Boston Flora

Tag: Ellen Sousa

  • Mondays, July 25 and August 29, 12:30 pm – 3:00 pm – Native Herbaceous Plant Materials: Late Season

    Over the course of mid- to late summer, The Native Plant Trust will examine a wide variety of native plants for gardens and discuss each plant’s cultural and habitat needs as well as its importance to wildlife. We will address and provide tips for growing 80 species. You will learn to identify native plants in the New England gardening palette, become familiar with each plant’s appropriate use, and study each plant’s role in the ecosystem in terms of attracting pollinators and other wildlife. The classes, with Ellen Sousa, will be held July 25 and August 29 at Garden in the Woods from 12:30 – 3:00 pm. $90 NPT members, $110 nonmembers. Register at http://www.nativeplanttrust.org/events/native-herbaceous-plant-materials-late-season/

  • Monday, November 5, 8:00 am – 4:30 pm – Season’s End Summit: The Sensory Garden – Elements to Enrich Every Landscape

    Monday, November 5, 8:00 am – 4:30 pm – Season’s End Summit: The Sensory Garden – Elements to Enrich Every Landscape

    As designers we aspire to create remarkable landscapes for ourselves, landscapes primarily measured in terms of visual, ecological, and functional appeal. Yet all of our senses are engaged as we experience the space and weigh the merits of the landscapes we enter. With planning, a sensory garden can deliver elements that involve all of the senses and ultimately deepen our connections with the space. In a culture dominated by technology, professional and amateur landscape designers have a unique opportunity to provide a rich experience for clients so that once disconnected from work, screen, headphones, and device, they can enjoy a multi-faceted garden that engages all of the senses and reconnects the soul.

    The Ecological Landscape Alliance invites you to slow down for one day on November 5 to contemplate a sensory-inspired journey into landscape design. Attend ELA’s 9th Annual Season’s End Summit as we explore sensory design elements, not just for specialty gardens but for every garden. Challenge the status quo, learn new approaches, reconnect with colleagues, and get inspired to embrace sensory dimensions in your next designs.

    Tovah Martin – The Garden in Every Sense and Season
    Gain inspiration for your next design as nationally known and celebrated Tovah Martin shares advice and ideas to deeply enhance the gardening experience for you and your clients. Tovah explores the garden on all levels by attuning your nose to the scents and training your ears to listen. Learn to garden with eyes wide open, ears to the ground, and hands outstretched as Tovah leads us on an odyssey of exploration to awaken the senses and arouse our abilities of perception on all levels.

    Ellen Sousa – Savor the Fragrance and Feast on the Bounty

    The sense of smell merges delightful sensory experience with lasting associative memory. It is easy to incorporate fragrances into a garden through blooms or aromatic foliage. Ellen will discuss how and when plants release their fragrance, provide placement suggestions for greatest impact, and share design tips for overlooked plants that offer floral, spicy, and fresh fragrances. But it is not just about the aroma. As we catch the scent of ripening fruit, the taste-buds begin tingle with anticipation of mouth-watering edibles. Ellen will inspire us with design options that satisfy the sense of taste from vegetables, herbs, and spices to fruits, nuts, edible flowers, and more.

    Trevor Smith – Tap into Your Inner Child

    Children touch everything to fully engage with their surroundings, a well-planned sensory garden invites visitors of all ages to experience this enjoyable sensation. In the sensory garden there are many textural options to invite interaction. Trevor encourages designers to incorporate plants featuring smooth, rough, waxy, hairy, silky, spiny, and even sticky elements and shares some favorite plant options. Of all of the senses, incorporating sound is where Trevor’s designs excel. Sound elements in the garden create a sense of calm and serenity. There are several ways to incorporate sounds by including: plants that rustle in the breeze; enhancing habitat features to invite wildlife bringing chirping, buzzing, and birdsong; adding man-made features such as wind chimes; or integrating a water feature to provide the most soothing of sound of moving water. Trevor will share ideas and address questions as we channel our inner child in the sensory garden.

    After lunch, all of the Summit speakers will join in a lively panel discussion. Panelists will answer questions to help address some challenges posed by sensory gardens. And regardless of a landscape’s design theme, there is a checklist of strategies at the core of any successful, ecological landscape. Panelists will discuss issues and provide tips for putting these principles and practices to work in any landscape.

    The day long event will take place at the Community Harvest Project Barn, 37 Wheeler Road in North Grafton, and is $119 – $129. Visit www.ecolandscaping.org for registration and complete information.

    Image result for the garden in every sense and season

  • Saturday, August 4, 10:00 am – 12:00 noon – Pollinator-Friendly Gardens and Landscapes

    Bees and other pollinators are all the buzz these days. Pollinator populations are crashing locally and worldwide, but these tiny forms of wildlife are vital to food production, pest management, and environmental stability. Even in a small backyard, you can help support pollinators through careful plant choices and a basic knowledge of the varied habitat needs of native bees and other beneficial insects. In this Tower Hill Botanic Garden class with Ellen Sousa on August 4 from 10 – noon, you’ll learn to identify some of the good – and bad – bugs flying around your gardens, and at the same time welcome a whole new dimension to your enjoyment of gardening and the natural world. We’ll also spend some time exploring the gardens looking for pollinators in their garden habitats.

    Ellen Sousa is a garden coach, designer and author from Turkey Hill Brook Farm in Spencer MA, a small native plant nursery and habitat farm. Since 2007, Ellen has worked with homeowners, landowners and non-profit organizations to design and manage landscapes that support local biodiversity. She is the author of the book The Green Garden: A New England Guide to Planning, Planting & Maintaining the Eco-friendly Habitat Garden. Tower Hill member price $20, non-members $30. Register at www.towerhillbg.org.

    Image result for Ellen Sousa Green Garden

  • Thursday, June 1, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – Pollinator-Friendly Gardens and Landscapes

    Bees and other beneficial insects are all the buzz these days – and for good reason. Pollinator populations are crashing both locally and worldwide, yet these small forms of wildlife are vital to food production, pest control, and environmental stability. With just a few changes in your property management, you can help support and maintain a diversity of pollinator and beneficial insect species in your backyard or farm. On Thursday, June 1 at 7 pm, learn to identify the good – and bad – bugs flying around your gardens, and at the same time welcome a whole new dimension to your enjoyment of gardening and nature. The lecture will be held at the Gardens at Elm Bank, 900 Washington Street in Wellesley.

    Ellen Sousa is an author, garden coach and designer from Turkey Hill Brook Farm, a habitat farm and native plant nursery in Spencer, MA. Since 2007, Ellen has worked with homeowners, landowners and non-profit organizations to design and manage landscapes that support food production and local biodiversity. She is the author of the book The Green Garden: A New England Guide to Planning, Planting & Maintaining the Eco-friendly Habitat Garden.

    Mass Hort Members: $12; General Admission: $20. Sign up online at www.masshort.org.

  • Tuesday, June 9, 10:00 am – 12:30 pm – Gardening for Pollinators

    Pollinators are all the buzz these days, but what are they and why are they so important? In this New England Wild Flower Society class on Tuesday, June 9, from 10 – 12:30, you will learn how essential pollinators are to the reproductive success of the world’s flowering plants, and take away easy tips for attracting and supporting pollinators to your own garden and yard. The class is given by Ellen Sousa at Garden in the Woods in Framingham, and the fee is $33 for NEWFS and Mass Audubon members, $40 for nonmembers, co-sponsored by the Massachusetts Audubon Society. Register online at http://www.newfs.org/learn/our-programs/gardening-for-pollinators-1. Image from www.extension.org.

  • Saturday, May 2, 8:00 am – 4:30 pm – Beyond the Honey Bee: Conserving Our Native Pollinators

    The Hubbardston-Ware River Nature Club and the East Quabbin Land Trust will sponsor a day long seminar Beyond the Honey Bee: Conserving Our Native Pollinators, on Saturday, May 2 from 8 – 4:30 at the Harvard Forest in Petersham. The purpose of this event is to increase awareness and provide information and resources to people who want to manage their properties to benefit native pollinators. It is designed for small landowners, public lands managers, small farmers, backyard gardeners, and others who want to manage open space with native pollinator needs in mind. Speakers include Dr. Rob Gegear of Worcester Polytechnic Institute, naturalists Gail Howe Trenholm and Charley Eiseman, Dr. Anne Averill of UMass-Amherst, Tom Sullivan (pictured below – thank you www.gazettenet.com) of PollinatorsWelcome.com, and author and garden coach Ellen Sousa. Schedule and registration information visit: http://hubbardstonnatureclub.weebly.com/conference.html.

  • Wednesday, March 11 & 18, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm – Getting Started with Home Landscaping

    Learn the basics of landscaping your property. This two-part New England Wild Flower Society class, to be held at Garden in the Woods in Framingham on March 11 and 18, from 6:30 – 8, teaches you how to determine the right plants for the various conditions in different parts of your yard. You will also get tips on planting, watering and keeping your gardens healthy over the long-term using earth-friendly practices that are safe for your family, pets, and the planet. Ellen Sousa, author of The Green Garden, is the instructor, and the fee is $26 for NEWFS members, $32 for nonmembers. Register online at http://www.newfs.org/learn/our-programs/getting-started-with-home-landscaping.

  • Saturday, August 17, 10:30 am – 1:30 pm – Turkey Hill Brook Farm

    On Saturday, August 17, visit this four-acre central Massachusetts horse farm, Turkey Hill Brook Farm, landscaped as a sanctuary for farm animals, people, and wildlife. Homeowners Ellen and Robert Sousa have rehabbed their farm’s landscaping using sustainable gardening methods, removing invasive plants, and encouraging native plants to grow as food and housing for birds, pollinators, amphibians and other wildlife. The bird and butterfly borders and pond side gardens should be in full bloom. Please wear comfortable shoes – some terrain is hilly. The farm is located in Spencer, Massachusetts, and the program, sponsored by the New England Wild Flower Society, costs $24 for NEWFS members and $28 for nonmembers. Register at www.newfs.org.

    http://www.thbfarm.com/uploads/Sneaks-peeking-out-of-barn-.jpg

  • Thursday, April 12, 10:00 am – The Green Garden: Earth-Friendly Gardening in New England

    Ellen Sousa, whose book, The Green Garden, offers a step-by-step way to make your garden more ecologically friendly, will speak at Elm Bank on Thursday, April 12, at 10:00 a.m. She will offer an illustrated talk on earth-friendly gardening in New England.

    Ellen enjoys a reputation as a renowned garden coach, working with homeowners who want to make their gardens more natural and welcoming to a variety of inhabitants. Many of those techniques are explained in her book, The Green Garden: a New England Guide to Planning, Planting and Maintaining the Eco-Friendly Habitat Garden, which was reviewed in the January Leaflet. Her ideas are put into practice at her central Massachusetts property, Turkey Hill Brook Farm, where she works with her husband, Robert.

    Ellen sets a high but reasonable threshold for her gardens; namely, that they must be sustainable for enjoyment by future generations. They should be beneficial in that they attract the animals and insects that were indigenous to our area before European settlement. Her goal is to gradually reverse the missteps made over a period of centuries. She acknowledges that doing so takes hard work, but that it can be done in small, manageable steps.

    But the results are both tangible and rewarding: Turkey Hill Brook Farm won the 2011 New England Wildflower Society’s Katherine T. Taylor Award for Private Gardens. The farm is also a certified Monarch Waystation.

    Everyone is welcome to attend the talk. There is no fee and light refreshments will be served. Copies of The Green Garden will be for sale. While no reservation is required, Librarian Maureen Horn says it would be helpful to have an idea of how many people to expect. You can call or email her at 617-933-4912 or MHorn@Masshort.org.

  • Wednesday, April 4, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – Our Native Pollinators: Intriguing Insects and More

    Scientists now consider our residential landscapes to be a “final frontier” in providing essential habitat for at-risk pollinator species that are vital to environmental health and a functioning food web.

    Come to the Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway in Cambridge, on Wednesday, April 4, from 7 – 8:30 to learn about the best plants for helping to feed and shelter our native pollinators, including bees, butterflies, moths, and hummingbirds. There are many easy ways to support pollinator populations in your garden, utilizing a few important principles in your landscaping practices.

    Speaker Ellen Sousa is a garden coach, habitat naturalist, and author, whose writings appear in numerous journals and blogs. The lecture is free, and is sponsored by Grow Native Massachusetts. Photo from flatbushgardener.blogspot.com.