Boston Flora

Tag: Brown University

  • Thursday, January 25, 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm – Full Moon Walk

    Take in the sights and sounds of the Arnold Arboretum under the light of a full moon on January 25. Facilitator Bob Linscott will lead the group through some mindfulness in nature practices as we meander along the paved road to our final nighttime viewing location on top of Bussey Hill. Meet on January 25 at 6 pm in front of the Hunnewell Building. Registration is required at https://arboretum.harvard.edu/events/event-signup/?id=82536

    Accessibility: This program will take place entirely on paved roads. We will ascend some moderate hills.  Facilitator Bob Linscott is a certified Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction teacher at Brown University and Center for Mindfulness at UMASS Memorial Health Care.

    In the event of inclement weather, registrants will be notified via email. If you have questions, please email publicprograms@arnarb.harvard.edu or call the Visitor Center desk between 10:00am and 4:00pm at (617) 384-5209.

  • Wednesday, June 21, 10:00 am – 2:00 pm Eastern – Seeing the Forest and the Trees: Exploring the Social History of the Outdoors, Online

    Join The Native Plant Trust on June 21 for a virtual spring symposium focusing on aspects of the social history of natural spaces, from nature appreciation and inspiration to notions of territory, access, and participation. We will explore and consider humanistic and scientific approaches to this subject through a transdisciplinary lens. Through these investigations, we will consider how historical actions continue to impact societal and environmental change. Here’s the program:

    10:00 a.m. Communities of Color & Access to Nature
    With Mardi Fuller

    People of Color face systemic barriers to accessing natural spaces for recreation and have limited visibility in the mainstream conservation movement. The reasons for this are layered and complex, but date back to the founding of the United States, the original sins of dispossession and slavery and the colonial imagination that positioned white people as landowners with practical and figurative freedom of movement while restricting the rights and movement of People of Color. In this talk we will explore the founding policies, cultural norms and illusions that have led to the entrenched exclusion that People of Color experience today. 

    Mardi Fuller advocates for racial equity through writing, speaking and community building. A lifelong backcountry adventurer, in January 2021 she became the first known Black person to hike all 48 of New Hampshire’s high peaks in winter. She lives in Boston where she works as a nonprofit communications director and volunteers with the local Outdoor Afro network. She writes for Outside magazine, SKI magazine, Melanin Basecamp and more. Mardi is committed to personal and corporate Black liberation and thereby, liberation for all humanity. She believes deeply in nature’s healing power.

    11:00 a.m. Native People and the World
    With Chief Don Stevens (Abenaki)

    Don Stevens will discuss how the Abenaki created a space for agroforestry work to benefit all relationships that existed. He will discuss the spirituality behind those important interpersonal relationships with the land, animals, and plants that still exist today.

    Don Stevens is Chief of the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk-Abenaki Nation and President of AHA (Abenaki Helping Abenaki.) Don is an accomplished leader, businessman, writer, and lecturer. Don has served on many boards and commission including the Vermont Commission on Native American Affairs and Attorney General Board of Racial Disparities. He helps lead the fight to obtain legal recognition, acquire land, and federal settlement agreements for the Abenaki People. He has 30 years of experience in Information Technology, Logistics, and Manufacturing strategies. Don served in the US Army, graduated from Champlain College, and holds several Honorary Doctorate Degrees.

    12:00 p.m. When Life Gives You Lemons
    With Dr. Xan Chacko

    In the early 20th century, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) funded international expeditions with the aim of finding plant specimens for introduction into the agricultural landscape and new experimental projects in hybridization. One such agricultural explorer, noted for his eponymous lemon, was Frank Nicholas Meyer, an immigrant from the Netherlands whose expeditions in Asia have brought to the United States celebrated fruit and toxic weeds. The era of these plant explorers has ended, but their material trace remains in a variety of spaces and modes of existence that have hitherto been disregarded. Reading Meyer’s letters shows the authority and discipline behind his transformation from gardener’s apprentice to professional plant collector. These photographs and plants are understudied material traces that enable historians to re-examine the means by which credit was received, given, and exchanged.

    Xan S. Chacko is a Lecturer and Director of Undergraduate Studies for the program in Science, Technology, and Society at Brown University. In 2018, Chacko received a PhD from the Cultural Studies Graduate Group at the University of California, Davis, with designated emphases in Feminist Theory & Research, and Science & Technology Studies. Chacko’s co-edited volume, Invisible Labor in Modern Science, which explores the people and practices that are crucial to the production of scientific knowledge but remain uncredited and marginalized, was published in August 2022.

    Please note: We do not make video or audio recordings of classes or programs available after the fact, because we believe education is interactive, with instructors and students building a community and culture of learning. Some programs may be recorded strictly for instructor-training purposes. Please visit this page to review this and other FAQs about our policies. $60 for NPT members, $72 for nonmembers. Register at www.nativeplanttrust.org Picture courtesy Getty Images/Thomas Barwick

  • Wednesday, November 18, 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm – Brown University Herbarium, Online

    Native Plant Trust has partnered with staff at university herbaria throughout New England to offer a special inside look at the region’s most impressive plant specimen collections. All programs will be conducted virtually. On Wednesday, November 18, tour the Brown University Herbarium with Rebecca Y. Kartzinel. $12 for NPT members, $15 for nonmembers.

    Photo: Frank Mullin

  • Monday, March 2, 12:00 noon – 1:30 pm – Seed Sovereignty and ‘Our Living Relatives’ in Native American Community Farming and Gardening

    Native heirloom seed varieties, many of which have been passed down through generations of Indigenous gardeners or re-acquired from seed banks or ally seed savers, are often discussed by Indigenous farmers as the foundation of the food sovereignty movement, and as helpful tools for education and reclaiming health. This March 2 free presentation at the Harvard Graduate School of Design explores how Native American community-based farming and gardening projects are defining heirloom or heritage seeds; why maintaining and growing out these seeds is seen as so important, and how terms like seed sovereignty should be defined and enacted. Many of the definitions seed keepers provided highlight the importance of heritage seeds for connecting them to previous generations of seed keepers; as a symbol of how tribal governments and citizens needed to better protect their cultural property; and as a token of the “relationality” that many Indigenous people feel towards aspects of their food systems. Seeds are described almost as intergenerational relatives– both as children that need nurturing and protecting, and as grandparents who contain cultural wisdom that needs guarding.  For these reasons, a growing network of Indigenous seed keepers is coalescing to not only provide education to tribal people around seed planting and saving, but also to push for the “rematriation” of Indigenous seeds from institutions who have collected or inherited them, back to their communities of origin. 

    Elizabeth Hoover is Associate Professor of American Studies at Brown University where she also serves as the Faculty Chair of Brown’s Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative steering committee. Her first book The River is In Us: Fighting Toxics in a Mohawk Community, (University of Minnesota Press, 2107) is an ethnographic exploration of Akwesasne Mohawks’ response to Superfund contamination and environmental health research.  Her second book project-in-progress From Garden Warriors to Good Seeds; Indigenizing the Local Food Movement explores Native American community based farming and gardening projects; the ways in which people are defining and enacting concepts like food sovereignty and seed sovereignty; the role of Native chefs in the food movement; and the fight against the fossil fuel industry to protect heritage foods. She also recently co-edited a book Indigenous Food Sovereignty in the United States with Devon Mihesuah (2019 University of Oklahoma Press). Elizabeth has published articles about Native American food sovereignty and seed rematriation; environmental reproductive justice in Native American communities; the cultural impact of fish advisories on Native communities; and tribal citizen science.  Outside of academia, Elizabeth serves on the executive committee of the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance (NAFSA) and the board of North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems (NATIFS).

    Anyone requiring accessibility accommodations should contact the events office at (617) 496-2414 or events@gsd.harvard.edu.

  • Thursday, November 1, 6:00 pm – Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore

    Harvey. Maria. Irma. Sandy. Katrina. We live in a time of unprecedented hurricanes and catastrophic weather events, a time when it is increasingly clear that climate change is neither imagined nor distant and that rising seas are transforming the coastline of the United States in irrevocable ways. In her new book, Rising, Elizabeth Rush guides readers through some of the places where this change has been most dramatic, from the Gulf Coast to Miami, from New York City to the Bay Area. For many of the plants, animals, and humans in these places, the options are stark: retreat or perish in place.

    Elizabeth Rush’s journalism has appeared in the Washington Post, Harper’s, Guernica, Granta, Orion, and the New Republic, among others. She is the recipient of fellowships and grants including the Howard Foundation Fellowship, awarded by Brown University; the Andrew Mellon Foundation Fellowship for Pedagogical Innovation in the Humanities; the Metcalf Institute Fellowship; and the Science in Society Journalism Award from the National Association of Science Writers. She received her MFA in nonfiction from Southern New Hampshire University and her BA from Reed College. She lives in Rhode Island, where she teaches creative nonfiction at Brown University.

    The Preservation Society of Newport County will host the author on Thursday, November 1 at 6 pm at Rosecliff, 548 Bellevue Avenue in Newport. Advance ticket purchase is required. Preservation Society Members $10 / General Public $15. You may purchase tickets at https://www.newportmansions.org/learn/adult-programs

    Image result for rising elizabeth rush

  • Sunday, March 4, 8:30 am – 4:30 pm – NOFA/RI Winter Conference

    Join Northeast Organic Farming Association of Rhode Island on Sunday, March 4 from 8:30 – 4:30 at Hope & Main, 691 Main Street in Warren, Rhode Island for a full day of workshops with speakers locally known and nationally recognized. There will be a potluck lunch.

    Featured in the award-wining documentary, A Small Good Thing, Jennifer and Pete Salinetti (pictured below) have been farming together for over 16 years and have created a thriving farm and CSA business in the Berkshires. Woven Roots Farm focuses on bio-intensive growing using no-till and environmentally sound farming practices. For the past 15 years, Jen has taught classes and has lead garden education programs throughout New England and has been actively involved in the local food movement within the Berkshires. She is currently developing an education center at their homestead in Tyringham. Jen holds a degree in Sustainable Agriculture and Herbal Studies and Pete has has a degree in horticulture.The Salinettis grow more than 75 crops, “all the usual stuff,” plus a considerable amount grown to extend their season. In recent years they have not been using tillage to grow their vegetables. Jen feels that by not disturbing the soil they have a considerable positive impact on carbon sequestration on their land. They have experienced and found a significant increase in quality and yields which has enabled them to create a viable business on a small amount land.

    Also featured is Ben Hewitt of Lazy Mill Hill Farm, speaking on The Family Cow and The Nourishing Homestead. Born and raised in northern Vermont, in a two-room cabin situated on a 165-acres, Ben knows about a thing or two about homesteading. He now lives in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom with his wife and two sons, where they run a small-scale, diversified hill farm. Their focus is producing nutrient dense foods from vibrant, mineralized soils for their family and the immediate community. He’s a freelance writer and author. He is currently working on his sixth book.

    Ryan Bouchard and Emily Schmidt of RI Mushroom Hunting Foundation will give a talk on Spring Mushroom Season. Ryan Bouchard and Emily Schmidt created the Mushroom Hunting Foundation, to educate people about safely hunting for wild mushrooms. It is a nonprofit organization that aims to make mushroom hunting better understood and well-known as part of our culture. Ryan is the author of Gourmet Mushrooms of Rhode Island, the first book and calendar about mushroom hunting in the Ocean State. Look for a new 2019 edition titled Gourmet Mushrooms of the Northeast.

    Learn about Growing Medicinal Herbs from Mary Blue of Farmacy Herbs. Since 2001, Mary has taught classes on herbalism at local businesses, hospitals, universities, conferences and to special interest groups and non profits. Her programs were so popular that Mary started developing the Farmacy’s Herbal Education and Training Program. Her programs focus on herbal medicine, health justice and nutritional healing. Mary holds a teaching associate position at the Brown University Medical School, teaching Western Herbalism to the Integrative Resident Program.

    Chuck Currie of Freedom Food Farm will discuss Onions & Garlic Grown Organically. Chuck studied biochemistry and chemistry before taking a sustainable agriculture course, visiting a small farm run by someone not much older than him, and instantly realizing he had wanted to be a farmer his entire life. After many years of farming in Vermont, Chuck moved back to Southeastern Massachusetts with the goal of providing equal access to good food in more urban communities, and to be closer to family and friends. He started Freedom Food Farm in 2012.

    Julie Rawson and Jack Kittredge of Many Hands Organic Farm will speak on Practical No-Till Carbon Farming. Julie, the Executive Director of NOFA Mass, and Jack, editor of NOFA’s “The Natural Farmer”, are in a unique position as educators and advocates of carbon farming as their farm is one of many to demonstrate that building soil makes both economic and ecological sense for farmers. Over the years, Julie has experimented with various tillage practices and can offer many insights to the challenges of moving to a no-tillage operation. Julie and Jack run a 70-person CSA, raise and sell pasture-raised eggs, broiler chickens, turkeys, beef, and pork, and operate a non-profit, Many Hands Sustainability Center.

    Rick Hermonont presents Tools for a Profitable Livestock Business. After operating a dairy farm for over 30 years, Rick converted the farm to diversified agricultural including turkeys, chicken, pork, beef, misc. cash crops and agri-tourism. For over 20 years, Rick has held sessions to train those interested in records keeping, budgeting, business planning, financial and feasibility analysis, succession planning, business benchmarking and more. Rick is a Farm Business Consultant with Farm Credit East. He holds a BS in Animal Science from the University of Connecticut.

    Finally, Dan Bensenoff, a father, farmer, forager, and fermentation freak, will give a talk entitled Garden Like a Farmer. Before working with NOFA/Mass, he worked as a vegetable grower for 4 years.

    Register at http://nofari.org/events/winter-conference/#.WohhS4JG06d. NOFA member price $50, nonmember $60.

  • Wednesday, May 3, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm – Conifer Pollination: Sex Among Evergreens

    Andrew Leslie, PhD, Assistant Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Brown University, will speak at the Weld Hill Building of the Arnold Arboretum on Wednesday, May 3 at 6:30 pm on the topic of Conifer Pollination: Sex Among Evergreens. Cones scattered on the ground beneath an evergreen; hemlock seedlings sprouting through duff…it is easy to find evidence that conifers reproduce. But how do they do it? Andrew  will explain conifer reproduction with a close look at pollen. He will begin in the Weld Hill Lecture Hall and then walk to explore the Arboretum’s conifer collection. Fee $5 Arboretum member, $10 nonmember.

    Register at my.arboretum.harvard.edu or call 617-384-5277. Image from media.growsonyou.com.

  • Wednesday, March 8, 10:00 am – How the Glaciers Affected New England’s Plants

    Wednesday, March 8, 10:00 am – How the Glaciers Affected New England’s Plants

    Today, Massachusetts is a network of houses, businesses, farms, forests, and wetlands—but how did it get to be that way? What did it look like when the Laurentide Glaciers melted 12,000 years ago? How did a state that was only 25 percent forest by 1850 come to be 64 percent forested today? As part of our ongoing series The Prehistoric Garden, The Garden Club of the Back Bay welcomes Meg Muckenhoupt to our March meeting on Wednesday, March 8 at 10 am at The College Club, 44 Commonwealth Avenue. This broad overview traces how and why the land has changed and what people thought about it—from Wampanoag King Philip to Frederick Law Olmsted to Governor Charlie Baker.

    Our speaker Meg Muckenhoupt is an environmental and travel writer. She has appeared on NPR’s Radio Boston and WCVB’s Chronicle, as well as WGBH’s Forum site. Her work has been featured in the Boston Globe, the Boston Phoenix, Boston Magazine, and the Time Out Boston guide; her book Boston Gardens and Green Spaces (Union Park Press, 2010) is a Boston Globe Local Bestseller. She currently serves as Executive Director of Community Outreach Group for Landscape Design (COGdesign).

    Meg was awarded a certificate in Field Botany by the New England Wild Flower Society and earned degrees from Harvard and Brown University. She lives in Lexington, Massachusetts. Garden Club members will receive notice of the meeting. If you are not a member but are interested in attending, please email info@bostonflora.com. Image from bostongeology.com.

  • Thursday, October 13, 7:00 pm – Water in Plain Sight: Hope for a Thirsty World

    Water scarcity is on everyone’s mind. Long taken for granted, water availability has entered the realm of economics, politics, and people’s food and lifestyle choices. But as anxiety mounts many are finding new routes to water security with key implications for food access, economic resilience, biodiversity and climate change. Judith D. Schwartz shows there are alternatives to praying for rain or sandbagging like crazy, demonstrating that we can ally with the water cycle to revive the earth and restore lush, productive landscapes. Take for instance a river in rural Zimbabwe that, thanks to restorative grazing, now flows a kilometer farther than in living memory. Or a food forest of oranges, pomegranates, and native fruit-bearing plants in Tucson, grown through harvesting urban wastewater. Or a mini-oasis in West Texas nourished by dew.

    Water in Plain Sight shares stories of water innovators and takes readers though the US and the world to find new water—water held in the soil, cycled through plants, captured as dew. We gain new insights on how water flows across the land, insights that can help us replenish water sources and make the best use of what we have. Ms. Schwartz will speak at Porter Square Books, 25 White Street in Cambridge on Thursday, October 13 at 7 pm, and will be available to sign copies of her book.

    Judith D. Schwartz is a journalist whose recent work looks at ecological restoration as a way to address environmental, economic, and social challenges. She writes on this theme for numerous publications and speaks in venues around the world. Her 2013 book Cows Save the Planet was awarded a Nautilus Book Award Silver Prize for Sustainability and is among Booklist’s Top 10 Books On Sustainability. A graduate of the Columbia Journalism School and Brown University, she lives in Vermont. For more information visit www.portersquarebooks.com.

  • Monday, April 18, 7:00 pm – Brilliant Beacons: A History of the American Lighthouse

    In a work rich in maritime lore and brimming with original historical detail, Eric Jay Dolin, the best-selling author of Leviathan, presents the most comprehensive history of American lighthouses ever written, telling the story of America through the prism of its beloved coastal sentinels. Set against the backdrop of an expanding nation, Brilliant Beacons traces the evolution of America’s lighthouse system, highlighting the political, military, and technological battles fought to illuminate the nation’s hardscrabble coastlines. In rollicking detail, Dolin treats readers to a memorable cast of characters including the penny-pinching Treasury official Stephen Pleasonton, who hamstrung the country’s efforts to adopt the revolutionary Fresnel Lens, and presents tales both humorous and harrowing of soldiers, saboteurs, ruthless egg collectors, and most importantly, the light-keepers themselves. Richly supplemented with over 100 photographs and illustrations throughout, Brilliant Beacons is the most original history of American lighthouses in many decades. Mr. Dolin will speak at Porter Square Books, 25 White Street in Cambridge, on Monday, April 18 at 7 pm, followed by a book signing.

    Eric Jay Dolin is the author of Leviathan: The History of Whaling In America, which was chosen as one of the best nonfiction books of 2007 by the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe, and also won the 2007 John Lyman Award for U. S. Maritime History; and Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America. He is also the author of When America First Met China: An Exotic History of Tea, Drugs, and Money in the Age of Sail. A graduate of Brown, Yale, and MIT, where he received his Ph.D. in environmental policy, he lives in Marblehead, Massachusetts, with his wife and two children.