Boston Flora

Tag: Garden in the Woods

  • Tuesday, July 10, 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm – Design Inspirations from New England’s Wild Landscapes

    Join the Ecological Landscaping Association on Tuesday, July 10, from 7 – 9 at Garden in the Woods at 180 Hemenway Road in Framingham for a program by Laura Eisener entitled Design Inspirations from New England’s Wild Landscapes.  Recapture the flavor of your favorite part of New England by designing a native plant community into your garden  The lecture will include several examples of local naturalistic landscapes, some wild sites that “just grew,” some managed natural landscapes, and some that were designed as a recreation of a woodland, seacoast, or meadow location.  Register at www.ecolandscaping.org. $24 for ELA or NEWFS members, $29 for nonmembers. Design below by Douglas Brine.

  • Thursday, June 28, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – Design and Installation of an Edible Native Plant Garden

    Kristin DeSouza, Senior Horticulturist and Plant Record Coordinator at Garden in the Woods, and past speaker with The Garden Club of the Back Bay, will present the June 28 installment of Thursdays at the Hort at Elm Bank in Wellesley beginning at 7 pm. Most of our daily foods are non- native introductions produced in mass quantity using fertilizers and pesticides. So what are our native edibles and how can we utilize them in the garden? Have you ever eaten a Pawpaw fruit…or sautéed Oyster Mushrooms freshly picked from your garden for your evening’s dinner? Senior Horticulturalist Kristin DeSouza will illustrate the design and installation process of the new edible plant garden at Garden in the Woods. Using all native plants Kristin will weave together design approaches, horticultural techniques, and culinary uses. “There are over 20,000 species of edible plants in the world yet fewer than 20 species now provide over 90% of our Food.” The classes are priced at $12 for Mass Hort members and $15 for non-members – no need to pre-register.  You may pay at the class.  For more information visit www.masshort.org.  Below is a native persimmon.

  • Tuesday, July 10, 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm – Design Inspirations from New England’s Wild Landscapes

    Recapture the flavor of your favorite part of New England by designing a native plant community into your garden.  This Tuesday, July 10 lecture at Garden in the Woods in Framingham will include several examples of local naturalistic landscapes, some wild sites that “just grew,” some managed natural landscapes, and some that were designed as a recreation of a woodland, seacoast, or meadow location.  The instructor will be Laura Eisener, principal landscape designer at Laura D. Eisener Landscape Design.  Fee is $24 for NEWFS and ELA members, $29 for nonmembers.  Register at www.ecolandscaping.org.

  • Saturday, April 28, 9:30 am – 3:00 pm – Introduction to Willow Identification

    Willows are considered challenging for identification: variation within each species is so high that often at first glance plants belonging to different species resemble each other more than those of the same species. However, some characters remain constant and reliable, and with practice, willows become much more approachable. Irina Kadis and Alexey Zinovjev, Botanists and willow enthusiasts, will concentrate on the characters helpful for identification, using mostly common native and non-native species from Massachusetts as examples, on Saturday, April 28, from 9:30 – 3 at New England Wild Flower Society’s Garden in the Woods in Framingham. In the classroom they will have herbarium specimens, freshly cut branches, some forced branches for those species that flower later in spring, and also some potted plants to examine and compare. Bring a hand lens, if you have one. After lunch, you will carpool to a site a short distance away from Garden in the Woods for a walk. Boots are required, as the area is flooded during the spring time. Bring a lunch and beverage. (Note: Irina Kadis is Curatorial Assistant at the Arnold Arboretum’s Dana Greenhouses.)  Co-sponsored with the Arnold Arboretum. Fee $66 member, $80 nonmember.  Register at http://my.arboretum.harvard.edu/Info.aspx?EventID=1#April.  Image of melanostachys from www.thislittleworld.typepad.com.

  • Saturday, April 28, 9:30 am – 12:30 pm – Designing on Your Feet

    The ability to make observations is fundamental to success as a landscape designer.  Like the statue hidden within a block of marble, a landscape design will emerge through your observations of client and site.  Every observation should lead you to a conclusion.  If done well, there should be no need for “selling.”  Everything should fit.  This on-site seminar introduces you to the skill of observation through a walking analysis of two properties in progress in the vicinity of Garden in the Woods.  The instructor is Tom Strangfeld, a landscape designer and builder.  Fee is $36 for members of either the Ecological Landscaping Association or the New England Wild Flower Society, and $43 for non-members.  Register at www.ecolandscaping.org.  Image from www.bostondesignblog.com.

  • Thursday, March 22, 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm – Forget-Me-Nots: Working with Clients

    Anyone in pursuit of a career as a designer or builder of landscapes will eventually have to face one possibly distasteful reality.  Like it or not, part of you will have to function as a salesperson.  During our education, most of us designed in a nurturing vacuum, never forced to confront the reality of the needs, wants, personalities, tastes and budgets of clients with an ultimate veto power.  Embracing that reality needn’t be painful, although it can be if not done properly.  This Ecological Landscaping Association and New England Wild Flower Society seminar, to be held Thursday, March 22, from 7 – 9 at Garden in the Woods in Framingham, will introduce you to some of the “Forget-Me-Nots” that Tom Strangfeld, the instructor, learned by ignoring the consequences of forgetting them.  $24 for NEWFS or ELA members, $29 for nonmembers.  Register at www.newfs.org.

  • Tuesday, February 28, 10:00 am – 11:30 am – Volunteer Fair at Garden in the Woods

    Learn about volunteer opportunities at Garden in the Woods and beyond on Tuesday, February 28 from 10 – noon. Support the native plant conservation mission of New England Wild Flower Society, while making new friends and learning about our local plants.

    Volunteers are needed to lead garden tours for adults or children, to work in the garden, to help with plant propagation in the stockbeds, to assist in the library, and to volunteer beyond the garden gates working as a Plant Conservation Volunteer or with invasive plant management projects.

    Attend a brief presentation about volunteer opportunities, followed by refreshments and a tour of the facilities at 180 Hemenway Road in Framingham. For more information, telephone 508-877-7630, ext. 3302, or visit www.newenglandwild.org.

  • Sunday, February 26, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm – Women in Botany

    Judith Sumner, botanist, author, and educator, celebrates women’s many roles in botany, at Garden in the Woods in Framingham on Sunday, February 26 from 10 – 4. Expert practical botanists – as gardeners, cooks, herbalists, and midwives – women have also become recognized professional botanists contributing significantly to plant science through exploration, research, and publication. Beginning with colonial America and the work of Jane Colden, explore the role of women in botanical studies and documentation. Recognize the role of women in protecting biodiversity (including the origins of the New England Wild Flower Society) and the work of Beatrix Farrand and others in ecology and landscape design.  In addition to lecture, slides, and discussion, peruse primary source materials from the Society library and participate in hands-on activities that commemorate the diverse roles of women in botany. This lecture is offered in collaboration with The Wellesley College Friends of Horticulture. Fee for members of either organization is $72 per person, and for non-members, $87. Register on line at www.newfs.org, or at www.wellesley.edu/WCFH.

  • Saturday, December 3, 1:30 pm – 3:30 pm – Flora Novae Angliae

    The New England Wild Flower Society hosts a lecture and book signing with Arthur Haines at Garden in the Woods on Saturday, December 3, from 1:30 – 3:30.  Illustrators Elizabeth Farnsworth and Gordon Morrison will also attend. New England Wild Flower Society is thrilled to announce that after nine years of field, herbarium, and literature study Flora Novae Angliae, a Manual for the Identification of Native and Naturalized Higher Vascular Plants of New England, has been published by Yale University Press.

    This 1,008 page book is the definitive publication for the study and identification of the plants of New England. Join the author for a discussion of the underlying philosophies, a look at some of the research and novel finds on which the manual was written, and discussion of the many collaborators (and their exciting finds) who helped make the book possible. The lecture will present fascinating botanical information pertinent to each state in New England.

    This partly illustrated work presents the latest in nomenclatural, taxonomic, and distribution information for New England’s tracheophytes (i.e., higher vascular plants). The manual makes a departure from its predecessors in several respects. First, well-supported information was incorporated into the text, regardless of how unpopular it may have been viewed. Second, many thousands of herbarium specimens were reviewed to verify not only recent collections but the early ones as well. Third, identification keys were written, where possible, with focus on characteristics that do not display substantial phenotypic (i.e., environmental) variation. And fourth, all hybrid plants that could be verified as part of the New England flora were included (rather than just the well-known or named ones). These underlying philosophies have contributed to building a floristic manual with many substantial changes from earlier works covering the region.

    Arthur Haines stated, “The initial view of this manual may be one of greater complexity, but the goal was simply to write a manual that reflected, as accurately as plant taxonomists understood, our best understanding of the species growing on the New England landscape.”  After the lecture, the author will be joined by the two illustrators, Elizabeth Farnsworth and Gordon Morrison, for a book signing in the Garden Shop at Garden in the Woods.  Please RSVP if you plan to attend the December 3 lecture by calling the registrar at 508-877-7630, ext 3303.

  • Saturday, November 12, 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm – The Future Meets the Past: Sustainable Gardening Practices

    Ecological gardening with native plants uses our treasured flora of the past and applies the most innovative sustainable practices to create a new norm for the American garden. Learn practices in horticulture that have positive or neutral ecological impact—methods that can be sustained over the long term with the least possible alteration of the existing community of plants, animals, fungi, and microbes. Ecological gardening is a way to work with nature, not against it, and sustainable practices are those which work in an ecologically sound manner. The New England Wild Flower Society has utilized principles of ecological gardening for over 40 years at its botanic garden, Garden in the Woods. Such practices preserve floral and faunal diversity, both above and below the soil line, and do not significantly alter the soil, water, air or organisms that exist in, or come in contact with, our landscape. In this Saturday, November 12 Berkshire Botanical Garden class, held at The Berkshire Botanical Garden from 1 – 3 pm, led by Scott Lafleur of the New England Wild Flower Society, learn about the sustainable practices with a focus on creating and maintaining healthy soil and effectively using compost and compost tea. Consider site location and how to identify the “right plant for the right place.” These techniques use a hands-on approach to mitigating the adverse affects of traditional gardening. Learn how to put all these practices together to achieve a closed system. $35 fee. Register on line at www.berkshirebotanical.org, or email info@berkshirebotanical.org.

    Scott Lafleur is Botanic Garden Director at Garden in the Woods, home of the New England Wild Flower Society, where he is curator of plant collections and oversees facilities, visitor services and retail services. He is a graduate of the University of New Hampshire horticulture program, and specializes in perennials and perennial garden design.