Boston Flora

Tag: Maine

  • Friday, August 13, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm – Newforest Institute Gardens Tour

    The Belfast Garden Club will present an Open Garden day at the Newforest Institute Gardens on Friday, August 13, at 66 Monroe Highway (Rt. 139), Brooks (Camden), Maine. This educational nonprofit has 8 acres of demonstration vegetable, herb and flower gardens plus an “edible forest” including fruit & nut trees and berries. See a seedling house, cold frames, garlic berm, mushroom logs, terraced gardens that also serve as a water collection system, sheet mulched beds and a 2-position movable greenhouse.  $4 admission fee.

    For more information call: Diane Allmayer-Beck at 338-3105 or Martha Laitin at 948-2815.  You may also log on to www.belfastgardenclub.org.

  • Friday, July 23, 10:00 am – 3:00 pm – Wrapping Flowers Japanese Style

    In Japan, presentation influences so much – food, flowers, tea. But Japan is not the only culture this workshop will be inspired by. There are wonderful, exciting flower arrangement traditions from many cultures and this workshop will draw from them. July 23 from 10 – 3 is the perfect time for the Berkshire Botanical Garden, 5 West Stockbridge Road, West Stockbridge  to offer a flower-oriented workshop as there will be many flowers to choose from in our gardens. Participants will use basketry materials, papers and metal screening to “wrap flowers” in a new way. Be prepared to be newly excited about presenting the flowers you already love to live with and give as gifts.

    Nancy Moore Bess is a master basket maker and exhibits her baskets worldwide. She has championed Japanese basketry in the west and is the author of Bamboo in Japan. She teaches basket making workshops throughout the United States including for the Haystack School of Crafts on Deer Isle, Maine. Her popular workshops always sell out. BBG members $75, nonmembers $85, plus a $20 materials fee paid directly to the instructor.  To register, log on to www.berkshirebotanical.org, or call 413-298-3926.

    http://www.freshflowersandgifts.com.au/shop/images/big/B4.jpg

  • Thursday, July 8, 4:00 pm – Beatrix Farrand, Private Gardens, Public Landscapes

    Judith Tankard continues her book tour with a stop at Berkshire Botanical Garden, 5 West Stockbridge Road in West Stockbridge,  on Thursday, July 8 at 4 pm. Beatrix Farrand (below) was one of the foremost landscape architects of the early 1900s and one of the earliest women to take up the profession. She studied privately under the renowned horticulturist Charles Sprague Sargent and learned about garden design through extensive travel abroad. Many of her clients were members of high society, with estates in Newport, the Berkshires, and Maine. Learn about this remarkable woman and her lasting influence on the field of landscape design.  $20.  To register, log on to www.berkshirebotanical.org, or call 413-298-3926.

    Judith B. Tankard is an art historian specializing in landscape history. She is the author of seven books and has taught for over twenty years at the Landscape Institute of the Arnold Arboretum, Harvard University.

    http://www.ced.berkeley.edu/cedarchives/images/farrand2.jpg

  • Sunday, July 19, 3 – 4:30 p.m. – Curves, Carpets and Color – Romantic and Victorian Gardening in America

    Historic New England (www.historicnewengland.org) invites you to Castle Tucker, 2 Lee Street in Wiscasset,  Maine on Sunday, July 18, from 3 to 4:30 pm, when author Martha McDowell explores the development of an American landscaping style from the formal plans of the eighteenth century to the elaborate designs of Victorian high style.  The program is co-sponsored by the Maine Antiques Dealers’ Association.

    Marta McDowell lives, writes and gardens in Chatham, New Jersey.  She shares her garden with her husband, Kirke Bent, her crested cockatiel, Sydney, and approximately 30,000 honeybees.  Her garden writing has appeared in popular publications such as Woman’s Day, Fine Gardening and The New York Times.  Scholars and specialists have read her essays on American authors and their horticultural interests in the journals Hortus and Arnoldia.

    Following the relationship between the pen and the trowel led Marta to the poet Emily Dickinson.  Marta’s book, Emily Dickinson’s Gardens, was published by McGraw-Hill in 2005.  If you visit the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts, you can stroll the grounds with a landscape audio tour that Marta scripted in 2007.

    Marta teaches landscape history and preservation at the New York Botanical Garden and Drew University.  She teaches gardening classes for the Chautauqua Institution.  A popular lecturer on topics ranging from design history to plant combinations, she has been a featured speaker at locations ranging from Wave Hill to the Garden Club of Philadelphia and the Cummer Museum of Art in Jacksonville, Florida.

    Marta’s latest gardening adventure was a six-month working holiday in England.  She interned at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Rosemoor in Devon and at the Chelsea Physic Garden in London.

    Her husband summed up Marta’s biography as “I am, therefore I dig.”

    $5 for Members of Historic New England, $10 for non-Members.  Pre-registration is recommended.