Boston Flora

Tag: Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum

  • Thursday, June 26, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – Ming Fay: Edge of the Garden Opening Reception.

    What is a garden? A wild space? A curated collection of plants? Or a plot of soil in which to seed memory, connection, and creativity? This summer, the Gardner Museum’s Hostetter Gallery springs to life with the large-scale sculptures of Ming Fay (1943 – 2025), whose work reconsiders gardens as sites of creative potential that reflect the lives and desires of those who cultivate them.

    At once playful and contemplative, Ming Fay: Edge of the Garden constructs a space of wonder that calls on visitors to view the world around them with new appreciation. Sculptures of fruits, seeds, shells, as well as hybrid plants borne of his boundless imagination, surprise in their unexpected pairings and sizes. Together, they conjure new meanings through familiar shapes, scents, and symbols. In his papier-mâché, bronze and ceramic gardens, Fay unites personal, collective, and cultural memories, building gardens as fantastical spaces born of curiosity, longing, and his own lived experiences as part of the Chinese diaspora in the United States.

    On view from June 26 – September 21, 2025, Ming Fay: Edge of the Garden invites visitors to escape the city for a brief moment and marvel at the extraordinary, ordinary beauty of a maple tree twirler, a ripe cherry, or a crooked wishbone—and how they can unlock memory and imagination.

    Where We Meet: Imagining Gardens and Futures, a partner exhibition at Pao Arts Center will explore the city of Boston’s Chinatown gardens through the art of Ming Fay, Mel Taing, and Yu-Wen Wu from July 18 – October 10, 2025.

    For details visit https://www.gardnermuseum.org/ming-fay-exhibition

  • Through January 31 – Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Holiday Garden Courtyard Display

    Holidays are a special time to come to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, where the festive courtyard features dark forest greens, and shades of red and silver. This holiday tradition showcases masses of flowering jade trees, silver curry plant, and the dark red winter blooms of amaryllis.

    The jades (Crassula argentea) in the courtyard have been raised in the Museum’s greenhouse for many years. The largest of them, with trunks five to six inches in diameter, are over 60 years old. Their small starry white flowers cover their large spreading branches over three feet high.

    Please note that the courtyard displays are part of a living collection and as such the actual flowers may be different than what is described on the website, https://www.gardnermuseum.org/experience/courtyard/holiday-garden.

  • Saturday, December 3, 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm – Alternative Winter Bulbs: Creating an Indoor Sanctuary

    Taylor Johnston of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum will lead a workshop at Tower Hill Botanic Garden on Saturday, December 3 from 1 – 2:30 pm (snow date December 10) on Alternative Winter Bulbs: Creating an Indoor Sanctuary.  Gain insight into the lesser-known South African indoor bulbs, such as Veltheimia, Lachenalia (pictured), and Oxalis species. You’ll get to pot up a specimen bulb for home or holiday gift.  Tower Hill member price $50, nonmembers $65.  Register online at http://www.towerhillbg.org or call 508-869-6111, ext 124.

  • 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.