Boston Flora

Tag: Gardner Museum

  • Now through August 17, 2015 – CORRESPONDENCE: The Monk’s Garden 1903 – 2013

    The Gardner Museum recently commissioned Michael Van Valkenburgh to design a new four-season garden on the site of what Isabella Gardner called her “Monk’s Garden.” The redesigned Monk’s Garden, sited to the east of the historic palace, opened in September 2013 as part of the Museum’s expanded campus. CORRESPONDENCE features design process and construction drawings of the new garden, as well as communications between the design team and contractors responsible for its construction. The exhibition centers on a pair of letters between Norma Jean Calderwood Director Anne Hawley and Van Valkenburgh describing their aspirations for the new garden at the beginning of the design process. The exhibition also presents photographs that illustrate how greatly the garden has changed over the years.

    Van Valkenburgh’s design of the Monk’s Garden interprets the Museum’s meandering gallery layout, and the rich colors and textures of its idiosyncratic collection, in a contemporary landscape context. While the garden is accessible (weather permitting) from both the original Museum building and Renzo Piano’s new addition, it is not the primary connection between them, freeing it to focus instead on cultivating a sense of place. The garden is given its own interior, with the aim of provoking extended quiet contemplation rather than hurried passage.

    The original high brick wall of Fenway Court surrounds the garden, and the design aims to soften this enclosure through the creation of a small-scale, dreamlike woodland. Composed of approximately 60 trees including stewartia, paper bark maple, and gray birch, the groves establish a detail-rich palette of colors and textures suitable for intimate appreciation. Winding paths, paved in a striking combination of black brick and reflective mica schist, meander through the trees. Rather than intersecting, the paths playfully meet and diverge, while also gently widening in places to create nooks for garden chairs. For more information visit www.gardnermuseum.org.

  • December, 2014 – A Holiday Garden at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

    Holidays are a special time to come to the Gardner, where the festive Courtyard, featuring dark forest greens and shades of red and silver, adds to the excitement of the season. This holiday tradition showcases masses of flowering jade trees, silver curry plant, and the white and dark red winter blooms of amaryllis, all of which brighten winter shadows.

    The jades (Crassula argentea) in the Courtyard have been raised in our greenhouse for many years. The largest, with trunks five to six inches in diameter, are over forty years old. Their small, starry, white flowers cover the large spreading branches that are over three feet high. The Latin word crassula means thick and fleshy, describing the jade’s leaves.

    The Courtyard features plants that are actively growing and constantly changing. Courtyard images include plants that are representative of each display, but plants will be added or replaced over the life of the display. For more information visit www.gardnermuseum.org.

  • Through November 30 – Chrysanthemums at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

    Dozens of varieties of chrysanthemums appear in the courtyard in late October. Japanese-style single-stem chrysanthemums mix with traditional types in an explosion of color and texture.

    To create this unique exhibit, Museum gardeners and volunteers work from June to October using Japanese cultivation methods to create a single stalk and a single flower on each specimen plant. Over the spring and summer, each plant is pinched weekly (this is called disbudding) and fertilized at specific intervals. This style, which produces a large single bloom, is called ogiku.

    The Japanese technique of training chrysanthemums became popular in the West around the turn of the century. Within Isabella Gardner’s lifetime, many chrysanthemums were grown on her Brookline estate, Green Hill, and won awards at the Massachusetts Horticultural Society’s fall flower shows. The Museum later won top awards from the Massachusetts Horticultural Society for its chrysanthemums in 1934 and 1936.

    Chrysanthemums were first cultivated as an herb in ancient China and arrived in Japan in the 8th Century. Cultivation of the flower was originally permitted only in the gardens of the emperor and the nobility. They were introduced to the western world in the 17th Century. Today, sumptuous festivals are held in celebration of the flower throughout Japan.

    The Chrysanthemums display is made possible in part by the Barbara Millen and Markley H. Boyer Endowment Fund for Horticulture. The Museum thanks Longwood Gardens and the Botanic Garden of Smith College for their generous donations of single-stem chrysanthemum cuttings for the 2014 Chrysanthemums display.

    The Courtyard features plants that are actively growing and constantly changing. Courtyard images include plants that are representative of each display, but plants will be added or replaced over the life of the display. For more information visit www.gardnermuseum.org.

  • Tuesday, April 20, 7:30 pm – Restoring Historic Landscapes and Gardens

    The program “Restoring Historic Landscapes and Gardens” will be presented Tuesday, April 20th at 7:30 pm at the Acton Memorial Library. The evening’s speaker is JoAnn Robinson, Assistant Curator of Landscape, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and Co-chair of the Arlington Historical Commission.

    Every historic property has a landscape component. Appropriate landscapes can make an immeasurable contribution to a property and town as whole.  Learn what some other towns such as Arlington have done, and how to begin researching and implementing a historic landscape to complement your property.  The program is co-sponsored by the Acton Memorial Library, the Acton Historic District Commission, and the Acton Historical Commission.

    The lecture is free and open to the public.  The library is located at 486 Main St., Acton, MA next to Town Hall.  The parking lot and entrance are reached from Woodbury Lane. For information, please contact the library at 978 264-9641 or Kathy Acerbo-Bachmann, Acton Historic District Commission, 617.536.0944 x217 or hdc@acton-ma.gov.

    http://actonarboretum.org/images/DSCF0014BflyG500pxW.jpg