Boston Flora

Tag: Central Park

  • Tuesday, September 14 & Wednesday, September 15 – A Virtual Design Symposium and Flower Show: The Life and Legacy of Frederick Law Olmsted

    The Albemarle Garden Club is thrilled to announce that Charlotte Moss,  American interior designer and national author of ten books, has agreed to serve as the honorary chair of AGC’s virtual flower show: “Genius of Place: an Ode to Frederick Law Olmsted.” This virtual flower show will attract judges and exhibitors from across the country. It will offer classes in four divisions – Floral Design, Horticulture, Photography, and Botanical Arts. The two day Olmsted Forum will debut with the “Preview” of the flower show on Tuesday, September 14 from 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm Eastern time. This will be a ticketed, virtual event and feature a presentation by Charlotte Moss. Her new book, launching this spring, is entitled Flowers.  $40. Register at https://www.albemarlegardenclub.com/olmsted-forum-tickets

    On Wednesday, September 15 from 1:30 – 5:00 pm Eastern Time, with the support of the National Association of Olmsted Parks and the Center for Cultural Landscapes at University of Virginia School of Architecture, Albemarle Garden Club is planning Olmsted Forum – 2021. Building on our successful fundraising platform —Design Forum— the focus of this event will be Frederick Law Olmsted.  Olmsted is commonly known as the father of landscape design.  The Forum will survey his life and lasting legacy, providing the opportunity to learn about Olmsted from an historical perspective and how and why parks are so important today.  This event will be one of the first in a year-long line up of events organized by the NAOP leading to the bicentennial of Olmsted’s birth in May 2022. 

    Olmsted scholars and practitioners will present talks focusing on the relevance of Olmsted’s legacy in the park movement today. Speakers will include:

    • Susan Rademacher, GCA Honorary Member since 2017. Susan is the founder and President of ForeGround Consulting, LLC.  She was the Parks Curator for the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy which preserved, enhanced and promoted the Pittsburgh Parks from 2007 until 2019.  During Susan’s tenure, the Conservancy raised more than $126 million and completed 22 major projects.  Susan also served as the assistant director of the Louisville Metro Parks and the president of the Louisville Olmsted Parks Conservancy from 1991-2007.  She  has lectured and taught extensively and has authored award winning  books and articles.  She has been the recipient of a prestigious Loeb fellowship at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and received the Frederick Law Olmsted Award for Distinguished Leadership.
    • Sara Zewde,  Founding Principal of Studio Zewde.  Sara is an Assistant Professor of Practice at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.  She was named the 2014 National Olmsted Scholar by the Landscape Architecture Foundation, a 2016 Artist-in Residence at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and in 2018 was named to the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s inaugural “40 under 40” list. Most recently, she was named a 2020 United States Artists Fellow.  Sara is a registered landscape architect and holds a master’s of landscape architecture from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, a master’s of city planning from MIT, and a BA in sociology and statistics from Boston University. 
    • Sara Cedar Miller, Central Park Conservancy Historian Emerita.  Sara first joined Central Park in 1984 as a photographer. She conducts extensive research on Central Park, lectures on history and is the  author of award-winning books. She was named in 2020 a Preservation Hero by the Library of American Landscape History.

    The moderator for a live conservation with the speakers will be Elizabeth K. Meyer, FASLA.  

    Beth Meyer, the Merrill D. Peterson Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Virginia.  She founded the Center for Cultural Landscapes at UVA and is broadly recognized as one of the most influential landscape architectural critics and theorists.  She is a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects and the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture. She was awarded the Vincent Scully Prize by The National Building Museum in 2019 and in 2017 the Jot D. Carpenter Teaching Medal from the American Society of Landscape Architects. 

    The forum will also include a presentation by Albemarle Garden Club on its work at the Booker T. Washington Park in Charlottesville, Virginia. 

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    Format:  this will be a hybrid event with some components pre-recorded and available for viewing ahead of the event for ticket holders.  Speaker introductions and the panel discussion will be live and links will be provided to ticket holders. Register at https://www.albemarlegardenclub.com/olmsted-forum-tickets

  • Wednesday, April 23, 8:00 pm – Frederick Law Olmsted: Designing America

    The Emerald Necklace Conservancy will host the Boston premiere of the new film Frederick Law Olmsted: Designing America, on Wednesday, April 23 at 8 pm at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.  Tickets are $11 general admission, $9 MFA members and Emerald Necklace Conservancy donors.

    The new, one-hour documentary chronicling the career and lasting influence of America’s premiere landscape architect who designed Boston’s Emerald Necklace, New York’s Central Park, Biltmore in Asheville, NC among other public and private spaces throughout the United States. The film’s producer, Lawrence Hott will be in attendance for a brief Q & A with the audience.   The film’s co-producer is Diane Garey, and is a co-production of WNED-TV, Buffalo/Toronto and Florentine Films/Hott Productions, Inc.  Frederick Law Olmsted: Designing America has been made possible by major grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the Human Endeavor, and The Margaret L. Wendt Foundation, with funding provided by HSBC, The Tiffany & Company Foundation and The C.E. & S. Foundation. Additional support provided from The Peter C. Cornell Trust and Mass Humanities.

    Tickets can be purchased at any MFA ticket desk, by calling 1-800-440-6975, or online.

    http://www.olmstedparks.org//srv/htdocs/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/frederick-law-olmsted-647x288.jpg

  • Wednesday, March 6, 10:00 am – New York Garden Spaces

    Maureen Bovet presents the green side of the Big Apple to The Garden Club of the Back Bay on Wednesday, March 6, beginning at 10 am at The College Club, 44 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. This photo show explores the wonderful public parks of New York City. Maureen was born and raised in NYC and her passion for gardening began there. She offers a unique view of the green spaces available to be enjoyed by natives and visitors alike. The history and the horticulture of these parks are illustrated by beautiful slides from her collection. Included are Wave Hill, the garden at The Cloisters, Olmsted-designed Central Park, with its 70-year-old Conservatory Garden, the new High Line Park modeled on a Paris railroad bed reuse, The New York Botanical Garden, and Battery Park at the tip of Manhattan looking out at the Statue of Liberty. She will discuss garden design and plant cultivation along with the fascinating history of these parks. Maureen is a Museum Associate at the MFA on the Flower Team, a graduate of Wellesley College, and a former student at the Arnold Arboretum Landscape Institute and the UMass Green School.  An optional lunch ($20) will follow the presentation.  Free to GCBB and College Club members, $5 contribution requested from nonmembers.  If you wish to attend, please email info@bostonflora.com to put your name on the list.

  • Wednesday, July 11, 6:30 pm – The Pollinator’s Corridor

    This just in: “the back corner” and Mt Grace Land Conservation Trust are pleased to co-host an evening with author Aaron Birk tomorrow, July 11, beginning at 6:30 pm, at 1497 Main Street in Athol. Aaron will present and discuss the significance of his new graphic novel The Pollinator’s Corridor.

    Set in the aftermath of the 1970’s landlord fires, The Pollinator’s Corridor follows the lives of three friends who attempt to convince wild bees and butterflies to cross the Bronx by planting ‘corridors’ of native flora throughout the industrial wasteland. Connecting fragmented forests, watersheds and city parks, our heroes restore biodiversity to the blighted ghetto by uniting marginalized communities and laying the foundations of ecological health in an age of crisis and decline.

    Philadelphia-based artist Aaron Birk began work on The Pollinator’s Corridor in 2003, while employed as a forester in Central Park, NY. Along with his efforts in restoration ecology, Aaron continues to hone his craft in illustration, puppetry and acrobatics. He is sponsored by New York Foundation for the Arts, and is the recipient of two major grants from The Independence Foundation and Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts.

    The project has received over $15,000 in grant funding through three major foundations, including The Independence Foundation, The New York Foundation for the Arts, and Pennsylvania Cultural Alliance. The Pollinator’s Corridor has been featured in The Bronx Museum of the Arts, and made the cover of the Philadelphia City Paper. Audiences range from 4th graders to PHD entomologists.

     

  • Sunday, April 22, 7:00 pm – Olmsted & Whitman: The Civil War Years

    Gerry Wright has researched, written and produced a one-man show honoring the life and work of Frederick Law Olmsted, the father of landscape architecture. The play provides insights into Olmsted’s passionate vision as he played critical roles in the dynamics of slavery as a writer, Executive Secretary of the U.S. Sanitary Commission in the Civil War, and as the landscape architect for New York City’s Central Park, Boston’s Emerald Necklace, the US Capitol grounds, along with multiple plans for colleges, communities and private estates. Olmsted was a key pioneer in the movement to preserve land as national parkland, both at Yosemite and Niagara Falls.

    Olmsted’s life story, from “vagabond,” to dry goods salesman, sailor, traveler, journalist, author, publisher, executive (including a goldmine in California), to becoming the father of landscape architecture in America is both inspiring as history and reason for continued commitment in the 21st century.

    The Olmsted play has been presented at the Olmsted National Historic Site in Brookline, Boston’s 375th Anniversary Parade, Brookline’s 350th Anniversary Celebration, plus numerous communities of the Commonwealth; along with performances in Volgoda, Russia; in New York City for the 150 year anniversary of the legislation for Central Park; Olmsted Parks Conservancy in Louisville, Kentucky; and in Asheville, North Carolina. It will be presented, free, along with a second one act play, on Sunday, April 22, beginning at 7 pm at First Church of Jamaica Plain, Eliot and Center Street, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. Call 617-524-7070, or email FrederickLawOlmsted@yahoo.com.

  • Tuesday, October 18, 10:00 am – 12:30 pm (Corrected Time) – Genius of Place

    The True North Author Series, a joint presentation of the Library of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society and North Hill, opens Tuesday, October 18 at 10 am  with Justin Martin, the author of Genius of Place: The Life of Frederick Law Olmsted, a biography of the pioneering landscape architect of Central Park and 50 other green spaces around the United States. There will be no charge to attend the event, which will be held in the Hunnewell Carriage House at Elm Bank.  Martin, a former staff writer at Fortune magazine, is the author of two previous biographies, Greenspan: The Man Behind Money and Nader: Crusader, Spoiler, Icon. Martin’s bestselling Greenspan biography was chosen as a notable book by the New York Times Book Review.  To enroll and for more information, please contact North Hill Courses & Events at 781-433-6400.

  • Saturday, November 13, 9:00 am – 4:00 pm – A Horticultural History Tour

    The Massachusetts Horticultural Society is proud to announce a day-long series of lectures focused on the history of horticulture and landscape design in New England and beyond, to take place Saturday, November 13, from 9 – 4 at the Hunnewell Carriage House, Elm Bank, 900 Washington Street in Wellesley.

    The symposium will be hosted by John Furlong, FALA, emeritus director, Landscape Institute, Arnold Arboretum, faculty member of the Boston Architectural College, Distinguished Radcliffe Instructor, and recipientof the  Gold Medal and emeritus trustee, Massachusetts Horticultural Society.

    9:00 AM – Actor and interpreter Gerry Wright, as Frederick Law Olmsted, presents a biography of the landscape architect who was influenced by the natural landscapes of New England throughout his life. In 1850, at age 28, he traveled to England and was smitten with the countryside and a “democratic park” in Birkenhead. Olmsted’s two styles of landscape architecture were the creation of the “pastoral” and the “picturesque”. Beyond the creation for beauty, there was a sense of “service deeply rooted in his planning of public places.” New York City’s Central Park, Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum and the country estates on the Charles River in Wellesley and Dover are among the legacies of Olmsted and his firm.

    At 10:30, Allyson Hayward, garden historian, popular lecturer for The Garden Club of the Back Bay and author of Norah Lindsay: The Life and Art of a Garden Designer will deliver a new talk on two important New England estates, the Hunnewell estate, known as Wellesley, and Elm Bank, the Cheney/Baltzell estate which is now the home of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. Today, these landscapes reveal a layering of New England’s garden history. Ms. Hayward will take you on an armchair tour of these exciting gardens with an illustrated lecture tracing the landscapes dating from 1850 to the present. You will revel in the beauty of the initial vision of Horatio Hollis Hunnewell and his Italian Garden and Pinetum at Wellesley. The lecture will continue with images of Elm Bank from its Victorian grandeur to its transformation into a 1920s grandiose playground for Boston society, complete with theme gardens that portrayed the owners’ sense of taste and style.

    11:30 AM – David Barnett, PhD., President and CEO of Mount Auburn Cemetery, will present Wilson’s China: A Century On, published by The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, 2009. Wilson was the Arnold Arboretum’s principal plant collector from 1906 and following Sargent’s death he was appointed the self-styled ‘Keep” of the Arboretum. In addition to introducing over 1,200 plants, Wilson was a popular author and lecturer and a MassHort Trustee. His remarkable achievements are a continuing inspiration to botanists, horticulturists and landscapers. The slides have been loaned to MassHort through the courtesy of the English authors, Tony Kirkham and Mark Flanagan, respectively Head of the Arboretum at Kew and Keeper of the Royal Gardens in Windsor Great Park.

    Following lunch, at 1:30 PM, you will hear Elizabeth S. Eustis, a garden historian and guest curator, former Trustee of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, past President of the New England Wild Flower Society and faculty member of The Landscape Institute. She will speak on Romanticism in the Landscape, the subject of a 2010 exhibition that she co-curated for the Morgan Library in New York, Romantic Gardens: Art, Nature and Garden Design, with a catalog published by David R. Godine. Following the transition from formal classicism to more naturalistic garden design, Romanticism added a new emphasis on emotional and spiritual response to the landscape. The pervasive influence of Romanticism inspired artificial ruins, garden cemeteries, wild gardens, and contributed powerfully to the public parks movement. This talk will be extensively illustrated by recent photographs and historic works of art.

    3:00 PM – Meg Muckenhoupf is the author of Boston’s Gardens & Green Spaces, Union Park Press, 2010, which is a guide to the Arnold Arboretum, The Boston Public Garden, Mt. Auburn Cemetery, the Olmsted sites, Elm Bank and Boston’s historic and newer parks. Beautiful photos. You will discover delightful new spots to visit.

    Registration is $65 for MHS members, $75 for non-members, and the price includes lunch. You may register on-line at www.masshort.org/horticultural-history-tour or call 617-933-4995.

  • Friday, May 21 – Sunday, August 29 – Romantic Gardens: Nature, Art, and Landscape Design

    The pen and ink drawing that won Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux the commission to design Central Park, and a drawing by J.M.W. Turner, former owned by John Ruskin, are among the treasures in “Romantic Gardens: Nature, Art, and Landscape Design,” at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City, running from May 21 through August 29.   Scenic vistas, winding paths, bucolic meadows, and rustic retreats suitable for solitary contemplation are just a few of the alluring naturalistic features of gardens created in the Romantic spirit. Landscape designers of the Romantic era sought to express the inherent beauty of nature in opposition to the strictly symmetrical, formal gardens favored by aristocrats of the old regime.

    The Romantics looked to nature as a liberating force, a source of sensual pleasure, moral instruction, religious insight, and artistic inspiration. Eloquent exponents of these ideals, they extolled the mystical powers of nature and argued for more sympathetic styles of garden design in books, manuscripts, and drawings, now regarded as core documents of the Romantic Movement. Their cult of inner beauty and their view of the outside world dominated European thought during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

    The exhibition features approximately ninety highly influential texts and outstanding works of art, providing a compelling overview of ideas championed by the Romantics and also implemented by them in private estates and public parks in Europe and the United States, notably New York’s Central Park. If you plan to be in New York during that period, don’t miss this rare treat.  For information and hours, call 212-685-0008, or log on to www.themorgan.org.

    View of the Welbeck Estate, Humphry Repton (1752–1818), Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening (London, 1794). PML 46448. Gift of Henry S. Morgan and Junius S. Morgan, 1954. Photography, Graham Haber, 2009.