Join the New York Botanic Garden on April 16 online for Poisons & Remedies, the second panel of our 2025 Plant Humanities Conversations, co-organized between NYBG’s Humanities Institute and Dumbarton Oaks. In this session, Dr. Michael Balick (NYBG), Dr. Hannah Cole (UCSC), and Dr. Luciana Martins (Birbeck) explore plant stories of poisons and remedies as they feature in ethnobotanical research, literature, and botanical collections. Dr. Balick will share examples of how plants have been identified and used as poisonous from Western and non-Western medical traditions; Dr. Martins will dive into the economic botany collections at Kew to uncover stories of remedies in them; and Dr. Cole will explore literary representations of plants and toxicity.
The panel will be moderated by Yota Batsaki, Executive Director of Dumbarton Oaks, and Lucas Mertehikian, Director of NYBG’s Humanities Institute.This event is free and open to the public. Register in the link HERE to receive a Zoom invitation.
Join the American Horticultural Society and Yota Batsaki, PhD, Executive Director of Dumbarton Oaks, online on November 8 to learn about Plant Humanities, a new, interdisciplinary field that explores and communicates the unparalleled significance of plants to human culture. The Plant Humanities Initiative collaborates to produce a digital platform of rare historic materials that document plants, building an accessible resource for well-researched, widespread horticultural storytelling. Batsaki will suggest how plant history from a spectrum of fields relates to contemporary topics of climate change, environmental degradation, and cross-cultural exchange. This virtual program will include a presentation, conversation with facilitator, and opportunities for participants’ questions.
Yota Batsaki, PhD, is the Executive Director of Dumbarton Oaks, a Harvard University research institute, library, museum, and garden located in Washington, DC. As principal investigator for the institute’s Plant Humanities Initiative, Batsaki applies her expertise in comparative literature to the interdisciplinary study of plants and their significance to human culture. She has published essays and co-edited volumes on the intersection of history, literature, and culture, including The Botany of Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century.
Join Moderator Dr. William (Ned) Friedman, Director, Arnold Arboretum, and Panelists Dr. Yota Batsaki, Executive Director of Dumbarton Oaks, Dr. Michael Dosmann, Keeper of the Living Collections, Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, and Andrew Gapinski, Director of Horticulture, Arnold Arboretum, Harvard University, for the annual Director’s Series. To celebrate the Arboretum’s sesquicentennial, this year’s series will explore the Magic and Meaning of a Garden of Trees. Over the course of four sessions, we will trace the Arnold’s significance in the landscape architecture movement, value for the people of Boston, and leadership in creating global connections between plants and people. This session will include brief presentations and a moderated panel. The program is free and is offered both in person and livestreamed. This event will also be presented in-person at the Arboretum’s Weld Hill Research Building at 1300 Centre Street, Boston, MA 02131. To sign up for the in-person event, click here.To register for the online stream, click here.
Join garden historian and author Dr. Toby Musgrave online on a ‘Grand Tour’ showcasing America’s great and inspiring gardens, revealing their diversity and richness, and exploring their contribution to global garden art.
We’ll explore a variety of gardens in a variety of locations and climates around the United States, each of which is open to the public and can be visited and experienced in person. From the eastern seaboard to the west coast; the cold, high Rockies to the tropical southeast; balmy California to hot, dry deserts; the warm, wet Pacific northwest to the Prairies and the cool northeast create the full spectrum of garden design possibilities. Ranging across historical periods and styles, we will visit well known (and lesser well-known) gardens around the country to reveal in broad terms the evolution of American garden design over time. Beginning with early Colonial gardens on the East Coast and Mission gardens in California, we will move on to English Landscape-style gardens and French Baroque influenced antebellum plantation gardens. As we move chronologically ahead, we will also study the opulence of the Beaux-Arts-inspired Country Place Era and how it evolved into the innovative “homegrown” styles such as Prairie Gardens. We will conclude with a look at modern and contemporary American garden design.
Gardens featured include: Colonial Williamsburg, San Diego Mission, Mount Vernon, Monticello, Middleton Place, Rosedown Plantation, Biltmore, Dumbarton Oaks, Filoli, Innisfree, Longwood, Naumkeag, the Huntington Library, Untermeyer, Wave Hill, Longue Vue, Casa del Herro, J Irwin House and Garden, El Novillero, Lotusland, Sunnylands, Chanticleer, Chase Garden, Getty Centre, Hollister House and Windcliff.
Led by an expert on gardens and garden history, Dr Toby Musgrave, this Context interactive seminar will showcase and celebrate America’s great and inspiring gardens. Designed to inform curiosity as well as future travels, participants will come away with an increased knowledge and understanding of America’s great garden heritage. $36.50. Register at www.contextlearning.com
Dumbarton Oaks (Photo by Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
The Garden Club of the Back Bay opens its 2012/2013 program year focused on Gardens of America on Thursday, September 20, beginning at 10 am at The College Club, 44 Commonwealth Avenue. Join Adriana O’Sullivan for a spectacular armchair garden tour from Washington, DC to Mount Desert Island in Maine. This one-hour presentation focuses on some of the finest gardens the Northeast has to offer. Dumbarton Oaks in Washington D.C., designed by Beatrix Farrand between 1921 and 1941, Wave Hill Botanic Garden in The Bronx, Kykuit, the Rockefeller estate in Sleepy Hollow, NY (pictured below), the magnificent gardens at Old Westbury on Long Island, Edith Wharton’s estate ‘The Mount’, and Naumkeag in the Berkshire hills. In New Hampshire we visit the home and studio of Augustus Saint Gaudens and on Mount Desert Island in Maine we will see the Thuya Gardens, the Asticou Azalea Garden and the famous Abby Aldridge Rockefeller Garden. All gardens are a feast for the eye and all are open to the public. GC members will receive written notification. The public is invited, with a requested $5 donation, and may rsvp at info@bostonflora.com.
This September 25 and 26 in Washington, D.C., The Cultural Landscape Foundation will hold What’s Out There Weekend—the prototype for an annual, nationwide series of interpretive tours that focus attention on our country’s rich and diverse heritage of designed landscapes. The public will be able to visit any or all of 25 sites around Washington, D.C., to get free tours from expert guides.
The goal of the weekend’s activities is to raise awareness about the importance of Washington, D.C.’s astonishing and diverse historic designed landscape heritage and to educate the public about the individuals who designed them and the unique narratives behind their creation, ongoing care, and management. The landscapes span over 200 years of design, from L’Enfant’s Plan for the city to Dan Kiley’s plaza at the National Gallery of Art. Throughout the weekend there will be public guided tours, including a unique event at the U.S. Capitol Grounds; an insider’s view of some of Northwest D.C.’s most prominent estate landscapes and an introduction to Congressional Cemetery, one of our nation’s oldest designed cemeteries. TCLF’s What’s Out There Weekend partners, the National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation, will support sites all over the city, from the National Mall to Theodore Roosevelt Island National Memorial to Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens.
The What’s Out There Weekend initiative dovetails with the web-based What’s Out There, the first searchable database of the nation’s designed landscapes. What’s Out There Weekend extends the focus of the What’s Out There database, by creating a rich series of inspiring and educational events.
TCLF is proud to have the support of the National Park Service, the Smithsonian Institution, Dumbarton Oaks, and the Washington, D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation in hosting this first What’s Out There Weekend. TCLF also wishes to thank our Media Partner, Room & Board, and PNC Bank for their support. For a complete list of sites, and registration information, log on to www.tclf.org.
Judith Tankard provided members attending The Garden Club of the Back Bay’s March 23 meeting with a list of U.S. public gardens designed by either Beatrix Farrand or Ellen Shipman which are open to the public. For those of you unable to be with us at Wellesley, here is that list:
