Wheelock College, 43 Hawes Street, Brookline. Free and open to the public. Seating is limited. Reservations are requested: e-mail friendsoffairsted@gmail.com or leave a message at 617-566-1689, ext. 265.

Ambitious and visionary goals guide the creative team in their transformation of Brooklyn’s former industrial waterfront into a new public landscape of diverse recreational, economic, ecological and social possibilities: to preserve the historic urban context and the way it is experienced in this dramatic waterfront site. The award-winning design by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates gives voice to physical history, geography, industry, urbanity and evolving recreational needs as it transforms a challenging waterfront into a sustainable public park of monumental vistas and diverse landscape experiences.

Friends of Fairsted gratefully acknowledges the support of the following co-sponsors: National Park Service, Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site; Wheelock College; Arnold Arboretum; Boston Society of Landscape Architects; Brookline GreenSpace Alliance; Brookline Historical Society; Charles River Conservancy; Emerald Necklace Conservancy; The Fenway Alliance; Friends of Mount Auburn Cemetery; Friends of the Muddy River; Friends of the Public Garden; High Street Hill Association; Historic New England; The Landscape Institute of the Boston Architectural College; Library of American Landscape History; Massachusetts Historical Society; Muddy River Restoration Project Maintenance and Management Oversight Committee; National Association for Olmsted Parks; New England Landscape Design and History Association; Society of Architectural Historians, New England Chapter; The Trustees of Reservations.

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Wednesday, February 27 – Thursday, February 28 – Sustainable Habitats: Making Ecological Connections

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The Ecological Landscaping Association presents the 19th Annual Conference, Sustainable Habitats: Making Ecological Connections on February 27 and 28 at MassMutual Center, 1277 Main Street in Springfield.  Presentations will cover topics such as essential soil biology and soil improvements, water management, edible landscapes, phytomediation, carbon sequestration, and more.  To review the brochure and use the online registration, or to download a mail-in registration form, visit www.ecolandscaping.org.  You may also call Penny Lewis at 617-436-5838. The Keynote Dinner on February 27 will feature Jeff Lowenfels, author of Teaming with Microbes, A Gardener’s Guide to the Soil Food Web, speaking on How Plants Eat: The Wonder of Root Biology.  On February 28, the dinner speaker will be Rebecca McMackin, Park Horticulturist, Brooklyn Bridge Park, speaking on Brooklyn Bridge Park: Promoting Biodiversity in the Concrete Jungle.