Boston Flora

Tag: James Golden

  • Wednesday, June 29, 11:00 am – 12:00 noon – Designing for the Intangible, Online

    Though we often see them as utilitarian extensions of our homes, gardens are much more than ornament or recreation. We think of ourselves as the users, the givers of meaning, the protagonists, but a garden too can be the protagonist. It can act on us, change us, and cause us to think about our experience and existence. Using gorgeous images from his newly released book, Federal Twist, featuring his New Jersey home garden, James Golden shares how to design for a garden’s intangible aspects, its atmosphere, mood, ecology, and character of place. James Golden‘s book has been profiled in publications such as Gardens Illustrated, The New York Times, Rainer and West’s Planting in a Post-Wild World, Claire Takacs’s Dreamscapes, and Christopher Wood’s Gardenlust. A self-taught gardener, Golden has a Master’s Degree in modern poetry and worked as a writer for most of his career.This New York Botanical Garden webinar will take place June 29 at 11 am Eastern, online, and is $25 for NYBG members, $29 for nonmembers. Register HERE.

  • Wednesday, March 2, 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm – A New Way of Thinking about Gardens, Nature, and Ourselves, Online

    Nearing retirement, James Golden began making a garden on a ridge above the Delaware River in Western New Jersey. He had fallen in love with the house, a simple 1960’s modernist structure with floor-to-ceiling windows all around. It was an unusual site for a garden—little more than a derelict wood on heavy, wet clay—but he was taken with the emotional power and intangible qualities of the landscape.

    Like Lester Collins at Innisfree, James thought and felt his way through this process, resulting in new awakenings and a place of rare beauty. After visiting James’ garden, Federal Twist, for the BBC Gardener’s World series, American Gardens, Monty Don, the British TV gardening guru, said “after over 50 years of gardening and visiting gardens, it made me rethink what a garden can be and do.” James will share the story of his garden journey, both practical and abstract, which is the subject of his new book, The View from Federal Twist: A New Way of Thinking about Gardens, Nature and Ourselves (Filbert Press, March 2022).

    James Golden, born in Mississippi though resident in New York City for most of his life, was a writer in the corporate world. When he began this garden, he also began a now well-known blog, The View from Federal Twist. Fifteen years on, James is a celebrated garden maker and thinker whose garden has featured in numerous publications including The New York Times, Gardens Illustrated, the Financial Times, Horticulture, and other magazines and books. federaltwistdesign.org

    This online event on March 2 is part of Innisfree Garden’s 2022 winter lecture series Romanticism at Innisfree: Nature as Muse. Free for Innisfree members, $15 for nonmembers. Register HERE.