Boston Flora

Tag: Eudora Welty’s Home Place

  • Fridays, July 24 and July 31, 10:00 am – 12:00 noon – Writing in the Garden

    Rich in sensory experience, a garden is an especially inspiring place in which to write. In this two-hour workshop, to be held twice on July 24 and 31, from 10 – noon, participants will visit two gardens at Tower Hill and write spontaneously in response to prompts inspired by the surroundings. Both aspiring and experienced writers are welcome.

    Instructor Jane Roy Brown is an award-winning writer, editor, and landscape historian who lives in Conway, Massachusetts. Jane works part-time as director of educational outreach at the Library of American Landscape History, a nonprofit organization based in Amherst, Massachusetts, which publishes books, produces films, and organizes exhibitions about American landscape history. Her workshop series, The Heart of Story: Writing Stories of Our Lives, focuses on how to write memoir.

    With Susan Haltom, Jane is co-author of One Writer’s Garden: Eudora Welty’s Home Place (University Press of Mississippi, September 2011), which won the 2012 Eudora Welty Award. Jane also wrote Drawing Lessons, a history of the Conway School of Landscape Design (CSLD via lulu.com, November 2011, work for hire).
    Her articles on travel, gardens, and landscape architecture have appeared in numerous periodicals, including Architectural Record, the Boston Globe travel section, The Christian Science Monitor, Garden Design, Harvard Magazine, and Preservation. She is a contributing editor for Landscape Architecture, the magazine of the American Society of Landscape Architects. She received a 2008 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Gold Award from the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation. She edited the 2003 Journal of the New England Garden History Society and worked in various editorial staff positions at AMC Outdoors, the magazine of the Appalachian Mountain Club, from 1995 to 2004, where she received a 2004 national Gold Award from the Society of National Association Publishers.  After earning a B.A. at Middlebury College, Jane completed the certificate program in landscape-design history at Radcliffe Seminars (now the Landscape Institute at Boston Architectural College). As her final project, she documented the history of the 1926 Jens Jensen landscape at Skylands, the former summer home of Edsel and Eleanor Ford in Seal Harbor, Maine.

    Tower Hill member price is $20 per session, nonmembers $35 per session.  Register at www.towerhillbg.org.

  • Tuesday, March 27, 7:00 pm – One Writer’s Garden: Eudora Welty’s Home Place

    By the time she reached her late twenties, Eudora Welty (1909-2001) was launching a distinguished literary career. She was also becoming a capable gardener under the tutelage of her mother, Chestina Welty, who designed their modest garden in Jackson, Mississippi. From the beginning, Eudora wove images of southern flora and gardens into her writing, yet few outside her personal circle knew that the images were drawn directly from her passionate connection to and abiding knowledge of her own garden. Jane Roy Brown’s book One Writer’s Garden: Eudora Welty’s Home Place contains many previously unpublished writings, including literary passages and excerpts from Welty’s private correspondence about the garden.  Ms. Brown will speak at Porter Square Books, 25 White Street in Cambridge on Tuesday, March 27, beginning at 7 pm.

    Brown is a freelance travel and garden writer with a focus on historic gardens and landscapes. She is also director of educational outreach for the Library of American Landscape History. She has published in Horticulture, Preservation, Garden Design, and the Boston Globe, and she serves as a contributing editor to Landscape Architecture.  Call 617-491-2220, or visit www.portersquarebooks.com for more information.