The Boston Committee of The Garden Club of America invites members of its constituent fourteen clubs to its Spring Meeting and Luncheon on Thursday, April 26, beginning with registration at 10:30 am at The Country Club, 191 Clyde Street in Brookline. The featured speaker will be Steve Curwood.
In 1970, as a writer for the Boston Phoenix just out of Harvard University, Steve broke the story that Polaroid’s instant photo system was key to apartheid pass system in South Africa. Steve moved on to the Boston Globe as an investigative reporter and columnist and shared the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service as part of the Boston Globe’s education team. His production credits in public broadcasting include reporter and host for NPR’s Weekend All Things Considered, host of NPR’s World of Opera, producer for the PBS series The Advocates with Mike Dukakis, and creator, host and executive producer of Living on Earth, the prize-winning weekly environmental radio program heard for more than 20 years on public radio stations and distributed by Public Radio International (PRI) since 2006.
The cost of the lecture and luncheon is $50, lecture only $25. Please make your check payable to The Boston Committee of the GCA and mail to Jensie Shipley, 40 Dunster Road, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts 02467 before April 19, 2012, and note on the memo portion of your check your Garden Club affiliation. All reservations will be held at the door. Garden Club of the Back Bay members will receive written invitations and a car pool notice in the mail.
Widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost horticulturists, Armitage is a professor at the University of Georgia, Athens, where he teaches, conducts research on new garden plants, and runs the University of Georgia Horticulture Gardens. He is generally credited with creating the concept of the independent trial garden, the first one of which opened in Athens in 1982. He is the author of ten books, including Armitage’s Native Plants for North American Gardens and Armitage’s Garden Annuals. He has been cited as one of the ten most influential people or organizations in the floriculture industry.
Armitage is not the only distinguished honoree. The Jackson Dawson Award will go to Pierre Bennerup, president of Sunny Border Nurseries, one of the leading producers of perennial plants for the northeast. Sunny Border, headquartered in Kensington, Connecticut, is known around the world for being on the cutting edge of new plant development. Pierre, the second generation Bennerup in the industry, is an integral part of the global horticulture community and has been instrumental in searching out new plants suitable for North American gardens.
Also to be honored is Holly Shimizu, Executive Director of the U.S. Botanic Garden in Washington, D.C. Ms. Shimizu, who will receive the Thomas Roland Medal, has been responsible for the overall operation of the USBG for the past nine years and, under her leadership, the widely acclaimed new National Garden opened 2006. Ms. Shimizu is well known through her work as one of the hosts of The Victory Garden and as a frequent commentator on horticultural topics for National Public Radio.