Curious about Lady’s-slipper orchids or the rose pogonia, made famous by Robert Frost’s poem? Orchidaceae is one of the largest plant families in the world, and there are 50 orchid species native to New England, from showy lady’s slipper (Cypripedium reginae) to rose pogonia (Pogonia ophioglossoides). While some species are common, many are of conservation concern. This session provides context for understanding native orchid habitats, diversity, and conservation issues. You will learn identification techniques, pollination strategies, and life-cycle stages for native orchids. Learn about the members of this highly evolved plant family and their specialized pollination strategies and interesting life cycles. Botanist Neela de Zoysa will conduct a class on Orchids of New England on Saturday, July 23 at 12:30 pm at Garden in the Woods in Framingham. $60 for Native Plant Trust members, $72 for nonmembers. Register at http://www.nativeplanttrust.org/events/orchids-new-england-2/
Explore the huge variety of native trees, shrubs, and woody vines. You will learn which species grow well in shade, which support local wildlife, and how to stagger plantings for continual bloom, fruit production, and fall color. The two-part Native Plant Trust course on July 9 and 16 at Garden in the Woods in Framingham addresses growth characteristics, cultural requirements, and best horticultural uses. Trevor Smith instructs. $108 for NPT members, $132 for nonmembers. Register at http://www.nativeplanttrust.org/events/native-woody-plant-materials/
Milkweeds (Asclepias) are some of the most attractive and fragrant wildflowers, in addition to being magnets for butterflies and pollinators. Learn about their special relationship with monarch butterflies and their complex flower structure, ingenious pollination strategy, and protective chemical arsenal. This class will help you identify the common and rare species and recognize their surprising range of habitats. You will also learn tips for milkweed cultivation and discuss the dangers that threaten this native plant. The Native Plant Trust webinar on July 8 from 12:30 – 3:30 will be led by Neela de Zoysa. $45 for NPT members, $54 for nonmembers. Register HERE.
Please note: We do not make video or audio recordings of classes or programs available after the fact, because NPT believes education is interactive, with instructors and students building a community and culture of learning. Some programs may be recorded strictly for instructor-training purposes. Please visit this page to review this and other FAQs about our policies.
Join The Native Plant Trust on June 21 for a virtual spring symposium focusing on aspects of the social history of natural spaces, from nature appreciation and inspiration to notions of territory, access, and participation. We will explore and consider humanistic and scientific approaches to this subject through a transdisciplinary lens. Through these investigations, we will consider how historical actions continue to impact societal and environmental change. Here’s the program:
10:00 a.m. Communities of Color & Access to Nature With Mardi Fuller
People of Color face systemic barriers to accessing natural spaces for recreation and have limited visibility in the mainstream conservation movement. The reasons for this are layered and complex, but date back to the founding of the United States, the original sins of dispossession and slavery and the colonial imagination that positioned white people as landowners with practical and figurative freedom of movement while restricting the rights and movement of People of Color. In this talk we will explore the founding policies, cultural norms and illusions that have led to the entrenched exclusion that People of Color experience today.
Mardi Fuller advocates for racial equity through writing, speaking and community building. A lifelong backcountry adventurer, in January 2021 she became the first known Black person to hike all 48 of New Hampshire’s high peaks in winter. She lives in Boston where she works as a nonprofit communications director and volunteers with the local Outdoor Afro network. She writes for Outside magazine, SKI magazine, Melanin Basecamp and more. Mardi is committed to personal and corporate Black liberation and thereby, liberation for all humanity. She believes deeply in nature’s healing power.
11:00 a.m. Native People and the World With Chief Don Stevens (Abenaki)
Don Stevens will discuss how the Abenaki created a space for agroforestry work to benefit all relationships that existed. He will discuss the spirituality behind those important interpersonal relationships with the land, animals, and plants that still exist today.
Don Stevens is Chief of the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk-Abenaki Nation and President of AHA (Abenaki Helping Abenaki.) Don is an accomplished leader, businessman, writer, and lecturer. Don has served on many boards and commission including the Vermont Commission on Native American Affairs and Attorney General Board of Racial Disparities. He helps lead the fight to obtain legal recognition, acquire land, and federal settlement agreements for the Abenaki People. He has 30 years of experience in Information Technology, Logistics, and Manufacturing strategies. Don served in the US Army, graduated from Champlain College, and holds several Honorary Doctorate Degrees.
12:00 p.m. When Life Gives You Lemons With Dr. Xan Chacko
In the early 20th century, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) funded international expeditions with the aim of finding plant specimens for introduction into the agricultural landscape and new experimental projects in hybridization. One such agricultural explorer, noted for his eponymous lemon, was Frank Nicholas Meyer, an immigrant from the Netherlands whose expeditions in Asia have brought to the United States celebrated fruit and toxic weeds. The era of these plant explorers has ended, but their material trace remains in a variety of spaces and modes of existence that have hitherto been disregarded. Reading Meyer’s letters shows the authority and discipline behind his transformation from gardener’s apprentice to professional plant collector. These photographs and plants are understudied material traces that enable historians to re-examine the means by which credit was received, given, and exchanged.
Xan S. Chacko is a Lecturer and Director of Undergraduate Studies for the program in Science, Technology, and Society at Brown University. In 2018, Chacko received a PhD from the Cultural Studies Graduate Group at the University of California, Davis, with designated emphases in Feminist Theory & Research, and Science & Technology Studies. Chacko’s co-edited volume, Invisible Labor in Modern Science, which explores the people and practices that are crucial to the production of scientific knowledge but remain uncredited and marginalized, was published in August 2022.
Please note: We do not make video or audio recordings of classes or programs available after the fact, because we believe education is interactive, with instructors and students building a community and culture of learning. Some programs may be recorded strictly for instructor-training purposes. Please visit this page to review this and other FAQs about our policies. $60 for NPT members, $72 for nonmembers. Register at www.nativeplanttrust.org Picture courtesy Getty Images/Thomas Barwick
Floodplains have special plants that are adapted to inundation and fluctuating water levels. Join The Native Plant Trust and Neela de Zoysa an easy walk in the Greenways Conservation Area in Wayland, Massachusetts, on June 3 at 1 pm, to observe the vegetation of a typical small-river floodplain with nearly half a mile of shoreline accessible to the Sudbury River. This stretch of the river is federally designated as a wild and scenic river and has beautiful stands of silver maple (Acer saccharinum), basswood (Tilia americana), swamp white oak (Quercus bicolor), red maple (Acer rubrum), and shrub swamps of buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis). $30 for NPT members, $36 for nonmembers. Register at http://www.nativeplanttrust.org/events/floodplain-forests/
Native Plant Trust proudly presents its first visiting artist, Christine Southworth. Christine is a Lexington-based multimedia composer whose work primarily involves nature—lightning, honeybees, coral reefs, spiders, snowflakes, and, currently, mushrooms. Her new work incorporates photographs and videos of mushrooms growing at Garden in the Woods and around Middlesex County from summer 2021 through the present, and she is using these to create an immersive performance environment. The electrical currents given off by mycelium networks are thought to be used as communication between different fungal fruiting bodies. Surrounded by her images of mushroom colonies growing and fading throughout the seasons, she will make music with live mushrooms that she has grown by “listening to” slight electrical variations in the colonies via electrodes placed on different parts of the fruiting growth and converted to sound. The performance will be followed by a discussion with the artist.
The New England Botanical Society is holding its May meeting on Saturday, May 6 in person at the Native Plant Trust’s Garden in the Woods in Framingham at 7 pm. The speaker is Dr. Kirsten Coe, Assistant Professor, Department of Biology, Middlebury College, speaking on Sphagnum Moss-Associated Nitrogen Fixation in New England Peatlands. To register, and for more information, visit https://www.rhodora.org/meetings/upcomingmeetings.html
Kirsten K. Coe is a plant ecophysiologist, focusing on how environmental stress shapes plant performance and growth, and in turn how plant responses influence ecosystem level processes. She uses mosses as a model system to answer questions in this domain, focusing on ecosystems where they carry large ecological importance, often as keystone species. The Coe lab applies a combination of field manipulation experiments, stable isotope analysis, and laboratory photosynthetic stress assessment using infrared gas analysis and chlorophyll fluorescence. Two current lab research foci include (1) an NSF-funded project exploring the ecological, physiological, and genetic basis of desiccation tolerance in Syntrichia, a diverse clade of dryland mosses; and (2) the influence of symbioses between nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria and peatland mosses on nitrogen cycling.
This Native Plant Trust Live virtual course provides a comprehensive introduction to native plants, including their identification, ecology, and conservation. We explore New England’s native plants by studying key identification features of flowers, leaves, and stems; family characteristics; growth patterns; pollinators; seed dispersers; and habitats. You will learn basic botanical skills and tools for identifying wildflowers and study pollination and coevolution of flower structure and design, habitats and ecology, and conservation concerns. (This course is also offered in-person). Neela de Zoysa leads the four Monday sessions, May 1 – 22. $216 for NPT members, $264 for nonmembers. Register at www.nativeplanttrust.org Once registered, students will receive an automatic email containing details about the course and their receipt. These details may include pre-class readings, handouts, an access link, or directions to field sites. A reminder email will be sent out 1 week in advance.
Native climbers are an ecologically and taxonomically varied group of plants. They range from rare and vulnerable species, such as Allegheny vine (Adlumia fungosa) and the American climbing fern (Lygodium palmatum, pictured below) to those proliferating due to forest fragmentation and warming climate, such as wild grapes (Vitis spp) and poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans). Learn about 50 climbers and become familiar with identification characteristics. This Native Plant Trust class will take place online on April 6 from 3 – 6 led by Neela de Zoysa. NPT members $60, nonmembers $72. Register at http://www.nativeplanttrust.org/events/new-england-climbers-2/Please note: We do not make video or audio recordings of classes or programs available after the fact, because we believe education is interactive, with instructors and students building a community and culture of learning. Some programs may be recorded strictly for instructor-training purposes.
Join Uli Lorimer, director of Horticulture at Native Plant Trust and author of The Northeast Native Plant Primer- 235 Plants for an Earth-Friendly Garden (Timber Press) and Rebecca McMackin, Loeb Fellow, Harvard Graduate School of Design, and former director of Horticulture, Brooklyn Bridge Park, for an evening of no-holds-barred discussion about native plants in horticulture from two of the leading experts in the field today. The event will be moderated by Barbara Moran, a correspondent on WBUR’s environmental team. For 25 years, she has worked as a science journalist covering public health, environmental justice, and the intersection of science and society. She has written for many publications, including the New York Times and the Boston Globe Magazine, and produced television documentaries for PBS and others. She was twice awarded the National Association of Science Writers’ highest honor, the Science in Society Award.
This is a hybrid event: Live virtual and in person at Garden in the Woods, Framingham, MA. The talk is scheduled for March 31 from 6 – 8 Eastern.
Attend in person: Tickets $30 (members)/$36 (non-members)
Please note: We at the Native Plant Trust do not make video or audio recordings of classes or programs available after the fact, because we believe education is interactive, with instructors and students building a community and culture of learning. Some programs may be recorded strictly for instructor-training purposes.
