Boston Flora

Tag: Garden Design

  • Thursdays, September 10 – October 1, 5:30 pm – 8:30 pm – Designing with Annuals, Tropicals, and Unique Hardy Perennials

    This four-session Berkshire Botanical Garden class from September 10 – October 1, 5:30 – 8:30, is designed to add drama to your gardens with big, bold and beautiful plants. Under the guidance of Robert Clyde Anderson, students will learn to utilize underused annuals, seasonal tropicals and hardy perennials that can really make a splash in your garden with overscale, luxuriant and dramatic foliage effects. Also covered will be tips and techniques for how to create exuberant and impactful container plantings and groupings for versatile display on terraces, decks and poolside.

    Robert Clyde Anderson found his way to the Hudson Valley after a New York City career in illustration and book design. A native of Louisiana, Robert is a lifelong gardener and has designed and maintained gardens in Columbia County as well as serving as right-hand man for eight years at the former Loomis Creek Nursery in Claverack, NY. From 2012 to 2017, Robert served as Creative Director for Pondside Nursery in Hudson, NY, where he helped launch the business and was the buyer for perennials, annuals, tropicals and hard goods. He continues to serve as a client consultant and writes about plants and gardening on his personal blog, Sempervivum, at www.robertclydeanderson.com.

    BBG members $175, nonmembers $185. Register at https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/events/designing-annuals-tropicals-and-unique-hardy-perennials-0

  • Sunday, April 19, 11:00 am – 4:30 pm – Kitchen Garden Design – CANCELLED

    In this April 19 two-part Tower Hill Botanic Garden workshop with Ellen Ecker Ogden, author of The Complete Kitchen Garden, you will learn the six steps for successful kitchen garden design that combine art with productivity. The morning lecture, The Art of Growing Food, is a photo presentation and talk, and the afternoon session is a hands-on workshop.

    Lecture only: $15 Member; $20 Non-Member

    Lecture and Workshop: $45 Member; $55 Non-Member

    The Art of Growing Food, Sunday, April 19, 11AM-12:30PM

    A true kitchen garden opens your senses in new and inspiring ways, both in the garden and in the kitchen. You’ll start dinner by simmering onions on the stove, then dash to garden to see what you can harvest. It might be tiny artichokes, fresh peas, purple basil tips, tiny rainbow chard or spoon shaped mache, harvested in bare feet and brought into the kitchen in a lovely basket.

    In this lecture, The Art of Growing Food, you will take home new ideas for designing your kitchen garden to be more productive and more beautiful—combining art with practical technique and design. Best of all, you garden will be easier to maintain.

    In this one hour presentation, you’ll revel in the colorful photos from my book, and take a journey to visit many of my favorite kitchen garden designs, that will leave you with fresh ideas for your own.

    Ideal for gardeners just starting out and experienced gardeners who are planning to take the next step in their garden odyssey.  Participants will learn new ways to design, select the best plants, and how to include arbors, fences and practical paths that add personalized touches to bring style and whimsy.

    Lunch – 1 hour. Bring your own or eat at the cafe

    Workshop: Kitchen Garden Design The above lecture is a prerequisite, and taught as part of the full day program. Sunday, April 19, 1:30-4:30PM

    With graph paper, pencils and photos of your own kitchen gardens, participants brainstorm ways to integrate a garden into the rest of their home landscape and to design the kitchen garden of their dreams. Basic organic gardening techniques are covered: from building healthy soil, selecting seeds and how to read a seed catalog to getting the right garden tools.  Adding personality to the garden with trellises, benches and garden arts is also key. Lots of individual attention and sharing among participants. Everyone will leave with a plan, a list of plants and a vision for their new kitchen garden. Space in the workshop is limited, so sign up early!

  • Thursday, March 12, 10:00 am – 11:30 am – Design-less Gardening: A Natural Approach

    Traditional gardening methods can result in lovely landscapes but come with a high price in terms of maintenance. In this March 12 Garden Club Federation of Massachusetts Horticulture Morning , Dan Jaffe invites us to rethink the old rules of gardening so we can spend less time working and more time enjoying our gardens. The class will take place at the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, 900 Washington Street, Wellesley, beginning at 10 am

    How many inches of bark mulch is needed between plants? Are there alternatives to bark mulch? Should weeds be pulled or are there other management strategies? Is it necessary to clean the garden every fall or are there habitat benefits to skipping some of the cleanup? Some gardening rules make sense; and others do not.

    Join Dan for an exploration of the rules of gardening and learn how to build beautiful, resilient, and ecologically viable gardens without the services of a full-time gardener. Dan Jaffe earned a degree in botany from the University of Maine and an advanced certificate in Native Plant Horticulture and Design from NEWFS (now the Native Plant Trust). After interning at Garden in the Woods, Dan worked for a year as Plant Sales Coordinator at the Garden. Suggested donation: $5 at the door. Rsvp to mistyfloral@yahoo.com

    Image result for Butchart Gardens

  • Sunday, February 9, 2:00 pm – 5:00 pm – Authentic, Immediate, and Alive: Design Lessons from Wild Landscapes

    This February 9 program at The Groton Center, 163 West Main Street, Groton, is free and open to the public; made possible by a grant from the Groton Trust Funds’ Lecture Fund. It is co-sponsored by the Groton Garden Club and the Nashua River Watershed Association.

    What if our back yards could inspire, challenge, and delight us in the same ways that wild places do? For this year’s topic, join Groton’s own landscape architect Toby Wolf as he presents Authentic. Immediate, and Alive: Design Lessons from Wild Landscapes.

    Toby will explore ways that designed landscapes can draw from the ecology and the human experience of fields and forests. He will describe design strategies that not only support biodiversity and protect waterways, but also foster meaningful encounters with the natural world. Along the way, Toby will highlight some native plant species that can bring life and resilience to any New England garden Snow Date: February 16 –  Check NRWA@NashuaRiverWatershed.org for weather cancellation.

  • Saturday, February 1, 9:30 am – 11:00 am – Foundations in Gardening: Small Gardens for Big Enjoyment

    Are you reconsidering the size of your garden or thinking of simplifying your garden space? This Blithewold class on February 1 from 9:30 – 11 will focus on basic garden principles applied to small spaces to maximize your garden enjoyment. Small gardens can be both beautiful and functional: from creating a mini wildlife sanctuary to expressing dynamic tastes to providing a space for relaxation. Learn from Gail Read’s photo visits to friend’s gardens – discover how they enjoy their small gardens in a big way. Blithewold is located at 101 Ferry Road, Rt. 114, in Bristol, Rhode Island.

    $25 Members | $30 Non-Members. For more information, and to register, visit https://www.blithewold.org/event/foundations-in-gardening-small-gardens-for-big-enjoyment/

  • Friday, June 28, 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm – Low Maintenance Design

    Learn how to design unique garden spaces that strengthen your connection to our wonderfully varied New England landscape. Discover important functional and aesthetic qualities of native plants that can provide the building blocks for creating easy-to-care-for, sustainable gardens. Using strategies based on the observation and emulation of naturally existing plant communities, landscape designer Owen Wormser offers key techniques for creating enjoyable, low-maintenance garden spaces. In this interactive format, you are encouraged to bring your ideas, along with photographs, plans, or sketches of your own property. The Native Plant Trust class ($40 for members, $48 for nonmembers) will take place at Nasami Farm in Whately on June 28 from 1 – 4. Register at http://www.nativeplanttrust.org/events/low-maintenance-design/

  • Tuesday, October 23, 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm – Designing a Garden for All Seasons: Autumn Edition

    Tuesday, October 23, 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm – Designing a Garden for All Seasons: Autumn Edition

    How do you both captivate people and provide for wildlife year-round in a garden for all seasons? Anna Fialkoff will discuss garden designs that focus your plant palette on structure and seasonal themes to carry you through the year. This New England Wild Flower Society class will take place Tuesday, October 23 from 1 – 3. Afterward, you will walk through Garden in the Woods to see how the horticulture team tackles the autumn season at Garden in the Woods. $26 for NEWFS members, $32 for nonmembers. Register at www.newenglandwild.org.

    Image result for Garden in the Woods Framingham autumn

  • Thursday, October 18, 9:00 am – 4:30 pm – Advanced Design Workshop with Roy Diblik

    Join acclaimed designer and plantsman Roy Diblik on October 18 from 9 – 4:30 at Tower Hill Botanic Garden for a rare opportunity to immerse yourself in garden design and to be inspired by nearly four decades of his design experience and extensive plant background. During this full-day workshop, Mr. Diblik will share the importance of affection in the design process; the beauty of self-discovery in coming to know plants and creating intimate plant communities; and the joy of caring for perennial plantings.

    Mr. Diblik’s teaching is based on his belief that successful planting design isn’t about how many new and different plants you can use, but rather about knowing your plants and understanding how to combine them to create sustainable and beautiful relationships. In this workshop, Mr. Diblik will delve into 16 plants and explain the value of coming to known them. In-depth discussion will help build an understanding of their growth rate, growth habits, and other characteristics that contribute to successful placement in communities and to their seasonal and yearly developmental associations with each other. Mr. Diblik will explore the importance of mindful inputs based on the garden’s selected plant patterns within the overall plant community and their evolving relationships from year to year. During the workshop, he will guide the group through layout patterns and evaluate layouts based on their stewardship needs from the first year to the fifth year. In addition to plant and design topics, Mr. Diblik will discuss gardening practices over landscaping practices. This exploration will challenge workshop participants to consider the relative benefits of health-and-beauty over neat-and-tidy. With the recognition that we must manage time as well as financial resources, Mr. Diblik will also share his inspirational wisdom about the transformational time we are in within the horticultural industry. He will describe his vision that we are positioned to become a plant driven culture that raises the level of beauty while recognizing the value of responsible water use, biodiversity expansion, habitat creation, and good soil stewardship.

    Roy Diblik is a recognized perennial plant expert, grower, designer, author, and co-owner of Northwind Perennial Farm in southeastern Wisconsin. Combining his 35+ years of knowledge growing traditional and Midwest native perennials, he specializes in highly aesthetic, sustainable plant communities for all seasons, while reducing maintenance through design. e believes that gardens should be thoughtful, ecologically directed, emotionally outreaching, and yet very personal. Mr. Diblik is the author of The Know Maintenance Perennial Garden, a simplified approach that promotes use of hardy, beautiful plants that are complementary and thrive together as a community.

    Co-sponsored by the Ecological Landscape Alliance. $125 for members of sponsoring organizations, $160 for nonmembers. Register online at www.towerhillbg.org.

    Image result for know maintenance perennial garden by roy diblik

  • Wednesday, March 7, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – Lessons Learned When Field Botany Meets Design

    Grow Native Massachusetts presents a free talk on Wednesday, March 7 at 7 pm at the Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway, by Uli Lorimer, Curator of the Native Flora Garden at Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

    Ecologically attuned designers are increasingly looking to nature for inspiration in the design of managed landscapes. But connecting field botany to horticulture is complex, and insights gained from observations in the wild don’t always translate directly into a cultivated garden.

    Uli will use the recently expanded native flora garden at Brooklyn Botanic Garden, a cultivated pine barrens and coastal plain grassland, as a case study sharing lessons learned along the way as the project evolved from a concept into a dynamic, living landscape. Good design allows for change and succession to occur, and flexibility in design intent is a valuable strategy because things do not always work out as planned.

    Uli Lorimer has been the Curator of Native Flora at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Garden for over a decade. He was instrumental in the expansion of the Garden’s native plant collection, using only material sourced from the wild and grown from seed. As Field Chair at BBG, he coordinates fieldwork with regional botanists and leads botanical expeditions for naturalists and horticulturists. Co-sponsored by Mount Auburn Cemetery. For more information visit http://grownativemass.org.  Image from www.kendruse.com.

  • Tuesday, February 20, 6:30 pm – 8:00 ppm – Designing a Multi-Season Shade Garden

    This Massachusetts Master Gardeners talk on Tuesday, February 20 at 6:30 with Paul Steen covers a variety of shade situations and covers the unique problems/opportunities of shade gardening. We then cover the best shade plants and how to select them so that your garden is in bloom spring through fall. Even discuss how to have winter interest. Handout included covers a wide variety of shade plants and their cultural properties. The event takes place at the Eleanor Cabot Bradley Estate in Canton. Registration and payment is through the Massachusetts Master Gardeners Association. Fee: $25 per class. Contact: bradley@thetrustees.org for more information and the location to register and provide payment.