Boston Flora

Tag: Jane Roy Brown

  • Sunday, June 1, 10:00 am – 12:00 pm – Green Immersion

    That human beings benefit from exposure to the natural world is well documented, both empirically and experientially, yet our society does not formally acknowledge the importance of connecting with nature. The Japanese concept of shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing, provides Westerners with a way to reawaken our connection with nature through guided sensory experience. In a similar green immersion at Garden in the Woods, Native Plant Trust writer-editor Jane Roy Brown will guide a contemplative 2 hour walk that includes pauses to write, sketch, and meditate. The event takes place June 1, and is $45. Register at https://www.nativeplanttrust.org/events/green-immersion-ss2025/. Thank you Crabtree & Evelyn for the photo.

  • Thursday, February 6, 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm Eastern – The Meaning of Gardens, Online

    For garden makers and visitors alike, the beauty or symbolism of a garden may kindle a sense of connection to a larger world, physical or imaginary. Garden creation begins in the imagination as a quest for meaning. On February 6 at 5 pm Eastern, Jane Roy Brown and the Native Plant Trust will explore the process of imagining a garden that holds personal meaning and look at examples of types of gardens that fulfill meaning-making for their creators or for visitors. The class is online and is $17 for members and $20 for nonmembers. Register at https://www.nativeplanttrust.org/events/the-meaning-of-gardens/

  • Friday, November 12, 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm – Native Plants in American Gardens: A Brief History

    At various times in American history, conservationists, landscape architects, and backyard gardeners have encouraged the use of native plants in public and private landscapes. This Native Plant Trust illustrated online lecture will provide a historical overview of these movements, spanning the late-nineteenth century Chicago Prairie School and the late-twentieth century grassroots resurgence among gardeners and conservationists throughout the United States. Among other questions, this talk explores the platforms and concerns of native plants advocates over the course of the twentieth century. Jane Roy Brown will lead the webinar on November 12 from 1 – 2 pm. $12 for NPT members, $15 for nonmembers. Register at http://www.nativeplanttrust.org/events/native-plants-american-gardens-brief-history/

  • Sunday, May 31, 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm – Writing in the Garden Webinar

    Writers from Emily Dickinson to Edith Wharton and Eudora Welty have found their gardens to be wellsprings of sensory experience that stimulated their writing. In this two-hour online Native Plant Trust workshop with Jane Roy Brown on May 31 from 1 – 3, virtually visit the fields and designed gardens at Nasami Farm and write spontaneously in response to prompts—verbal or visual cues provided by the workshop leader—inspired by the surroundings. No previous writing experience required. Please have a notebook and pen or pencil available. This class is now offered as a live webinar. NPT members $30, nonmembers $36. Register at http://www.nativeplanttrust.org/events/writing-garden/

  • Sunday, October 22, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm – Warren Manning: A Force of Nature

    Join Jane Roy Brown on Sunday, October 22 at 2:00 pm at Garden in the Woods for a presentation about Warren Manning (1860­–1938), an innovative landscape architect and planner whose work is the subject of a new book, Warren H. Manning, Landscape Architect and Environmental Planner that Brown co-edited. Manning had a national practice based in north suburban Boston, and for a time employed Will Curtis, who designed Garden in the Woods. The book will be available for purchase after the lecture. $8 for NEWFS members, $10 for nonmembers. Register online at http://www.newfs.org/learn/our-programs/warren-manning-a-force-of-nature

  • Fridays, July 24 and July 31, 10:00 am – 12:00 noon – Writing in the Garden

    Rich in sensory experience, a garden is an especially inspiring place in which to write. In this two-hour workshop, to be held twice on July 24 and 31, from 10 – noon, participants will visit two gardens at Tower Hill and write spontaneously in response to prompts inspired by the surroundings. Both aspiring and experienced writers are welcome.

    Instructor Jane Roy Brown is an award-winning writer, editor, and landscape historian who lives in Conway, Massachusetts. Jane works part-time as director of educational outreach at the Library of American Landscape History, a nonprofit organization based in Amherst, Massachusetts, which publishes books, produces films, and organizes exhibitions about American landscape history. Her workshop series, The Heart of Story: Writing Stories of Our Lives, focuses on how to write memoir.

    With Susan Haltom, Jane is co-author of One Writer’s Garden: Eudora Welty’s Home Place (University Press of Mississippi, September 2011), which won the 2012 Eudora Welty Award. Jane also wrote Drawing Lessons, a history of the Conway School of Landscape Design (CSLD via lulu.com, November 2011, work for hire).
    Her articles on travel, gardens, and landscape architecture have appeared in numerous periodicals, including Architectural Record, the Boston Globe travel section, The Christian Science Monitor, Garden Design, Harvard Magazine, and Preservation. She is a contributing editor for Landscape Architecture, the magazine of the American Society of Landscape Architects. She received a 2008 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Gold Award from the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation. She edited the 2003 Journal of the New England Garden History Society and worked in various editorial staff positions at AMC Outdoors, the magazine of the Appalachian Mountain Club, from 1995 to 2004, where she received a 2004 national Gold Award from the Society of National Association Publishers.  After earning a B.A. at Middlebury College, Jane completed the certificate program in landscape-design history at Radcliffe Seminars (now the Landscape Institute at Boston Architectural College). As her final project, she documented the history of the 1926 Jens Jensen landscape at Skylands, the former summer home of Edsel and Eleanor Ford in Seal Harbor, Maine.

    Tower Hill member price is $20 per session, nonmembers $35 per session.  Register at www.towerhillbg.org.

  • Thursdays, July 23 – August 6, 10:00 am – 12:00 noon – Garden Writing Workshop: The Heart of Story

    The writer Eudora Welty found her garden to be a wellspring of sensory experience that nourished her writing. She observed that when stimulated by fragrance, the sounds of insects and birds and the colors and textures of plants, our minds take flight, and stories and memories bubble to the surface. Writing in a garden provides an opportunity to tap this rich inspiration, whether the topic is the garden itself, a personal memory or a story born of the imagination. In this series taking place on three consecutive Thursdays, July 23 – August 6, participants will visit different garden spaces at Berkshire Botanical Garden and write spontaneously in response to prompts—verbal or visual cues provided by the workshop lead- er—inspired by the natural surroundings. Writers will hone their abilities to observe, stay focused and respond from their hearts. This workshop is designed to be a safe, guided experience for aspiring and experienced writers alike. Participants can enroll in one, two or all three of the sessions. Each session will focus on a different topic: (1) Memoir and Garden Memories; (2) Establishing Sense of Place; (3) Writing with All Your Senses.  BBG Members $135; Nonmembers $145. Register online at www.berkshirebotanical.org. What to bring: Come prepared to spend two hours outdoors, including moderate walking. For example, the instructor usually carries a small tote or backpack containing a notebook, pen or pencil, water bottle, light rain jacket or umbrella, sunhat, sunscreen and bug repellent. In inclement weather, the workshop will take place indoors.

    Instructor Jane Roy Brown is an award-winning writer, editor and workshop leader who lives in Conway, MA. In January 2012, Jane founded “The Heart of Story: Writing Stories of Our Lives,” a suite of workshops designed to facilitate memoir writing for adults at all levels of experience. Jane is coauthor of One Writer’s Garden: Eudora Welty’s Home Place (University Press of Mississippi, 2011), the winner of the 2012 Eudora Welty Book Award. Her writing has appeared in numerous periodicals, including The Christian Science Monitor, Garden Design, Horticulture and Preservation. She is a contributing editor for Landscape Architecture, the national magazine of the American Society of Landscape Architects, and was a regular contributor to the Boston Globe travel section from 2001–2013.

  • Tuesday, March 27, 7:00 pm – One Writer’s Garden: Eudora Welty’s Home Place

    By the time she reached her late twenties, Eudora Welty (1909-2001) was launching a distinguished literary career. She was also becoming a capable gardener under the tutelage of her mother, Chestina Welty, who designed their modest garden in Jackson, Mississippi. From the beginning, Eudora wove images of southern flora and gardens into her writing, yet few outside her personal circle knew that the images were drawn directly from her passionate connection to and abiding knowledge of her own garden. Jane Roy Brown’s book One Writer’s Garden: Eudora Welty’s Home Place contains many previously unpublished writings, including literary passages and excerpts from Welty’s private correspondence about the garden.  Ms. Brown will speak at Porter Square Books, 25 White Street in Cambridge on Tuesday, March 27, beginning at 7 pm.

    Brown is a freelance travel and garden writer with a focus on historic gardens and landscapes. She is also director of educational outreach for the Library of American Landscape History. She has published in Horticulture, Preservation, Garden Design, and the Boston Globe, and she serves as a contributing editor to Landscape Architecture.  Call 617-491-2220, or visit www.portersquarebooks.com for more information.

  • Wednesday, December 7, 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm – One Writer’s Garden: Eudora Welty’s Home Place

    Eudora Welty’s Mississippi garden ran riot with the camellias, roses, and daylilies that she tended as zealously as her prose. The novelist, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for The Optimist’s Daughter, cultivated characters for her stories along with the flowers that she grew in her modest Jackson garden.

    A fine new book by Susan Haltom and Jane Roy Brown looks at Welty’s enduring relationship with her garden, to which she turned as a respite from her travels and the pressures of making a living as a writer. The garden and house where Eudora Welty (1909-2001) lived and wrote is now a museum, and the garden has been restored to its heyday in the 1920s through the ’40s.

    Welty’s letters, published for the first time in this book, reveal witty and telling observations about not only gardening, but also fellow gardeners. She wrote to a friend, “The delphiniums I planted in my ignorance have all bloomed like everything and are getting ready to bloom for the second time and Mother says the ladies of the garden club come over each day to worship and grit their teeth.”

    On Wednesday, December 7, from 3 – 5, come hear Jane Roy Brown speak about Miss Welty’s garden and how its formation also offers a compelling look at the broader social trends of the time, including the flourishing of womens civic involvement through garden clubs and the development of streetcar suburbs. Brown serves as director of educational outreach at the Library of American Landscape History. Her writing has appeared in the Boston Globe as well as in national publications.

    Admission to the book talk is free but an RSVP is requested to mhorn@masshort.org. The event is co-sponsored by COGdesign (www.cogdesign.org) and the Massachusetts Horticultural Society (www.masshort.org).  The event takes place at the Massachusetts Horticultural Society at Elm Bank, 900 Washington Street in Wellesley.