Boston Flora

Tag: Darwin

  • Wednesdays, April 6 – April 27, 1:30 pm – Unforgettable Gardens with English Heritage, Online

    The Gardens Trust is delighted to partner with English Heritage to show you some of the magnificent gardens under their stewardship, guided by the people who know them the best, their Head Gardeners. The series of four online talks will take place on Wednesdays, April 6 – 27, at 1:30 Eastern time. Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk. A link to the recorded session (available for 1 week) will be sent shortly afterwards. This ticket costs £16 for the entire course of 4 sessions or you may purchase a ticket for individual sessions, costing £5. Please note the slightly later starting time than usual. You may register through Eventbrite by clicking HERE.

    April 6 brings Audley End House and Gardens, with Louise Ellis. English Heritage’s Audley End is a grand Jacobean house with a 100-acre garden and landscape situated near the historic market town of Saffron Walden, Essex. The parkland was designed by Capability Brown, and an 1832 Parterre Garden designed by William Sawrey Gilpin has now been restored by English Heritage using appropriate plants. There is a magnificent and again recently restored 2.5 acre walled Kitchen Garden, a Pond Garden with a Pulhamite rockery, and a cascade designed by Richard Woods. Louise Ellis is head Gardener at Audley End. A post she has held since 2018. Originally in social care, Louise switched careers and studied horticulture at Brooksby Melton College in Leicestershire. Additional practical experience was gained working at Wyevale Garden Centre, a local tree and shrub nursery, and large-scale bedding grower. In 2007, after completing the National Diploma in Horticulture, she joined the team at Audley End as a Historic and Botanic Garden Training Programme trainee. Here her career has flourished, and promotions followed first as a temporary Gardener, then Senior Gardener where she focussed on the ornamental gardens at Audley End before her current position as Head Gardener.

    April 13 features Down House, with Antony O’Rourke. Down House was the home of Charles and Emma Darwin for 40 years, where they raised their large family. It was at Down House where Darwin, most known for his round the world journey of discovery on HMS Beagle and writing On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, used the grounds and surrounding countryside as his natural ‘Living Landscape Laboratory.’ He used this space to make observations and predictions at a time not known to Victorian society, and carried out meticulous observations on flowers, insectivorous plants and plant movement to discover the processes behind evolutionary theory. Antony O’Rourke is a graduate of the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. He has worked in numerous botanical gardens including the University of Bristol, Tresco Abbey in the Isles of Scilly and the Jerusalem Botanical Gardens in Israel where he managed their centre for plant introduction and propagation. Antony is a passionate plants person and has amassed extensive knowledge in the cultivation and natural history of many plant groups. His particular passion is for carnivorous plants, orchids, tropical plants and hardy herbaceous. Antony has been at Down for five years and set about a programme of restoration of Emma Darwin’s mingled border and perennial weed eradication. Says Antony, ‘I’m looking forward to presenting the garden as the Darwin’s would have known it, from the ornamental beds through to the produce grown in the kitchen garden and of course bringing to life the narrative of the experimental Mr. Darwin at Down.’

    April 20 takes us to Osborne House, pictured below, on the Isle of Wight with Toby Beasley. Osborne was the seaside home of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert; a place where they could get away from the pressures of court life and enjoy some privacy. Prince Albert was the driving force behind the improvements at Osborne, taking the property from a Georgian manor house to royal palace. He had no official royal role so he pursued his interests in architecture, agriculture, forestry, and horticulture. This talk will look at the creation of Prince Albert’s Garden and the improvements to the wider estate, the garden’s restoration in the 1990’s and our current task of ‘restoring the restoration’ now that more archive evidence has been uncovered. It will also include some of the challenges we face today in managing and presenting an historical garden and estate. Toby Beasley has spent his entire working life in horticulture. On leaving school he first worked in a nursery growing trees and shrubs and then at Torbay Parks Department. In 1996 he attended Writtle Agricultural College where he gained a BSc Degree in Horticulture, after which he worked at the University of Bristol Botanic Garden. Toby then joined English Heritage where he helped to restore the walled garden at Osborne House, one of English Heritage’s ‘Contemporary Heritage Garden’ project restorations. He was later head gardener at Down House, helping to recreate Darwin’s Garden experiments for visitors to see. In 2008 he returned as head gardener to Osborne House.

    Finally, on April 27 we go to Brodsworth Hall and Gardens, Yorkshire, with Daniel Hale. Brodsworth Hall survives as a mid-Victorian vision of a comfortable country house. The formal gardens were primarily laid out in the 1860s but had some Edwardian additions. The gardens were well maintained until the early 20th century but began to slowly decline after the First World War. By the 1990s, when English Heritage acquired the property, the garden was very neglected. This talk will discuss their restoration back to their Victorian grandeur, offering vibrant formal bedding, colourful herbaceous borders, topiary, ferns and more than 100 varieties of roses, and a fine collection of ornamental trees. Daniel Hale has been in the horticulture industry for 15 years. He gained experience as a landscape gardener in his early career before moving into historic gardens. He was acting head gardener at Wentworth Castle gardens before joining English Heritage and has been Head Gardener at Brodsworth Hall since 2015. Daniel has taken a key role in the restoration of the gardens, and loves formal gardens, making Brodsworth the perfect place for him.

  • Wednesday, October 20, 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm – The Other Darwin: Alfred Russel Wallace and the Origin of Species, Online

    Against all odds — lacking wealth, formal education, social standing or connections, Alfred Russel Wallace became the pre-eminent tropical explorer of his day, founding one entirely new discipline — evolutionary biogeography — and, with Darwin, co-founding another: evolutionary biology.

    With the 2023 centennial year of his birth approaching, join Harvard Alumni Travels online as we trace the epic trajectory of Wallace’s life and thinking, from his meteoric rise in the 19th century to his virtual eclipse in the 20th. Along the way we’ll explore the ups and downs of Wallace’s relationship with Darwin, and critically evaluate the ‘conspiracy theories’ that Wallace was wronged by Darwin and his circle over credit for the discovery of natural selection.

    Jim Costa is a long-time Research Associate in Entomology in the Museum of Comparative Zoology and HAA Travel Program Study Leader. As Executive Director of the Highlands Biological Station in Highlands, NC and Professor of Biology at Western Carolina University, he teaches biogeography and the history of evolutionary thinking. Jim has held fellowships at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, and was awarded the Wallace Medal in 2017. His books include The Annotated Origin (Harvard), Darwin’s Backyard: How Small Experiments Led to a Big Theory (W.W. Norton) and, most recently, An Alfred Russel Wallace Companion (Chicago). He is currently working on books elating to Darwin and Wallace for Princeton University Press.

    Space is limited and on a first come, first serve basis! Please note, this lecture will be recorded and shared with you. Register (free) HERE.

  • Friday, April 6, 10:00 am – Charles Darwin

    Carol Govan talks about the personal life, unusual philosophy, and important works of Charles Darwin on April 6 at 10 at the Wellesley College Botanic Garden. English naturalist, geologist and biologist Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882) rocked the world when he published his thesis that plants evolve and change to adapt to their changing habitats. He established that the vast diversity of life on Earth has all descended from common ancestors. Friends of Wellesley College Botanic Gardens, free. Nonmembers $10. Register by calling 781-283-3094 or email bcbgfriends@wellesley.edu.

  • Thursday, May 11, 6:00 pm – The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin’s Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Natural World – and Us

    Richard O. Prum, William Robertson Coe Professor of Ornithology and Head Curator of Vertebrate Zoology, Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, will speak in the Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street in Cambridge, on Thursday, May 11 at 6 pm as part of the Harvard Museum of Natural History’s Evolution Matters Lecture Series. Can adaptation by natural selection truly account for everything we see in nature? How do animal mating displays and mate choice drive evolutionary change? What insights can they offer about the evolution of human sexuality? Drawing from his new book, The Evolution of Beauty, Richard Prum will consider Charles Darwin’s long-neglected theory of sexual selection, in which the act of choosing a mate for purely aesthetic reasons is an independent engine of evolutionary change. In a reimagining of how evolutionary forces work, Prum will reveal how mating preferences—what Darwin termed “the taste for the beautiful”—create the extraordinary range of ornament in the natural world.

    The Evolution Matters Lecture Series is supported by a generous gift from Drs. Herman and Joan Suit. Free and open to the public.

  • Friday, April 10, 6:45 pm – Mutants in Our Midst: Darwin, Horticulture, and Evolution

    The New England Botanical Club is pleased to announce that NEBC Distinguished Speaker Dr. Ned Friedman, Director of the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, will speak on Friday, April 10, beginning at 6:45 pm in the Haller Lecture Hall, Room 102, Geological Museum, 24 Oxford Street in Cambridge, on the topic Mutants in Our Midst: Darwin, Horticulture, and Evolution.  This lecture was sold out when presented by Dr. Friedman as part of the Arnold Arboretum Director’s Lecture Series, and this presentation is free and open to the public.  For more information visit www.rhodora.org.

  • Monday, January 12, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – Mutants in Our Midst: Darwin, Horticulture, and Evolution

    Each year, Director William (Ned) Friedman and the Arnold Arboretum present the Director’s Lecture Series, featuring nationally recognized experts addressing an array of topics related to Earth’s biodiversity and evolutionary history, the environment, conservation biology, and key social issues associated with current science. Lectures take place in the Hunnewell Building Lecture Hall. Parking will be available in front of the building and along the Arborway. Free. Member-only registration through December 15; general registration after December 15.

    Ned Friedman, PhD, Director of the Arnold Arboretum and Arnold Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University will present the first talk on Monday, January 12, from 7 – 8:30. Although often overlooked as such, many of the horticultural varieties that we grow in gardens are premier examples of the ongoing process of evolution: random mutations that lead, on the rarest of occasions, to novel and desirable biological characteristics. Throughout his life, Charles Darwin (as well as other nineteenth century evolutionists) looked to the world of horticulture and plant domestication to gain critical insights into the generation of variation and the process of natural selection that underlie evolutionary change. Come see how horticulture played a central role in laying the foundations for discovering evidence of evolution as well as the process of evolution. Professor Ned Friedman will also argue that modern botanical gardens can and should become a leading force for the promotion of evolutionary thinking by highlighting the very kinds of mutations observed and described by Darwin as well as new examples of monstrosities and mutants that continue to be found in the Arboretum and other living collections around the world. Image from www.thunderboltkids.co.za.

    Register online at http://my.arboretum.harvard.edu/Info.aspx?EventID=1.

  • Wednesday, April 2, 6:00 pm – From Darwin to DNA: The Genetic Basis of Animal Behavior

    How do certain animals, such as wild mice, evolve their most critical survival traits, including skin coloration, body shape, and the ability to dig elaborate tunnels in order to hide from predators? How fast can successive generations acquire visible traits, and how do animal genes and behavior interact? Evolutionary geneticist Hopi Hoekstra, Professor of Zoology and Curator of Mammals at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, and colleagues have combined extensive field research with the latest techniques in DNA analysis to unlock one of biology’s most elusive secrets: the genes that control behavior. She will speak on Wednesday, April 2, beginning at 6 pm at the Geological Lecture Hall of the Harvard Museum of Natural History, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge. The Evolution Matters Lecture Series is supported by a generous gift from Drs. Herman and Joan Suit. Free and open to the public. Free event parking in the 52 Oxford Street Garage.

    https://www.mcb.harvard.edu/mcb_files/media/editor_uploads/2013/05/2013_hoekstra_hhmi.jpg

  • Sunday, May 22 – Tuesday, May 31 – Gracious Gardens & Architectural Gems of London, Sussex & Hampshire

    Yale Educational Travel announces an exclusive trip, Gracious Gardens & Architectural Gems of London, Sussex & Hampshire, featuring Yale Faculty Linda Peterson and Fred Strebeigh, May 22 to May 31. This unforgettable journey through the English countryside in late spring, when glorious gardens are in full bloom, will provide a privileged look at great houses built by the English aristocracy – many carefully restored by the families who live there.  You will, by special arrangement, attend the celebrated Chelsea Flower Show on Members’ Day, a visit to Down House, where Charles Darwin worked on his scientific theories and wrote On the Origin of Species, and 17th century Bateman’s, home to Rudyard Kipling from 1902 – 1936..  Then, travel south to East Sussex, including a visit to Scotney Castle, whose gardens are renowned for spectacular displays of rhododendrons and azaleas.  In Hampshire, you will stop en route at Petworth House, a late 17th century mansion housing a fine collection of works by Turner and Van Dyck.  You will also visit Firle Place, an intriguing mix of Tudor and Georgian style, and Highclere Castle, a Victorian home in high Elizabethan style, with a park designed by Capability Brown, and Osborne House (below) on the Isle of Wight.  $6,995 per person, double occupancy, with a single supplement of $1,125. For a brochure and complete information, call 203-432-1952, or make a reservation on line at www.YaleEdTravel.org/england11.

  • Saturday, February 5, 10:00 am – 3:00 pm – Darwinian Botany

    As a young man, Charles Darwin traveled on the HMS Beagle to the Galapagos archipelago, and later in his life offered to the scientific world the theory of evolution by natural selection. Darwin was also an expert botanist, and in his writings described pollination mechanisms, heterostyly, and insectivory. Join Darwinian student and botanist Dr. Judith Sumner at Garden in the Woods in Framingham, Massachusetts on Saturday, February 5, from 10 – 3, for this exploration of the life and botanical work of Charles Darwin. Discuss Darwin’s life, his voyage (1831-36) on the HMS Beagle, and his various botanical works. The course includes hands-on demonstrations and observations of plants that fascinated Darwin, as well as a traditional English tea to celebrate the anniversary of his birth on February 12. Co-sponsored by The New England Wild Flower Society and the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. $70 for members of either sponsoring organization, $84 for non-members. www.newfs.org.

  • Monday, January 31, 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm – A Darwinian Look at Darwin’s Evolutionist Ancestors

    NEW DATE: The Arnold Arboretum presents an exciting lecture series in 2011: the new Director’s Lecture Series at the Hunnewell Lecture Hall, 125 The Arborway in Boston.  The lectures are free but advance registration is required.

    On Monday, January 31, from 6:30 – 8:30 pm, Ned Friedman, newly-appointed  Director of the Arnold Arboretum, will speak on A Darwinian Look at Darwin’s Evolutionist Ancestors. Is Darwin truly deserving of his place in history? Examine the question of what set Darwin apart from the dozens of theorists who preceded him. For over a century before the publication of On the Origin of Species, naturalists, theologians, atheists, horticulturalists, medical practitioners, poets, and philosophers had advanced evolutionary concepts for the diversification of life through descent with modification. The early history of evolutionary thought will be examined through the lens of Charles Darwin’s highly personal views of his evolutionist ancestors.

    Contact Pamela Thompson, 617.384.5277. http://calendar.arboretum.harvard.edu/index.php