Boston Flora

Tag: Douglas Tallamy

  • Wednesday, October 30, 6:00 pm – Massachusetts Horticultural Society Honorary Medals Dinner

    The Board of Trustees of Massachusetts Horticultural Society (MHS) has announced its 2024 Honorary Medals recipients. The 7 winners will be celebrated at the 121st Honorary Medals Dinner at the Garden at Elm Bank in Wellesley, MA on October 30, 2024. This year, MHS will continue a 193-year tradition of awarding medals to individuals and organizations for their contributions to excellence in horticulture for the public good.


    Douglas W. Tallamy will be awarded the George Robert White Medal of Honor, MHS’s highest honor, for eminent
    service in the field of horticulture, and will deliver the keynote speech during the ceremony. A New York Times bestselling
    author, his books, including Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard (2020) and The
    Nature of Oaks: The Rich Ecology of Our Most Essential Native Trees     (2021), have delivered the importance of horticultural
    conservation to homes across the world. As a professor in University of Delaware’s Department of Entomology and
    Wildlife Ecology, he advocates for smaller lawns, native plants, and habitats for native species. His advocacy work is echoed
    through his founding of Homegrown National Park, a grassroots organization that encourages everyone to grow native
    plants.


    Matthew Cunningham will receive the Thomas Roland Medal for exceptional skill in horticulture and lectures.
    Founding Principal of Matthew Cunningham Landscape Design LLC, he is an award-winning and nationally recognized
    landscape architect.


    Gold Medals for eminent horticultural accomplishments will be awarded to David Barnett (President and CEO
    Emeritus, Mount Auburn Cemetery) and Tom Ryan (Senior Principal and Owner, Ryan Associates Landscape Architecture
    and Planning). Patrick Chassé (landscape architect), Dr. Barbara E. Millen (Board Chair, Center for Plant Conservation;
    Trustee, Massachusetts Horticultural Society and a long time Board Member of The Boston Committee of the GCA), and Murphy Westwood, PhD (Vice President of Science and Conservation, The Morton Arboretum) will receive Silver Medals for their noteworthy service in horticulture. More details about each awardee and their recognition will become available at https://www.masshort.org/honorary-medals/.


    The 121st Honorary Medals Dinner will take place Wednesday, October 30, 2024 at 6 pm at Massachusetts
    Horticultural Society’s Garden at Elm Bank. The dinner will be preceded by a day-long symposium, featuring lectures by
    medal winners Doug Tallamy, Matt Cunningham, Tom Ryan, and Murphy Westwood. Tickets for the awards ceremony
    including dinner and drinks are $180; symposium tickets are $250 for General Admission and $200 for Boston Society of
    Landscape Architects and MHS members. Proceeds benefit excellence in horticulture at MHS. For event information and
    to purchase tickets when they are released, please visit https://www.masshort.org/honorary-medals/

  • Sundays, September 11 – October 2, 10:00 am – 12:00 noon – Gardening with Native Plants, Online

    Learn how native plants enhance gardens and augment biodiversity. Study native herbaceous and woody plants: their identification, habitat, and culture. Hear about the significance of woodland soils, and how to promote a healthy environment to support spring ephemerals, summer perennials, shrubs, and trees. This New York Botanical Garden series of online lectures takes place Sundays, September 11 – October 2 from 10 – noon, taught by Kim Eierman. There are two required texts: Donald J. Leopold’s Native Plants of the Northeast: A Guide for Gardening and Conservation (Timber Press, 2005) and Douglas Tallamy’s Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants (Timber Press, 2009). The series is $215 for NYBG members, $239 for nonmembers. Register HERE.

    Kim Eierman earned a Certificate in Horticulture from the Botanical Garden and is the founder of EcoBeneficial!, a horticulture communications and consulting company promoting ecological landscapes and the use of native plants. Kim is a Certified Horticulturist through ASHS, an Accredited Organic Landcare Professional, a Master Gardener, a Master Naturalist and a member of the Native Plant Center Steering Committee.

  • Saturday and Sunday, September 23 and 24, 8:30 am – 4:30 pm – Environmental Studies School

    The Garden Club Federation of Massachusetts, Inc. will offer Series 5, Course 2: The Living Earth – Land & Related Issues, on Saturday and Sunday, September 23 & 24, at UTEC, Inc., 35 Warren Street in Lowell.  Subjects to be covered are Ecology, Plants, Environmental Science, Wildlife, Earth Stewardship, Source Reduction of Pollutants, Coastal Zone Management, and Field Study of the Land.  Recommended reading is Bringing Nature Home by Douglas W. Tallamy, and Living in the Environment by G. Tyler Miller, Jr., 7th Edition or later. For more information contact Leigh Cameron, ESS Chairman, at leighb.cameron@gmail.com.

  • Thursday, June 10, 6:30 pm – An Evening with National Expert Douglas Tallamy

    Douglas Tallamy’s book, Bringing Nature Home, has captured the nation’s attention since it was first released two years ago. Since then, he has been in demand all over the country, speaking to more than 600 different audiences—at venues ranging from the American Society of Landscape Architects National Conference, to the Hummingbird Festival in Mississippi, to the Tyler Arboretum in Pennsylvania, and many more. He also has been featured on National Public Radio’s Science Friday and on other media programs.

    As Chair of the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware, he has done groundbreaking work on the role of insects as intermediaries in the food web, discovering the extent to which exotic plants, even if they are not invasive, host relatively few insects. His work reveals how important it is to restore native plant communities, if we are to reverse the declines in migrating songbirds, butterfly populations, and biodiversity as a whole. Tallamy makes an urgent plea about the importance of native plants to our landscapes, and indeed, to our survival. And he embraces the importance of land stewardship throughout urban and suburban America as critical components of this effort.

    This event, taking place Thursday, June 10,  is co-sponsored by the Cambridge Plant & Garden Club, the Ecological Landscaping Association, and the Friends of the Cambridge Public Library. The talk will begin at 6:30 at the Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway in Cambridge, and will be followed by a reception at 8 pm with book signing. The event is free and open to all. For more information, log on to www.grownativecambridge.org.

    http://www.plantanative.com/images/douglas-tallamy.jpg

  • Wednesday, September 9, 1:00 pm – Gardening For Wildlife

    Now in its third year, the American Horticultural Society’s “webinar” program , offered exclusively to members, is a great way to learn from and interact with leading horticultural experts without having to leave home.  Past presenters include Julie Moir Messervy, Norm Lownds, and Scott Calhoun.  On Wednesday, September 9, beginning at 1 pm, Douglas Tallamy, author of the highly aclaimed Bringing Nature Home, will present “Gardening for Wildlife.”  The seminar will consist of an online slide show with the presenter’s voice streamed through your computer’s speakers, or delivered by telephone.

    Tallamy takes an obvious observation—wildlife is threatened when suburban development encroaches on once wild lands—and weds it to a novel one: that beneficial insects are being deprived of essential food resources when suburban gardeners exclusively utilize nonnative plant material. Such an imbalance, Tallamy declares, can lead to a weakened food chain that will no longer be able to support birds and other animal life. Once embraced only by members of the counterculture, the idea of gardening with native plants has been landscape design’s poor stepchild, thought to involve weeds and other plants too unattractive for pristine suburban enclaves. Not so, says Tallamy, who presents compelling arguments for aesthetically pleasing, ecologically healthy gardening. With nothing less than the future of North American biodiversity at stake, Tallamy imparts an encouraging message: it’s not too late to save the ecosystem-sustaining matrix of insects and animals, and the solution is as easy as replacing alien plants with natives. After the presentation, which lasts about an hour, the speaker will take questions from participants via a chat box.  Space is limited so registration prior to the event is required.  A high-speed Internet connection is strongly recommended for an optimum viewing experience.  For more information on registering and joining the American Horticultural Society, log on to www.ahs.org.

    Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens

  • Wednesday, August 12, 7:30 p.m. – Bringing Nature Home

    Can gardeners make a difference for the future of biodiversity in our communities? Come to the Polly Hill Arboretum in West Tisbury, Massachusetts for the Annual David H. Smith Memorial Lecture on Wednesday, August 12, beginning at 7:30 p.m.

    Yes we can! In this talk based on his book, Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens, Douglas Tallamy, professor and chair of the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware, reveals the importance of the interaction between plants and insects in our own backyards.

    Tallamy will illustrate the unbreakable link between native plant species and native wildlife: when native plants disappear, native insects disappear, impoverishing the food source for birds as well as other animals. Learn how as gardeners we can help sustain this link by planting native species that support our native wildlife population. Book signing after lecture. $10/$5 for PHA members. Begins at 7:30 pm.  Sponsored by SBS: the Grain Store.  For more information contact Karin Stanley at karin@pollyhillarboretum.org, or call her at 508-693-9426.