Boston Flora

Tag: Garden Conservancy

  • Sunday, June 7, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm – Monadnock Region Open Day

    Four beautiful gardens in the Mondadnock Region of New Hampshire will be on display Sunday, June 7 from 10 – 4 courtesy of The Garden Conservancy. Preregistration is required. Admission to each garden is $5 for Conservancy members, $10 for nonmembers.

    The May Place gardens of Bill and Eileen Elliott are in Hancock, New Hampshire. Two compulsive plant collectors have been making gardens on a wooded hillside clearing for forty-five years. They continue to do all of the planning, landscaping, planting and maintenance themselves.

    Gardening offers ample challenges and satisfaction as the garden continues to expand, change, die back, thrive, disappoint, and exhilarate. Within the green wall of mature woodland is a two-acre clearing which contains a mix of trees, shrubs, perennials, biennials, annuals, herbs and vegetables. (Picture below courtesy of Yankee Magazine)

    A 200-yard path through the woods leads to shade and container gardens near the house.

    This Garden Host reports the following Terrain Notes about the garden: The garden is on a hillside with uneven paths. Sturdy shoes are needed. Register at https://www.gardenconservancy.org/garden-directory/open-days/may-place-gardens-of-bill-and-eileen-elliott

    Also in Hancock is Skatutakee Farm. The gardens surround Hancock’s first house, built in 1778 by the town clerk, Jonathan Bennett. The farmhouse plantings are informal and blend into surrounding fields and woods.

    On each side of the old front door are beds reminiscent of Colonial gardens, flanked by plantings of old roses and nepeta. Behind the 1970 kitchen wing is a 48-foot-long

    koi pond designed by landscape architect Diane McGuire and planted with lotuses, irises, and water lilies.

    McGuire also laid out the perennial bed and woodland border planted with witch hazel, azaleas, snakeroot, and Rodgersia.

    The AIA-award-winning screened porch was designed by Dan Scully. A pair of 200-year-old granite Korean rams graze on the back lawn.

    Walking beyond the borders, one comes to a bog garden surrounded by marsh marigolds, skunk cabbage, and sedges. A trail of cardinal flowers brightens the wetland beyond. In the field below the terraced potager are two beds planted heavily in pollinators for late arrival of Monarch butterflies.

    This garden’s estimated size is 2 acres.

    This Garden Host reports the following Terrain Notes about the garden: Wheelchair access is possible, but limited. There are terraces, uneven ground, and staircases throughout the property, and assistance is not available. Register at https://www.gardenconservancy.org/garden-directory/open-days/skatutakee-farm-597bf224-f726-4180-92ac-e8615c22ccd4

    In Peterborough is the garden of Betsy and Michael Gordon. This small garden in the village was designed by a plantsman to be an extension of the house. The house and garden are situated on a hill and the garden is terraced on three levels. The upper level was designed to be enjoyed from the street. The middle level is laid out formally using yew hedges and a century-old granite wall foundation to create a garden room. The lowest level, an informal woodland garden, has both eastern North American and eastern Asian shade-loving plants. The garden was planted with a mixture of unusual trees, shrubs, perennials, grasses, annuals, and bulbs. Plants were selected primarily for interesting form, foliage, and texture. The garden is chronicled on Instagram @thegardenerseye. Register at https://www.gardenconservancy.org/garden-directory/open-days/garden-of-michael-betsy-gordon

    Continuing on to Dublin is the Japanese Garden. The Japanese garden project began after the owner had worked for over 15 years to build a small traditional Japanese house on property in Dublin. The garden and pond were added so that visitors could experience that same quiet feeling outside the house as they did inside.

    The owner is a student of Japanese history and design. This garden’s estimated size is 3/4 acre. Register at https://www.gardenconservancy.org/garden-directory/open-days/japanese-house-in-new-hampshire-garden

  • Tuesday, May 19, 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm Eastern – Writing the Garden, Online

    Throughout history, gardeners have been compelled to put pen to paper to capture the beauty, seasonal changes and quiet philosophy of their plots. Claire Masset’s new book, Garden Voices: A Year of Gardeners’ Writing, brings together some of the best of these musings—through letters, diary entries, and articles—in a unique anthology organized around the calendar year. Readers are transported across time and place to enjoy rare horticultural glimpses from both world-famous gardeners and lesser-known—though no less inspiring—garden writers.

    On May 19 at 2 pm Eastern, Claire Masset will explore a selection of these voices, from artists Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro and Van Gogh to writer-gardeners Celia Thaxter, Derek Jarman and Vita Sackville-West. Accompanied by carefully selected paintings and photographs, the talk will offer insights into their lives, thoughts, and achievements, revealing gardens not only as places of beauty, but as powerful sources of artistic and personal expression. $5 for Garden Conservancy members, $15 for nonmembers. Register at https://www.gardenconservancy.org/events/web26-writing-the-garden

  • Tuesday, May 5, 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm Eastern – Rooting the Soil, Online

    Rooting the Soul will discuss a psycho-spiritual illness prominent in Latin America: susto. (In the West, susto loosely parallels post-traumatic stress disorder.) Susto is often treated using plant medicines and other earth-based materials. Myriam Gurba will discuss the ways that susto has manifested in her life and how it shaped the writing of Poppy State: A Labyrinth of Plants and a Story of Beginnings. She will also discuss how transforming her relationship to land and rekindling her relationship to Indigenous nations helped to repair her experience of susto. California native plants and animals will be central to this conversation. Native lands occupied by the settler colonial state of Mexico will also be part of this conversation. Program participants will be encouraged to engage in personal storytelling. This Garden Conservancy online discussion takes place May 5 at 2 pm Eastern. $5 for Conservancy members, $15 for nonmembers. Register at https://www.gardenconservancy.org/events/web26-rooting-the-soul

    MYRIAM GURBA is the author of several books, including Poppy State: A Labyrinth of Plants and a Story of Beginnings. Her writing has been published by the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and The Paris Review. She is part of the movement to end gender-based violence. She enjoys coffee, dirt, and freedom.

    You will receive the webinar link directly from Zoom. A recording of this webinar will be sent to all registrants a few days after the event. We encourage you to register, even if you cannot attend the live webinar.

  • Tuesday, April 21, 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm Eastern – Chasing Lewis’s Monkeyflower: The Amazing Afterlife of Lewis and Clark Expedition’s Wild Plants

    Chasing Lewis’s Monkeyflower is the 200-year saga of finding, losing, and finding the wild plants collected on America’s first exploration west, the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Thomas Jefferson handpicked Meriwether Lewis to lead the expedition, gather notable specimens along the way, and then write the journals, with one volume to include science-worthy descriptions and classifications of the plants that Lewis collected and pressed to preserve. Not a botanist, Lewis needed help to write this part of the journals. Ambition, deceit, theft, wealth, debt, alcoholism, loss, suicide, serendipity, and stubborn persistence cross the plants’ paths in Philadelphia, New York, and London. This is the first work detailing the places, practices, and times of a cavalcade of people who touched the plants. It’s a fascinating chronicle of an unexplored byway of the great American story.

    ELIZABETH ADELMAN gardened on weekends and summer evenings while practicing law. Twenty-five years ago, she gave in and started Heritage Flower Farm, an award-winning nursery growing perennial flowers, now featured in botanic gardens, historic sites, and backyard gardens around the country. About a decade ago, a friend introduced her to the plants collected on the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and she was hooked. She spent winters researching and writing about the people, times, places, and events creating the mysteries, losses, and rediscoveries of the plant specimens across two continents and 200 years.

    You will receive the webinar link for the April 21 webinar directly from Zoom. A recording of this webinar will be sent to all registrants a few days after the event. We encourage you to register, even if you cannot attend the live webinar. $5 for Garden Conservancy members, $15 for nonmembers. Register at https://www.gardenconservancy.org/events/web26-chasing-lewis-s-monkeyflower

  • Tuesday, April 7, 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm Eastern – The Young Man & The Tree, Online

    The Young Man and the Tree is gorgeous proof of ELLE Decor’s claim that Fernando Wong is “one of the most influential landscape designers in America.” As the luxuriant private gardens featured in this sumptuously illustrated book reveal, Wong has become renowned for designing not only landscapes of lushly layered foliage and flowers but also elaborate garden follies, pools, pool pavilions, outdoor kitchens, fountains, sculpture gardens, and hardscapes. Trained in architecture and interior design in his native Panama, Fernando Wong turned to landscape design after moving to the United States in 2001, and along with his partner, Tim Johnson, founded Fernando Wong Outdoor Living Design in 2005. All the projects featured here are located in tropical climes, including Miami, Palm Beach, and Lyford Cay on Nassau. With a foreword by Martha Stewart and commentary by noted interior designers including David Netto, Miles Redd, and Amanda Lindroth, who decorated some of the homes for which Wong created the gardens, this book provides gardeners and garden lovers everywhere with fresh inspiration. $5 Conservancy members, $15 nonmembers. Register at https://www.gardenconservancy.org/events/web26-the-young-man-and-the-tree-fernando-wong-landscape-design

  • Tuesday, March 24, 2:00 pm Eastern – Lost Gardens of London, Online

    Todd Longstaffe-Gowan’s online talk for The Garden Conservancy on March 24 at 2 pm Eastern will focus on and celebrate the evanescence of London’s vast and varied garden legacy. Our fascination with lost gardens is more than a mere pervasive wistfulness for the past or a vague longing for vanished paradise—it is often fueled by our interest in reconstructing worlds that supply us with a powerful means of making sense of the past, and a way of reading history. London gardens, often shut off from the continuum of everyday life around them, and so allowing particular scope for individual experimentation, readily encapsulated attitudes to the design and use of open spaces that now often seem eccentric and improbable. The gardens he will examine range from the capital’s humble allotments and defunct squares to amateur botanical gardens, princely pleasure grounds, artists’ gardens and private menageries gardens that have either vanished or that have changed beyond recognition. Lost Gardens will seek to remind us of what a precious asset gardened greenspace is, and how it has contributed over the centuries to the quality of life and well-being of generations of inhabitants of the Metropolis. $5 Garden Conservancy members, $15 General Admission. Recording will be available to registrants for one week following the live lecture. Register at https://www.gardenconservancy.org/events/web26-lost-gardens-of-london

  • Wednesday, March 19, 12:00 noon – 1:00 pm Eastern – From Beijing to Europe: Chinese Gardens and the Rise of Chinoiserie, Online

    In a special three-part virtual series for the Garden Conservancy this winter, Professor Andrew Hui explores fascinating yet overlooked history of the Western Gardens at the Chinese Emperor’s Summer Palace in the eighteenth century. Over the course of three episodes, he will explore the unexpected story of how these vast gardens came to be designed by Jesuit priests and how they influence the development of Europe’s own gardens.

    Part 3: From Beijing to Europe: Chinese Gardens and the Rise of Chinoiserie

    March 19, 2026 I 12 noon Eastern

    While Jesuits introduced European designs to the Qing court, Chinese gardens themselves profoundly shaped Europe. Jesuit letters back to Europe described landscapes of winding paths, asymmetry, and surprise, a sharp contrast to Versailles’ rigid geometry. These ideas—captured in the English neologism “sharawadgi”—helped spark the English landscape movement and a wave of chinoiserie across Europe. This final lecture traces the paradox: the Summer Palace absorbed European mazes and fountains, even as Europe reimagined itself through the Chinese garden. Together, these exchanges reveal gardens as a global art form in the early modern world.

    Andrew Hui teaches at National University of Singapore and is the author of three books: The Study: The Inner Life of Renaissance Libraries (2025), A Theory of the Aphorism from Confucius to Twitter (2019, translated into 4 languages), and The Poetics of Ruins in Renaissance Literature (2017). His newest project is The Emperor’s Maze: The Jesuits in China and the Making of a Global Age (under contract, Penguin Press).

    Andrew is an experienced public speaker who has lectured widely, including recent talks at Yale, Oxford, and Brown universities, as well as online for the Medici Archive Project, the Smithsonian, and the 92nd Street Y.

    You will receive the webinar link directly from Zoom. A recording of this webinar will be sent to all registrants a few days after the event. We encourage you to register, even if you cannot attend the live webinar. Register at https://www.gardenconservancy.org/events/web26-the-emperor-s-western-maze-and-the-making-of-a-global-garden

  • Thursday, February 26, 12:00 noon – 1:00 pm Eastern – The Maze: Jesuits, Emperors, and the Invention of the Western Style Gardens in China, Online

    In a special three-part virtual series for the Garden Conservancy this winter, Professor Andrew Hui explores fascinating yet overlooked history of the Western Gardens at the Chinese Emperor’s Summer Palace in the eighteenth century. Over the course of three episodes, he will explore the unexpected story of how these vast gardens came to be designed by Jesuit priests and how they influence the development of Europe’s own gardens.

    Part 2: The Maze: Jesuits, Emperors, and the Invention of the Western Style Gardens in China

    February 26, 2026 I 12 noon Eastern

    In the early eighteenth century, Jesuit missionaries astonished the Qing court by designing a European-style maze in the Summer Palace. What began as a playful mimicry soon expanded into an entire quarter of Western-style gardens: fountains, cabinets of curiosities, and perspective vistas unlike anything in China before. This lecture tells the story of how Jesuits, armed with mathematics, hydraulics, and the technique of linear perspectives, became imperial garden makers—and how their creations embodied wonder, diplomacy, and power at the meeting point of two civilizations.

    Andrew Hui teaches at National University of Singapore and is the author of three books: The Study: The Inner Life of Renaissance Libraries (2025), A Theory of the Aphorism from Confucius to Twitter (2019, translated into 4 languages), and The Poetics of Ruins in Renaissance Literature (2017). His newest project is The Emperor’s Maze: The Jesuits in China and the Making of a Global Age (under contract, Penguin Press).

    Andrew is an experienced public speaker who has lectured widely, including recent talks at Yale, Oxford, and Brown universities, as well as online for the Medici Archive Project, the Smithsonian, and the 92nd Street Y.

    You will receive the webinar link directly from Zoom. A recording of this webinar will be sent to all registrants a few days after the event. We encourage you to register, even if you cannot attend the live webinar. Register at https://www.gardenconservancy.org/events/web26-the-emperor-s-western-maze-and-the-making-of-a-global-garden

  • Thursday, January 29, 12:00 noon – 1:00 pm Eastern – The Summer Palace: Beijing and its Creators, Online

    n a special three-part virtual series for the Garden Conservancy this winter, Professor Andrew Hui explores fascinating yet overlooked history of the Western Gardens at the Chinese Emperor’s Summer Palace in the eighteenth century. Over the course of three episodes, he will explore the unexpected story of how these vast gardens came to be designed by Jesuit priests and how they influence the development of Europe’s own gardens.

    Part 1: The Summer Palace: Beijing and its Creators

    January 29, 2026 I 12 noon Eastern

    The Garden of Perfect Brightness (Yuanmingyuan), better known as the Summer Palace, was the most ambitious garden complex in imperial China. Conceived by the Kangxi and Qianlong emperors, it brought together traditional Chinese landscape art from all parts of its sprawling empire. This talk introduces the palace’s vast grounds and classical Chinese gardens—pavilions, lakes, and rockeries that embodied dynastic authority and literati aesthetics. We will set the stage for the drama of cultural exchange that would soon reshape its landscapes.

    Andrew Hui teaches at National University of Singapore and is the author of three books: The Study: The Inner Life of Renaissance Libraries (2025), A Theory of the Aphorism from Confucius to Twitter (2019, translated into 4 languages), and The Poetics of Ruins in Renaissance Literature (2017). His newest project is The Emperor’s Maze: The Jesuits in China and the Making of a Global Age (under contract, Penguin Press).

    Andrew is an experienced public speaker who has lectured widely, including recent talks at Yale, Oxford, and Brown universities, as well as online for the Medici Archive Project, the Smithsonian, and the 92nd Street Y.

    You will receive the webinar link directly from Zoom.

    A recording of this webinar will be sent to all registrants a few days after the event. We encourage you to register, even if you cannot attend the live webinar. Register now at https://www.gardenconservancy.org/events/web26-the-emperor-s-western-maze-and-the-making-of-a-global-garden

  • Thursday, December 11, 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm Eastern – Sleepy Cat Farm, Part IV – Planning and Perfecting with the Future in Mind, Online

    Sleepy Cat Farm embodies the vision of Fred Landman who, since acquiring a Georgian Revival house and six acres of neglected grounds in Greenwich, CT, has transformed his property into a magical thirteen-acre landscape that serves as a testament to his belief in the harmony between house and garden. This four-part Virtual Program, which began with two episodes in the spring and summer, continues to explore the evolution of Fred’s vision from 1994 to today. It tells the story of how the talented architects, horticulturists and artisans he collaborates with have married landscape and architecture to create a series of highly personal sanctuaries. Fred delights in sharing these spaces with hundreds of visitors every year.

    Our final episode in the story of Sleepy Cat Farm’s evolution looks to the future with Kristi Wright, who succeeded Alan Gorkin as Head Horticulturist in 2024. Kristi likes to think of the garden’s design as a stage set on which the scene continually changes according to the season, the gardener’s hand, or on occasion, the whim of Mother Nature. She seeks to maintain the design integrity of each of the garden’s features when it’s time to edit an overgrown area; reassess sun/shade issues, introduce unusual species, or face the challenges that climate change presents. Another objective is creating opportunities for Sleepy Cat Farm to serve the wider community. Local food banks rely on Sleepy Cat’s vegetable garden and orchard for produce. A six-month internship program is in the works, and a volunteer program is a possibility for the future. Kristi hopes to create a plant list on the garden’s website in order to share the staff’s horticultural knowledge with gardeners everywhere. For now, however, Kristi, her team, and Fred Landman can’t wait to show off to the next wave of Open Day visitors all the wonders that Sleepy Cat Farm has to offer. $5 for Garden Conservancy members, $15 for nonmembers. Register at https://www.gardenconservancy.org/events/web25-sleepy-cat-farm-part-iv-12-11-2025