Boston Flora

Tag: Kittery

  • Saturday, June 18, 9:30 am – 11:30 am – Eco-Tour: Gardening for Insects, a Native Pollinator Garden

    The Ecological Landscape Alliance invites you to tour the private gardens of landscape designer and pollinator expert, Thomas Berger.

    When choosing plants to support insects in our gardens, we want to make the most of our limited space. Which plants nourish the most species? And which kinds of insects need our support most urgently?

    Thomas Berger has been designing landscapes for insects for more than twenty years in his own gardens and client gardens. Thomas pays particular attention to providing for two groups of insects:

    • The caterpillars of butterflies and moths (lepidoptera), which are an important part of the wildlife food chain.
    • The pollinators, especially native bees that fulfill the essential function of pollinating not only our food crops but also native plants and thus contribute to their survival.

    Our goal for any garden should be to provide habitat for the largest possible number of insect species. Thomas Berger’s gardens demonstrate effective habitat that provide joy and beauty for humans as well.

    Join us for a unique opportunity to explore the private gardens of an inspiring insect specialist, landscape designer, and passionate nature photographer. Thomas Berger grew up in a small rural town in Germany. During his childhood he was an avid collector of shells, bones, sea creatures, and fossils. He also gardened with his father and kept bees and sheep which led him to study agriculture. As an adult, Thomas worked on farms in Germany, France and Australia, and joined the German Volunteer Service in 1984, working in an agricultural project in Niger, West Africa. In 1994 he moved to the United States, where he started a landscape design and construction firm, Green Art, and received an award of excellence from the New Hampshire Landscape Association in 1998. Thomas is a regionally known stone sculptor, expressing his love of nature through his art. Thomas has won many awards and commissions and his sculpture is displayed at many public venues throughout the Northeast.

    $33 for nonmembers. ELA member discounts will apply Register at www.ecolandscaping.org

  • Saturday, July 25, 10:00 am – 12:00 noon – The Green Art Garden: A Garden for Nature and a Space for Art

    Join artist, landscape designer, and ecologist Thomas Berger on Saturday, July 25 from 10 – noon for an Ecological Landscape Alliance private tour of the Green Art Garden, 30 US Route 1 Bypass in Kittery, Maine. Over the span of several years, Thomas renovated the formerly neglected landscape, removing debris and clearing the impenetrable stands of multiflora rose, buckthorn, barberry, autumn olive and poison ivy. In the early years Thomas planted many trees, hedges, and display beds for use as a commercial nursery. Later these landscape elements became the framework for the formal gardens with mixed borders, a reflecting pool, a grapevine-covered greenhouse frame, a miniature garden, and a pollinator-planting. Throughout the garden, Thomas displays his nature-inspired stone sculptures.

    Adjacent to the formal gardens are two woodland acres including mature red oak, white pine, and beech, and a wide variety of other species. With a keen interest in providing habitat, Thomas is now enriching this woodland with native plants, and has created a pond and other habitat elements to provide food and shelter for wildlife. Thomas is particularly concerned with insect habitat. There are many species of butterflies, dragonflies, solitary wasps, and bees, and new guests being attracted to the garden every year.

    Thomas Berger grew up in a small rural town in Germany. During his childhood he was an avid collector of shells, bones, sea creatures, and fossils. He also gardened with his father and kept bees and sheep which led him to study agriculture. As an adult, Thomas worked on farms in Germany, France and Australia, and joined the German Volunteer Service in 1984, working in an agricultural project in Niger, West Africa. In 1994 he moved to the United States, where he started a landscape design and construction firm, Green Art, and received an award of excellence from the New Hampshire Landscape Association in 1998. Thomas is a regionally known stone sculptor, expressing his love of nature through his art. Thomas has won many awards and commissions and his sculpture is displayed at many public venues throughout the Northeast. – See more at: http://www.ecolandscaping.org/event/the-green-art-garden-a-garden-for-nature-and-a-space-for-art/#sthash.QksKgg99.dpuf Rain or shine event, $20 for ELA members, $30 for nonmembers.

  • Friday, March 4, 5:30 pm – The Land Use History, Flora, and Natural Communities of the Isles of Shoals

    Bill Nichols, Senior Ecologist/Botanist of the New Hampshire Natural Heritage Bureau will address the New England Botanical Club on Friday, March 4, beginning at 5:30 pm in the Haller Lecture Hall, Room 102, Harvard Museum of Natural History, 24 Oxford Street in Cambridge. He will speak on the topic The Land Use History, Flora, and Natural Communities of the Isles of Shoals (Rye, New Hampshire and Kittery, Maine.) The meeting is free and open to the public. For maps and parking directions, log on to www.rhodora.org.