Boston Flora

Tag: Los Angeles Times

  • Wednesday, August 9, 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm – Harvest: Unexpected Projects Using Extraordinary Garden Plants

    In their beautifully photographed guide to growing, harvesting, and utilizing 47 unexpected plants, Harvest, Stefani Bittner and Alethea Harampolis encourage gardeners to discover the surprising usefulness of petals and leaves, roots, seeds, and fruit. Turn turmeric root into a natural dye and calamintha into lip balm. Make anise hyssop into a refreshing iced tea and turn apricots into a facial mask. Crabapple branches can be used to create stunning floral arrangements, oregano flowers to infuse vinegar, and edible chrysanthemum to liven up a salad. With the remarkable, multi-purpose plants in Harvest, there is always something for gardeners to harvest from one growing season to the next. Stefani will appear at Tower Hill Botanic Garden on Wednesday, August 9 for a talk beginning at 7 pm, followed by a book signing. Free with admission to the gardens.

    Stefani Bittner and Alethea Harampolis are the co-founders of Homestead Design Collective, a San Francisco Bay Area landscape design firm focused on creating beautiful gardens that provide harvest. Stefani is the co-author of The Beautiful Edible Garden (Ten Speed Press, 2013) and Alethea is the co-author of the best selling books, The Flower Recipe Book and The Wreath Recipe Book (Artisan 2013 and 2014). Stefani and Alethea’s latest collaboration, Harvest, was released by Ten Speed Press in February 2017. Stefani and Alethea’s work has been featured in San Francisco Chronicle, Sunset Magazine, C Magazine, Los Angeles Times, NY Times, Martha Stewart Living, Better Homes & Gardens, Vogue, Food and Wine, and Gardenista.com.

  • Tuesday, April 25, 1:30 pm – 3:00 pm – Bees in Springtime

    Bees pollinate dozens of plants that bloom in the springtime, so now is the time to set up beehives in gardens, on rooftops, at home or even at work. Engage with bee expert Noah Wilson-Rich, Ph.D. and a beekeepers from The Best Bees Company to learn how to set up habitat in springtime with bees in mind. This Massachusetts Horticultural Society event will take place at the Gardens at Elm Bank on Tuesday, April 25 from 1:30 – 3.

    Noah Wilson-Rich, Ph.D. is a biologist, professor, New York Times & Los Angeles Times contributor, two-time TEDx speaker, beekeeper, uncle, and author of The Bee: A Natural History published by Princeton University Press. Noah’s research focuses on bee immunology. Noah is the Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of The Best Bees Company, a beekeeping service that delivers, installs, and manages beehives for residential and commercial properties nation-wide. Proceeds from The Best Bees Company go toward research to improve bee health. This research is based out of the Urban Beekeeping Laboratory and Bee Sanctuary, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization in Boston’s South End.

    Mass Hort Member Cost: $12; Non Member Cost $20. Register online at www.masshort.org.

  • Monday, April 18, 7:00 pm – Brilliant Beacons: A History of the American Lighthouse

    In a work rich in maritime lore and brimming with original historical detail, Eric Jay Dolin, the best-selling author of Leviathan, presents the most comprehensive history of American lighthouses ever written, telling the story of America through the prism of its beloved coastal sentinels. Set against the backdrop of an expanding nation, Brilliant Beacons traces the evolution of America’s lighthouse system, highlighting the political, military, and technological battles fought to illuminate the nation’s hardscrabble coastlines. In rollicking detail, Dolin treats readers to a memorable cast of characters including the penny-pinching Treasury official Stephen Pleasonton, who hamstrung the country’s efforts to adopt the revolutionary Fresnel Lens, and presents tales both humorous and harrowing of soldiers, saboteurs, ruthless egg collectors, and most importantly, the light-keepers themselves. Richly supplemented with over 100 photographs and illustrations throughout, Brilliant Beacons is the most original history of American lighthouses in many decades. Mr. Dolin will speak at Porter Square Books, 25 White Street in Cambridge, on Monday, April 18 at 7 pm, followed by a book signing.

    Eric Jay Dolin is the author of Leviathan: The History of Whaling In America, which was chosen as one of the best nonfiction books of 2007 by the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe, and also won the 2007 John Lyman Award for U. S. Maritime History; and Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America. He is also the author of When America First Met China: An Exotic History of Tea, Drugs, and Money in the Age of Sail. A graduate of Brown, Yale, and MIT, where he received his Ph.D. in environmental policy, he lives in Marblehead, Massachusetts, with his wife and two children.

  • Tuesday, March 19, 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm – Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation

    The Concord Museum and the Concord Museum Guild of Volunteers will host author Andrea Wulf on Thursday, March 19 at the Concord Museum, Cambridge Turnpike at Lexington Road in Concord, for a lecture beginning at 1 pm.  The talk is the 2013 Mary M. Lesneski Memorial Lecture, on Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation. 

    Founding Gardeners offers a fascinating look at the revolutionary generation from the unique and intimate perspective of their lives as gardeners, plantsmen, and farmers. For the founding fathers, gardening, agriculture, and botany were elemental passions, as deeply ingrained in their characters as their belief in liberty for the nation they were creating. Wulf’s stories of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Madison reveal a guiding, but previously overlooked, ideology of the American Revolution.

    Andrea Wulf was born in India and moved to Germany as a child. She lives in Britain where she trained as a design historian at the Royal College of Art. Her most recent book, Chasing Venus, was published in 2012 in eight countries in conjunction with the last transit of Venus in our century. Wulf has written for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, and many other newspapers. She has lectured widely to large audiences at the Royal Geographical Society and Royal Society in London, the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, Monticello, and the Chicago Botanic Garden, among many others. She is a three-time fellow of the International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello and the Eccles British Library Writer in Residence 2013.

    During her visit to Concord, Ms. Wulf will be a Scholar in Residence at the Concord Museum, exploring both the Concord Museum’s collection and the collections of other area institutions for research for a new book.

    As is tradition, Afternoon Tea organized by the Concord Museum’s Guild of Volunteers follows the lecture. The annual Mary M. Lesneski Lecture, begun 34 years ago in memory of a dedicated Concord Museum volunteer, has brought nationally renowned speakers on a variety of topics to the Museum each March. Tickets to the lecture and tea are $30; $25 Concord Museum Members. Reservations are required as space is limited; (978) 369-9763, ext. 216. Books will be available for purchase in the Museum Shop, with a book signing to follow the lecture.

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