Boston Flora

Tag: Morven Museum

  • Thursday, April 16, 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm Eastern – Middleton Place, Online

    The fourth and final program in Morven Museum & Garden’s 2026 Grand Homes and Gardens series, Freedom at Home: Telling the Full Story of America’s Founding Homes & Gardens, featuring Middleton Place in Charleston, South Carolina with speaker Brandon Stone, Director Research and Preservation will take place April 16 at 6:30 pm. Register ($10 Morven members, $20 nonmembers) for the virtual event at https://www.morven.org/events/grandhomes-middleton-place

    The primary residence of the Middleton Family, including Declaration signer Arthur Middleton, Middleton Place, located in Charleston, SC, was built in several phases of the course of the 18th and 19th centuries. The plantation’s extensive and transformative gardens, established in the 1740s, were awarded the Garden Club of America’s highest honor, the Bulkley Medal, in 1941.

    The estate saw the birth of the new country and was heavily impacted less than a century later by the Civil War when Union troops razed most of the property. More than 2,800 men, women, and children were enslaved by the Middleton family from 1738 to 1865. Today, the site works to interpret the stories of the enslaved and free Africans and African Americans who lived at Middleton Place.

    Born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina, Brandon has and always will call the Carolina Lowcountry his home. Graduating from Coastal Carolina University in 2019 with a Bachelor’s degree in History, Brandon began his career with the Drayton Hall Preservation Trust as a Historical Interpreter. While completing his Master’s Degree in Public History at the College of Charleston, he took on the role of Volunteer and Interpretive Coordinator at the Edmondston- Alston House, a house museum operated by the Middleton Place Foundation. Brandon now proudly serves as the Director of Research and Preservation for Middleton Place.

    Brandon takes great pride in working for the Middleton Place Foundation alongside a fantastic team, where each day is a privilege to be part of stewarding a National Historic Landmark.

  • Thursday, March 26, 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm Eastern – Thomas Jefferson’s Revolutionary Garden, Online

    The third program in the 2026 Grand Homes and Gardens series, Freedom at Home: Telling the Full Story of America’s Founding Homes & Gardens, featuring gardens of Monticello in Charlottesville, Virginia with speaker Peter Hatch, Gardener, Historian, and Emeritus Director of Gardens and Grounds for the Thomas Jefferson Foundation.

    Peter J. Hatch is a gardener and historian living in Albemarle County, Virginia, where he gardens, lectures, consults, and writes about garden history. The Emeritus Director of Gardens and Grounds for the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Hatch was responsible for the maintenance, interpretation, and restoration of the 2,400-acre landscape at Monticello from 1977 to 2012.

    Peter Hatch also conceived and oversaw numerous educational programs, including Monticello Garden Tours (for 35,000 annual visitors); the Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants, a unique nursery selling and preserving garden varieties and species from our past; the Saturdays in the Garden program of natural history walks, lectures, and horticultural workshops; and the Historic Landscape Institute, a two week field school for students from around the nation.

    Thomas Jefferson wrote that “the greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture,” and the Monticello vegetable garden, a 1,000-foot-long terrace, became an experimental laboratory, an Ellis Island of new and unusual edible plants from around the world. Jefferson was a strong believer in a vegetable diet, and this revolutionary garden inspired a revolutionary cuisine in the kitchen at Monticello. The Jefferson legacy in food, wine, and gardening is profound — setting a strong foundation and high standard for the farm to table movement today.

    Mostly restored today to the early nineteenth century, Monticello’s gardens feature extensive flower beds, a terraced vegetable garden, and orchards of fruit trees. Much of the work constructing, cultivating, and maintaining the gardens would have fallen to enslaved labor. Thomas Jefferson enslaved over six hundred people throughout his life.

    Hatch is the author of four books on Thomas Jefferson, and he has lectured in thirty-eight states on Monticello and the history of garden plants. Hatch’s book on the Monticello vegetable garden of Jefferson’s retirement years, A Rich Spot of Earth’ Thomas Jefferson’s Revolutionary Garden at Monticello (Yale University Press), received the American Horticultural Society’s Best Book Award for 2012.

    In 2011, he received The Garden Club of America’s Medal in Historic Preservation, the first horticulturist to receive the award, and in 2012, Peter Hatch was awarded the Flora Ann Bynum medal, the highest honor bestowed by the Southern Garden History Society.

    The March 26 Morven Museum program begins at 6:30 pm and is $10 for Morven members, $20 for nonmembers. Register at https://www.morven.org/events/grandhomes-thomas-jefferson

  • Thursday, March 12, 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm Eastern – Stratford Hall, Online

    The second program in Morven Museum & Garden’s 2026 Grand Homes and Gardens series, Freedom at Home: Telling the Full Story of America’s Founding Homes & Gardens, featuring Stratford Hall in Stratford, Virginia with speaker Dr. Gordon Blaine Steffey, Director of Research and the Jessie Ball duPont Memorial Library. The virtual event will take place March 12 beginning at 6:30 and is $10 for Morven members, $20 for nonmembers. Register at https://www.morven.org/events/grandhomes-stratford-hall

    Stratford Hall, located in Stratford, Virginia, was the boyhood home of two signers of the Declaration of Independence, Richard Henry Lee, and Francis Lightfoot Lee. It was also the birthplace of Robert E. Lee, General in Chief of the Armies of the Confederate States during the Civil War.

    Four generations of the Lee family inhabited Stratford as did hundreds of enslaved Africans and African Americans who lived and labored at the plantation. Construction of the site’s Georgian Great House was completed in the 1740s. At that time, an estimated 200 enslaved people were living at Stratford and surrounding properties owned by Thomas Lee, father to Declaration signers Richard Henry and Francis Lightfoot Lee.

    Today, Stratford Hall stands as a model of Georgian architecture, standing almost entirely as it did in the 1740s. The site interprets the lives of the politically active Lee family. Extensive research, archaeological work, and engagement with descendant communities is ongoing to tell the stories of the people enslaved at Stratford.

  • Thursday, March 5, 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm Eastern – William Paca’s Annapolis House, Online

    The first program in Morven Museum & Garden’s 2026 Grand Homes and Gardens series, Freedom at Home: Telling the Full Story of America’s Founding Homes & Gardens, features the William Paca House in Annapolis, Maryland with speaker Glenn E. Campbell, Historian Emeritus, Historic Annapolis. The program will be available to watch online on March 5 beginning at 6:30 pm Eastern, and may be reserved at https://www.morven.org/events/grandhomes-william-paca. $10 Morven members, $20 general public.

    Glenn E. Campbell earned degrees in history from the U.S. Naval Academy and University of Maryland, College Park. Following his naval service, he joined the staff of Historic Annapolis in 1997 and was named Senior Historian of the non-profit historic preservation and education group in 2008. Since retiring in 2022, Mr. Campbell has pursued his passion for international travel while remaining engaged in public history as an independent scholar.

  • Thursday, March 20, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm Eastern – Celebrating the Experimental: The Case Study Houses, Live and Online

    This is the fourth and final program in the Morvin Museum’s 2025 Grand Homes and Gardens Speaker Series, The Quality of Doing: Mid-Century Modern Grand Homes & Gardens, featuring four scholars who will look at the work of Mid-Century Modern architects and designers through the lens of landmark homes and gardens across the United States. Learn more about the series and purchase series tickets.

    In 1945, Arts + Architecture magazine commissioned major architects to study, design, and build efficient and affordable model homes. The program anticipated a residential housing boom in the United States in the aftermath of World War II. Architects sought to create prototypes that could be cheaply and easily mass-produced while championing a modern design aesthetic. The resulting “Case Study Houses” were concentrated in the Los Angeles area and featured the work of architects such as Richard Neutra, Charles and Ray Eames, and Eero Saarinen (among many others). This talk with art historian, curator, and author Elizabeth A. T. Smith will introduce the most celebrated, experimental, and influential Case Study Houses, some of which are still standing today.  Those that are still standing were miraculously spared from the devastation of the recent Los Angeles fires.

    All talks begin at 6:30 p.m. in Morven’s Stockton Education Center. Doors and the virtual waiting room open at 6:00 p.m. A Zoom link will be sent to all virtual participants upon registration. Light refreshments inspired by each site will be provided for in-person attendees.


    Elizabeth Smith joined the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation as its first Executive Director in 2013. Previously she held curatorial positions at Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. While at MOCA, Smith curated the exhibition Blueprints for Modern Living: History and Legacy of the Case Study Houses (1989) and authored subsequent publications on the Case Study Houses for Taschen. As well, she curated and co-organized such MOCA exhibitions as The Architecture of R.M. Schindler, At the End of the Century: One Hundred Years of Architecture, and Urban Revisions: Current Projects for the Public Realm.

    This program is sponsored by Capital Health. The 2025 Grand Homes and Gardens series is sponsored by Bryn Mawr Trust.

  • Wednesday, March 5, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm Eastern – Architecting Nature: Philip Johnson, David Whitney, and the Evolution of the Glass House Estate, 1946 – 2024, Live and Online

    This is the second program in the 2025 Grand Homes and Gardens Speaker Series, The Quality of Doing: Mid-Century Modern Grand Homes & Gardens, featuring four scholars who will look at the work of Mid-Century Modern architects and designers through the lens of landmark homes and gardens across the United States. Learn more about the series and purchase series tickets.

    “To me the whole experience of what’s been labeled now all over the world ‘the glass house’ is a misnomer. To me, the house is a park. To me, the whole experience is a park in which there are, indeed, monuments or occasions or accidents or things by nature and things that I’ve placed there that create a place.” Philip Johnson (1906-2005)

    World-renowned architect Philip Johnson’s words convey the undeniable importance of the fifty-acre estate he assembled and tweaked over fifty years in partnership with curator and plantsman David Whitney. This talk will consider the social, architectural, and gardening history of the property, and its evolution from five untamed acres to a carefully contrived ideal landscape that is the setting – and the view — for The Glass House and its orbiting playground of Modernist follies constructed between 1946 and 2005. 

    All talks begin at 6:30 p.m. in Morven’s Stockton Education Center. Doors and the virtual waiting room open at 6:00 p.m. A Zoom link will be sent to all virtual participants upon registration. Light refreshments inspired by each site will be provided for in-person attendees.


    Maureen Cassidy-Geiger is an internationally recognized curator, scholar and educator with special expertise in European decorative arts and the history of architecture, gardens and court culture. Formerly on the staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Frick Collection and Parsons School of Design, she has curated exhibitions in Europe and America and has published and lectured on a broad array of subjects, for amateurs and specialists alike. In 2021, she presented The Art of Architecture: Beaux-Arts Drawings from the Peter May Collection at New-York Historical Society, to accompany the publication of the two-volume catalogue Living with Architecture as Art: The Peter May Collection of Architectural Drawings, Models and Artefacts (Paul Holberton Press).

    This program is sponsored by David Schure and Grant Wagner, mid century modern house specialists from Callaway Henderson Sotheby’s International Realty. The 2025 Grand Homes and Gardens series is sponsored by Bryn Mawr Trust.

  • Tuesday, March 5, and Wednesdays, March 13 – March 27, 6:30 pm Eastern – Grand Homes & Gardens Speaker Series: State-ly Homes – Exploring US Governors’ Mansions and Gardens, Online

    Homes to generations of state leaders and their families, governors’ mansions have been staples of the American landscape since the country’s founding. From refurbished sites of historical significance to bespoke masterpieces, the grand homes and gardens of U.S. governors offer a unique glimpse into how architecture, interior design, and landscapes can serve a civic purpose. 

    Join Morven (New Jersey’s first governor’s mansion) as we explore four current governor’s mansions, traveling from New Jersey to Virginia, Hawai’i, and Maine. Learn from experts about how these spaces were created to embody the state and the people they seek to represent. 

    The first event is Tuesday, March 5 at 6:30, exploring Drumthwacket, New Jersey’s Governor’s Mansion. Then, on Wednesday, March 13, we will visit First House, Virginia’s Executive Mansion, followed on March 20 by an exploration of Washington Place, the People’s Home of Hawai’i (below). The final event takes place on March 27 at The Blaine House, Home to Maine’s Governors.

    The virtual series is $70 for the general public. Register at https://www.morven.org/upcoming/grandhomes24series You may also register for individual sessions.

  • Wednesday, May 24, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm Eastern – The Costs of Luxury: Mahogany and Tall Case Clocks in Early America, Live and Online

    On May 24 at 6:30 pm, explore the human and environmental impact behind the rich mahogany exteriors of early American tall case clocks with Jennifer Anderson. Early clockmakers and cabinetmakers utilized some of the finest materials available to craft the tall case clocks featured in wealthy homes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Historian Dr. Jennifer Anderson will examine the human and environmental costs of one such material, mahogany. Beneath the rich and silky exterior of this exotic wood lies a larger story of consumer demand, exploitation, and environmental impact.

    Your in-person ticket includes access to visit Striking Beauty: New Jersey Tall Case Clocks, 1730 – 1830, from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m.

    This event is hybrid – held both live and online. Doors open for the in-person event at 6:00 p.m. in the Stockton Education Center at the Morven Museum & Garden, 55 Stockton Street in Princeton, New Jersey. The virtual waiting room opens on Zoom at 6:00 p.m. Q&A for both live and virtual attendees will follow the talk.

    A Zoom webinar link will be shared with virtual ticket holders upon registration. A recording of the event will be provided following the program.

    Jennifer Anderson, Associate Professor of History at Stonybrook University, holds a PhD in Atlantic and Early American History from New York University. She is the author of Mahogany: The Costs of Luxury in Early America (Harvard Univ. Press, 2012) about the social and environmental history of the tropical timber trade in the 18th century. She has received many awards and fellowships, including the 2016 Murrin Prize and the Society of American Historians’ Nevins Prize. She headed the research team for the Emmy-nominated documentary, “Traces of the Trade,” about the New England slave trade and in 2013 curated an exhibition about Sylvester Manor, a 17th century plantation in New York. Her new research focuses on reinterpreting the complex human and environmental history of Long Island within the broader Atlantic context. Strongly committed to public history, she serves as a historical consultant at numerous historic sites and museums.

  • Wednesday, March 15, 6:30 pm Eastern – Trailblazers and Trendsetters: Bartram’s Garden, Live and Online

    Morven Museum & Garden is pleased to present the 2023 Grand Homes & Gardens Speaker Series: Trailblazers and Trendsetters. Join us as we explore the people and spaces, past and present, who cultivated new opportunities and inspired breakthrough trends for future generations of landscape architects, designers, entrepreneurs, and horticulturalists. Today, these places continue the work of preserving historic and natural landscapes for public benefit and community engagement. The 2023 series will feature Manitoga, Villa Lewaro, Beauport – The Sleeper McCann House, and Bartram’s Garden. On March 15, the final installment of the series will be presented.

    Learn about America’s oldest surviving botanic garden that today serves its community as an educational and sustainable landscape in Philadelphia. As America’s oldest surviving botanic garden, established by John Bartram – the father of American botany, Bartram’s Garden has blazed many trails. Not only is the 14-acre garden in Philadelphia, PA home to a collection of plant species collected, grown, and studied by the Bartram family from 1728 to 1850, today the site provides communal space and sustainable farming opportunities for its surrounding neighborhoods. Speaker Aseel Rasheed, Public Programs Director at Batram’s Garden, will explore the history of the Bartram family, the home, and the gardens while also taking the story up to the present day and the site’s groundbreaking role as a space serving the community.

    This program is sponsored by Keller Williams Princeton Realty. $10 – $30. Register through Eventbrite HERE.

  • Wednesday, March 8, 6:30 pm Eastern – Trailblazers and Trendsetters: Beauport, Live and Online

    Morven Museum & Garden is pleased to present the 2023 Grand Homes & Gardens Speaker Series: Trailblazers and Trendsetters. Join us as we explore the people and spaces, past and present, who cultivated new opportunities and inspired breakthrough trends for future generations of landscape architects, designers, entrepreneurs, and horticulturalists. Today, these places continue the work of preserving historic and natural landscapes for public benefit and community engagement. The 2023 series will feature Manitoga, Villa Lewaro, Beauport – The Sleeper McCann House, and Bartram’s Garden. On March 8 at 6:30 pm, explore the unique and ornate designs in the summer home of one of America’s first professional interior designers, Henry Davis Sleeper.

    Henry Davis Sleeper set many trends as one of America’s first professional interior designers. Sleeper’s unique and ornate design concepts were showcased throughout his summer home, Beauport, in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Here he hosted a regular cohort of artists and intellectuals, navigating early twentieth century society as a gay man. Presented by Kristen Weiss, the Cape Ann site manager at Historic New England, this talk will examine Sleeper’s groundbreaking interior designs, still featured in the house today, as well as Beauport’s architecture and arts and crafts landscape design.

    Please note that our speaker will present this program virtually. The talk will be streamed live for an in-person and virtual audience alike. Speaker Kristen Weiss is the Cape Ann site manager at Historic New England; managing Beauport, the Sleeper-McCann House in Gloucester, Mass. and Cogswell’s Grant in Essex, Mass. She previously worked in the American Decorative Arts department at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass. She has developed multiple tours and lectures on historic sites, landscapes, and collections with a focus on American folk art. With an undergraduate degree in History and graduate work in Museum Studies and in Preservation Studies, Kristen has been working with museum collections and historic houses for over twenty-five years. $10 – $30 – Register HERE.