Boston Flora

Tag: Garden Conservancy

  • Saturday, May 20, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm – Middlesex County Open Day

    The Garden Conservancy hosts the Middlesex County Open Day on May 20 with three gardens, one in Weston, two in Stow.

    The Spencer-Scott Garden in Weston is a sun-drenched site with deep loam. The owners set out to create a garden to satisfy their varied interests in flowering trees, shrubs, vines, ground covers, perennials, and bulbs. They designed, created, and maintain the garden. Included are rock gardens, partial shade gardens, dwarf evergreens, and perennial beds with walking paths, all set against an open meadow. Of special interest are many varieties of peonies, species of old roses, iris, hardy geraniums, alliums, lilies, wildflowers, clematis, daylilies, azaleas, and rhododendrons. They have collected more than 1,500 varieties over the years.

    The Rock Bottom Garden in Stow is a one-acre garden has been shaped by three decades of collaboration between a woody plant zealot and a perennial gardener. From the 1855 house situated on top of a dry knoll, one enjoys sweeping vistas of the gardens below. When they first started gardening here, the property was a jungle of invasive trees, dying white ash, and multiflora rose. All were cut down, leaving them with a garden as sunny and windswept as the plains of Kansas for some years. They remedied this by planting trees, some of which are now nearly 60 feet tall. At present the garden is shaded in large part, and the perennial plantings are transitioning to reflect that. The garden features many unusual trees and shrubs, including rare magnolias and maples (some grown from seed), an herb garden, gravel garden, and a small vegetable garden. The striking topography makes the garden seem much larger than its actual size, and the trees include beautiful specimens you probably won’t see anywhere else in New England.

    Also in Stow is Glenluce Garden, a small, personal, and romantic garden. Entering by the western gate, you will find yourself on a mound with green paths beckoning in seven directions. Explore these paths to discover a grove of paperbark maples, an island of tree peonies, or a border of fragrant native azaleas. A pergola covered by climbing roses leads to a frog pond shaded by heptacodium and a courtyard with raised vegetable beds. Magnolias, rhododendrons, peonies, and roses abound in Glenluce Garden.

    Access to each garden is $5 for Garden Conservancy members, $10 for nonmembers. Tickets must be purchased in advance – no tickets will be sold on site. https://www.gardenconservancy.org/open-days/open-days-schedule/middlesex-county-ma-open-day-5

  • Thursday, April 20, 2:00 pm Eastern – A Conversation About Inspiring Black Flower Farmers and Florists, Online

    Teresa J. Speight is an author, podcaster, garden writer, and proud native of Washington, DC. With ancestral sharecropping roots originating in North and South Carolina, she feels deeply connected with the earth.  Teresa also works to reconnect people with the soil through one-on-one garden coaching and by offering curated “garden experiences” for small groups.

    Teresa is the author of Black Flora: Profiles of Inspiring Black Flower Farmers + Florists and co-author of The Urban Garden: 101 Ways to Grow Food and Beauty in the City. On her podcast Cottage in the Court (available on Anchor or Apple Podcasts), Teresa introduces interesting people, discovers unique places, and adds a little poetry to remind everyone to embrace the garden, as it is here for us.

    Black flower farmers and florists are often overlooked in an industry that is essential as we embrace the beauty that surrounds us. In many instances, the people in this book have pivoted from different careers and have found peace in working with flowers. In other instances, the choice to grow flowers and create with them is a way of life versus traditional employment. This work is not easy, however, each person in this book is dedicated to working with flowers. Boldly stepping out from behind the scenes, these floral professionals have been brought to life and hopefully will inspire the next generation of floral professionals.

    Register for this Garden Conservancy April 20 online talk at www.gardenconservancy.org. $5 for Conservancy members, $15 for nonmembers. 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.

    copyright Elyse Fujioka
  • Friday, March 3, 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm – Sue Stuart Smith: The Well-Gardened Mind

    Friday, March 3, 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm – Sue Stuart Smith: The Well-Gardened Mind

    Distinguished psychiatrist and avid gardener Sue Stuart-Smith believes our minds and our gardens interact in ways that can sustain our innermost selves. Her beautifully written UK bestseller, The Well-Gardened Mind, offers inspiring perspectives on the power of gardening to change people’s lives. For Stuart-Smith, a garden is much more than a beloved physical space. It is a mental space where you can hear your thoughts immersed in the primal awareness not only of nature’s beauty, but the eternal cycle of the seasons. Informed by literature, neuroscience and her experiences as therapist and gardener, she celebrates the joys of gardening, but also the life-affirming benefits of tending plants-physical, psychological and metaphorical.

    Before practicing as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist, Sue Stuart-Smith received her degree in English literature at Cambridge. Over the past 30 years, she has worked with her husband, leading UK garden designer Tom Stuart-Smith, on their wonderful Barn Garden in Hertfordshire.

    This Garden Conservancy lecture will take place on March 3 from 6 – 7 at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts. To register, visit https://www.gardenconservancy.org/education/2023-speaker-series. The Spring 2023 National Speaking Tour is in partnership with Perfect Earth Project

  • Thursday, February 23, 2:00 pm Eastern – Beauty of the Wild, Online

    For more than six decades, Darrel Morrison has drawn inspiration from the varied landscapes of his life—from the Iowa prairie, to Texas prickly pear scrub, to the maple-beech-hemlock forests of Door County, Wisconsin, to the banks of the Oconee River in Piedmont, Georgia. He has been guided as well by the teachings of Jens Jensen, who believed that we can not successfully copy nature but can get a theme from it and use key species to evoke that essential feeling. In native plant gardens at the University of Wisconsin Arboretum, New York Botanical Garden, and Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Morrison has blended communities of native plants in distillations of prairie, woodland, and coastal meadow. At Storm King Art Center, his landscapes capture the essence of prairie grasslands and native meadows. These ever-evolving compositions were designed to reintroduce diversity, natural processes, and naturally occurring patterns—the “beauty of the wild”—into the landscape. Darrel will speak online with The Garden Conservancy on February 23 at 2 pm Eastern. $5 for Garden Conservancy members, $15 for nonmembers. Register HERE.

    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.

    Members of the Frank & Anne Cabot Society for planned giving have complimentary access to Garden Conservancy webinars. All Cabot Society members will automatically be sent the link to participate on the morning of the webinar. For more information about the Cabot Society, please contact Sarah Parker at sparker@gardenconservancy.org or 845.424.6500, ext. 214.

    Darrel Morrison, FASLA, is a renowned landscape designer and educator ecology-based approach has influenced generations of practitioners. He has taught landscape design at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1969-1983) and University of Georgia (1983-2005). Morrison lived and worked in New York City from 2005 until 2015 and now lives in Madison, WI where he is an honorary Faculty Associate in the Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture at the University of Wisconsin.

  • Thursday, February 9, 2:00 pm Eastern – The Crevice Garden, Online

    A crevice garden replicates the environmental conditions of mountain tops, deserts, coastlines, and other exposed or rocky places on earth. These striking garden features provide perfect conditions for the plants native to these far-off places, bringing the cultivation of these precious gems within everybody’s reach. In the book, The Crevice Garden, enthusiastic experts Kenton Seth and Paul Spriggs bring us in-depth guidance on the design, construction, and planting of crevice gardens of all kinds including those suitable for containers, small gardens, and public parks and in styles that encompass both naturalistic scenes and non-traditional installations. In this February 9 online talk, Paul will discuss all aspects of rock and crevice gardening, including history, design, construction, and of course, lots of photos of Paul’s favorite plants.

    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 Garden Conservancy members, $15 general public. Register HERE.

    Members of the Frank & Anne Cabot Society for planned giving have complimentary access to Garden Conservancy webinars. All Cabot Society members will automatically be sent the link to participate on the morning of the webinar. For more information about the Cabot Society, please contact Sarah Parker at sparker@gardenconservancy.org or 845.424.6500, ext. 214.

    Paul Spriggs has been rock gardening for roughly 23 years and building crevice gardens for about 16 years. He is an avid plant explorer, photographer, mountaineer, owner of Spriggs Gardens Landscaping company, and past President of the Vancouver Island Rock and Alpine Garden Society. He has a passion for all wild plants, especially those of dwarf stature, and collects and cultivates them at various gardens in his hometown of Victoria, BC, Canada. Paul has learned the craft of crevice garden building directly from one of its innovators, Zdenek Zvolanek, of the Czech Republic, and in the past decade and a half, has built many gardens in public parks and private homes that range in size from small feature troughs, to large installations involving many tonnes of stone. Paul is passionate about spreading the word of this style, through speaking to garden clubs all over the West and by giving workshops for those keen on learning the finer points of this developing art form. He has just finished his work on the first North American book, The Crevice Garden, with co-author Kenton Seth of Colorado, released in spring 2022.

  • Thursday, January 26, 2:00 pm Eastern – In Conversation with Lily Kwong, Online

    Landscape artist Lily Kwong is a next-generation landscape designer with roots in the urban planning and art worlds whose mission is to reconnect people to nature. Lily specializes in creating transformative environments that combine horticulture, design, education, and visual arts to create cultural experiences that harmonize people with their environment. She earned her degree in Urban Studies from Columbia University and is an important voice in the growing sustainable movement.

    Lily was named by The New York Times as one of the ‘9 Young New Yorkers Poised for Creative Greatness’ and inducted into Forbes’s ’30 Under 30: 2018′ in the Art & Style category. She serves as Landscape Editor for Cultured Magazine and is also a member of the NEW INC program, the New Museum’s incubator. Studio Lily Kwong’s botanical art installations have been featured on The High Line, Grand Central’s iconic Vanderbilt Hall, The Whitney Museum shops, and more.

    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 General Public. Register HERE

    Members of the Frank & Anne Cabot Society for planned giving have complimentary access to Garden Conservancy webinars. All Cabot Society members will automatically be sent the link to participate on the morning of the webinar. For more information about the Cabot Society, please contact Sarah Parker at sparker@gardenconservancy.org or 845.424.6500, ext. 214.

  • Thursday, January 12, 2:00 pm EST – Small Space Gardening with Jason Williams, Online

    Since creating my platforms one year ago, Jason Williams managed to create a highly engaged online community and has been at the forefront of the balcony gardening niche. He rapidly found his own voice and proudly flies the flag for small space gardeners in a niche market. The talk will dive into the connection between small-space gardening, mental health, and biodiversity, and demonstrate how he has used social media and garden design to broadcast this message to a wider audience.

    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 General Admission. Register HERE.

    Members of the Frank & Anne Cabot Society for planned giving have complimentary access to Garden Conservancy webinars. All Cabot Society members will automatically be sent the link to participate on the morning of the webinar. For more information about the Cabot Society, please contact Sarah Parker at sparker@gardenconservancy.org or 845.424.6500, ext. 214.

    Jason Williams is a multi-award-winning garden designer, and during the pandemic, he started gardening on his 18th-floor balcony & slowly found the therapeutic qualities of gardening. A year later, he decided to collate his lived-in knowledge and create his own brand, Cloud Gardener UK, to help others start their own well-being journey through small space gardens. The aim of Cloud Gardener UK is to inspire a new generation of urban gardeners and encourage more urban residents to maximize their unique growing spaces, like a patio, terrace, or balcony garden, in an accessible way. Through his work, he shows that urban small-space gardening not only has mental health benefits but also has a direct impact on urban wildlife and biodiversity.

  • Thursday, November 17, 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm – Stamps & Stamps: Style & Sensibility, Online

    The Stamps & Stamps philosophy has always been to take on a project in its totality, to perfectly calibrate and coordinate all facets of the house to create a beautiful home. Harmony in the architecture, the interiors, and the gardens is essential to our belief that all aspects of a property must be conceived and executed with a clear vision of an integrated whole. In designing gardens, it is important to us that once you pass through the gate or the arch or the doorway that defines the beginning of a property, that you enter a world that is authentic. A Spanish colonial house feels comfortable in a setting of decomposed granite, citrus and olive trees, and beds of iris and agave. A craftsman house loves a Japanese inspired garden or a nest of succulents, and a cottage may need a riot of color and a mass planting of roses and viburnum, camellias, hydrangeas, and ferns. Stamps & Stamps was founded in 1991 by Odom and Kate Stamps. An Architectural, Interior Decoration, and Garden Design company, their work has been featured in publications such as Architectural Digest, House Beautiful, Vogue Entertaining and Veranda, among others. They are based in Southern California and have offices in New Orleans and England. The Stamps joined the Open Days program as Garden Hosts this year.

    On November 17, the Garden Conservancy will host a live webinar with the designers. Members $5 per person; General admission $15 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.

  • Thursday, October 6, 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm – The Seasonal Gardener, Online

    First published in 2001, and now fully revised and updated, acclaimed bestselling author Anna Pavord’s The Seasonal Gardener features 60 ‘star plants’ — from iris to hostas — each paired with two perfect partners: shrubs, herbaceous perennials, bulbs, and annuals that no garden should be without. This classic book reveals how best to group plants in a garden to create a year-long display. Ranging from hydrangeas, salvias, and ferns to dahlias, tulips and snowdrops, each star plant is paired with two partners, offering gardeners creative planting solutions to achieve stunning results, season by season. Anna Pavord is one of today’s most inspiring and much-loved garden writers and the author of globally bestselling The Tulip and The Naming of Names. Her gardening column in the Independent in the UK ran for 30 years from the paper’s launch in 1986 until the last print edition. Today, she writes for the Sunday Times and is an Associate Editor of Gardens Illustrated. Pavord lives in West Dorset and was awarded the Gold Veitch medal from the Royal Horticultural Society in 2001.

    On Thursday, October 6 at 2 pm Eastern Time, The Garden Conservancy will host a live webinar with Ms. Pavord. Conservancy Members $5 per person; General admission $15. 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.

    Members of the Frank & Anne Cabot Society for planned giving have complimentary access to Garden Conservancy webinars. All Cabot Society members will automatically be sent the link to participate on the morning of the webinar. For more information about the Cabot Society, please contact Sarah Parker at sparker@gardenconservancy.org or 845.424.6500, ext. 214. To register visit www.gardenconservancy.org

  • Saturday, September 24, 10:00 am – 12:00 noon – The Art of Planting Bulbs

    For many gardeners, nothing is more fulfilling than planting bulbs in the fall for spring bloom. In this Berkshire Botanical Garden class on September 24 from 10 – noon, garden writer and horticulturist Lee Buttala plumbs the depths of the geophyte kingdom, highlighting major and minor bulbs, from snowdrops, crocuses and daffodils to species tulips, hyacinths and fritillaria, that bring the spring garden into full focus. This class explores not only the classic techniques for using bulbs in the garden, but it also shows new approaches that pair bulbs with perennials and other plantings that complement them or that take the main stage as the bulb show comes to an end. This class will explore planting methods, post-bloom care for bulbs and how to select varieties best suited to naturalizing.

    Lee Buttala is the former executive director of Seed Savers Exchange, an heirloom vegetable genebank that is the only non-governmental organization storing seed at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. He has also worked for BBG and the Garden Conservancy, and currently serves as chair of the Historic Landscapes Committee of the APGA. Lee won an Emmy award for his role as a garden television producer for “Martha Stewart Living” and was the creator of PBS’s “Cultivating Life.” He is the editor of the award-winning book The Seed Garden: The Art and Practice of Saving Seed, writes a weekly garden column for The Berkshire Edge and serves on the board of Hollister House Garden in Washington, Conn. Lee studied garden design at the Chelsea Physic Garden, the New York Botanical Garden and the Kyoto School of Art and Design. He lives in Ashley Falls, Mass.

    Courtesy Garden Design