For over 90 years, the School of Professional Horticulture at the New York Botanical Garden has educated and trained motivated individuals to become horticulturists of the highest caliber. The call to educate and train horticulturists is growing louder particularly as climate change reshapes the field. This transformation brings forth new environmental challenges and opportunities, underscoring the need to recruit and develop horticulturists equipped with the knowledge and skills to address global demands. Discover the rich history of one of the nation’s premier horticulture programs with Richard Smith, Director of NYBG’s School of Professional Horticulture. The talk, at the Polly Hill Arboretum’s Far Barn on August 7 at 5:30, is $10 for Arboretum members, $20 for nonmembers. Registration is required: bit.ly/PHA-SOPH-Lecture
Knowing a little mycology (the study of fungi) can make you a better mushroom cook. This New York Botanical Garden illustrated talk online on June 5 teaches basic mycology through the lens of your kitchen. It explores the intersection of mycology and the selection, storage, preparation, and nutritional value of mushrooms; the way fungi spoils foods and improves foods; the biologic reason why mushrooms taste differently and why some are more expensive than others; and the impact of endophytic fungi and mycorrhizal networks on food crops.
Instructor Eugenia Bone is a critically acclaimed journalist, with an emphasis on food, fungi, and other microorganisms, and former president of the New York Mycological Society. She is a member of the National Association of Science Writers. Her previous books include Microbia, Mycophilia, The Kitchen Ecosystem, Well Preserved, At Mesa’s Edge, and Italian Family Dining. Her books have been nominated for a variety of awards, including a Colorado Book Award and James Beard Award, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Denver Post, The Wall Street Journal, Saveur, Food & Wine, and Gourmet, among others. She has lectured widely, at venues like the Missouri Botanical Gardens, the Denver Botanical Garden, and the New York Public Library.
Learn how to identify this unique order of insects as they take to the skies in early summer. Study their biology, behavior, habitat associations, and conservation efforts currently underway. This New York Botanical Garden three part online course begins June 3, and registered students will receive log in instructions. Members $155, Nonmembers $170. Register HERE.
Instructor is Alan Wells. Alan Wells holds a B.S. in Zoology and M.A. in Biology from California State University, Long Beach and a Ph.D. in Zoology from University of Alberta, Edmonton. During his working career, he spent approximately seven years teaching Biology, followed by over 35 years as a biologist/biostatistician for several environmental consulting firms. In recent years, he has participated in NY State and Citizen Scientist surveys of breeding birds, waterfowl, odonates, and insect pollinators. He is also a research scientist for the NY/NJ Palisades Interstate Park Commission conducting studies of the flora and fauna of Lily Pond, freshwater fish, and photographing and identifying insect pollinators found at the Trailside Museums Native Plant Garden. Dr. Wells is also a frequent speaker and field trip leader at local birding and natural history clubs, various scientific meetings, and other public forum
Do you want to be an influencer? Become a content creator as you take your floral arrangement photos to the next level using social media. In this New York Botanical Garden online class, you’ll define your goals for using social media platforms as a marketing tool to build your brand. Learn how to create engaging content, receive tips on connecting and communicating with followers, and receive best practices to convert followers into customers. Basic knowledge of Instagram is encouraged. Please note: This is not a floral arranging class. Jamie Jamison is the instructor. $125 for NYBG members, $135 for nonmembers. Register at www.nybg.org
Jamie Jamison is a natural light and still-life photographer with a passion for flowers, vintage finds and handmade treasures. As a social media content manager and influencer (@alajamie), she connects with other floral enthusiasts and has inspired people throughout the world with her uplifting photos. Jamie provides Instagram coaching, photography and styling for businesses as well works as a brand partner with several national companies.
Jamie is also a Communication Instructor at Youngstown State University and was awarded the 2019 Part-Time Excellence Award for teaching. Her work has appeared in Country Living, Somerset Life, Bella Grace Magazine, Somerset Digital Studio, Somerset Memories, Artful Blogging, Somerset Studio Gallery, Somerset Apprentice, and the Torpedo Factory Target Gallery.
Enter the enchanting world of the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents—the first museum of natural fragrance in the United States. Artisan perfumer, educator, author, and founder Mandy Aftel will reveal her latest publication, The Museum of Scent, which is a richly illustrated dedication to her museum’s rare collection of natural essences.
Aftel, one of the world’s preeminent natural perfumers, will guide you through the different families of botanical fragrances—including flowers, woods, leaves and grasses, and resins. Her book depicts each plant with a hand-colored antique woodcut and reveals its olfactory notes and uses. She’ll also share excerpts from chapters devoted to the most rare and precious fragrances—such as ambergris, botanical treasure boxes, Books of Secrets, and other evocative artifacts from her collection.
Through this captivating presentation, full of fascinating stories and lore, you’ll explore the natural and cultural history of scent. Q&A to follow. The New York Botanical Garden online class on April 9 is $35 for NYBG members, $39 for nonmembers.
To purchase a copy of Aftel’s The Museum of Scent, please visit the NYBG Shop
For nearly three centuries, Elizabeth Blackwell (1699–c. 1758) has been recognized for etching the 500 full-page illustrations of medicinal plants that are found in A Curious Herbal. Join historian and leading authority on Blackwell, Dr. Janet Stiles Tyson, as she uncovers narratives and identifies some of the key differences found in the many editions of this renowned masterpiece. This online presentation is sponsored by the New York Botanical Garden. The leading authority on Blackwell and A Curious Herbal, Dr. Janet Stiles Tyson, will correct persistent Blackwell narratives and restore attention to her book as a scientific document. Having examined more than 80 copies of Blackwell’s Herbal—including the three held in NYBG’s LuEsther T. Mertz Library—she will highlight differences that endow each with distinct personalities and argue that some copies were so dramatically altered by their owners that they can be considered unique books, and their former owners perceived as co-authors. Register at www.nybg.org
Transform your yard into a lush paradise. Whether you live in a rural or urban area, learn the secrets of how to cultivate a vibrant oasis right outside your door. Join GBH and public gardening expert Karen Daubmann from Massachusetts Horticultural Society and immerse in the lavish wonders of your own backyard haven. The free virtual event takes place March 15 at noon Eastern. Register at https://www.wgbh.org/events/ask-the-expert-planting-pampering-and-petal-perfection
Karen Daubmann is committed to creating effective and longstanding change to public gardens throughout her 25-year career. She joined Massachusetts Horticultural Society (MHS) in March 2022, where she brings her experience in advancing the operational and planning scale of public gardens. In the development and execution of exhibitions that have welcomed hundreds of thousands of visitors, Daubmann focuses her work on encouraging guests to connect and interact with gardens through art, nature and culture. Prior to joining MHS, she worked for 14 years at the New York Botanical Garden, culminating in her position as vice president for exhibitions and audience engagement. She has been featured in Jennifer Jewell’s The Earth in Her Hands: 75 Extraordinary Women Working in the World of Plantsand has contributed essays for Kusama: Cosmic Nature, 2021 and Frida Kahlo’s Garden, 2015.
Daubmann lives and gardens with her husband Matt and dog Klaus in coastal Rhode Island.
This event is presented is in partnership with Massachusetts Horticultural Society.
In this one-day Massachusetts Horticultural Society class with Carol Ann Morley, we will look at how to approach simple and complex forms to draw. We begin with distinguishing the underlying structure of form and how to define it from the surface details of pattern and texture. There will be graphite drawing exercises to achieve the basic forms of a sphere and the concave and convex shapes of curved surfaces and tonal application of graphite for smooth, patterned, and textured surfaces of specimens. Carol Ann Morley is a professional illustrator and dedicated teacher of botanical illustration. She is a former coordinator of the Botanical Art Illustration Certificate Program at The New York Botanical Garden. Her work has been widely exhibited and published in Science magazine, Animal magazine, and many Brooklyn Botanic Garden and NYBG publications. $125 for MHS members, $165 for nonmembers. Register at http://www.masshort.org/
Date: Friday, January 5, 2023 (Snow Date: Thursday, Jan. 11th) Time Frame: 9:30 a.m. – 3:30 p.m. EST
What can you do this fall to ensure a healthy garden next spring? Get a head start on your best garden ever by taking care of it now. In this NYBG webinar on October 25 from 6 – 8 Eastern, learn techniques to improve soil quality, protect perennials and tender plants through the winter, eliminate choice over- wintering sites for insects and diseases, and manage all those fallen leaves.
Anna Bakis is the instructor. Anna Bakis grew up in Brooklyn and spent many of her formative days exploring plants and insects in whatever patch of greenery she could find in her home borough. She has worked in a variety of New York City’s green spaces throughout her career, from community gardens to NYC parks to botanical and school gardens. Anna has years of experience in horticulture, environmental education, and public engagement, and enjoys sharing excitement about the natural world with students of all ages. NYBG Members $60.00 Non-members $65.00
To mark New York Botanical Garden’s 25th year of showcasing innovative and much-honored landscape design professionals and their contributions to this ever-changing field, they have invited three outstanding landscape architects from around the world – Richard Roark, Michelle Delk, and Sierra Bainbridge– to highlight their signature projects, working methods, and design philosophies.
On October 3, join Richard Roark for Nature Remixed: Reimagining Community and Biodiversity in Cities. With accreditations in LEED and Sustainable SITES, landscape architect Richard Roark is committed to creating ecologically-sound public landscapes. Among the several projects he will present are the American Embassy in London, the expansive 51-mile Los Angeles River Master Plan, Hunts Point in the Bronx, and the Infrastructure Plan for the communities of Caño Martín Peña in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Each of these sites, formerly contaminated or, as Roark says, “cast off” and “left behind,” were renewed, becoming not only visually delighting, but also healthy.
A partner of the Philadelphia-based firm OLIN, Richard Roark holds a Masters in both Landscape Architecture and Community Planning from Auburn University. He is dedicated to invigorating the public realm, promoting social justice, and creating opportunities for all, and his efforts have been recognized in his field with, among many other honors, the American Society of Landscape Architects’ 2020 Urban Design Award of Excellence for Dilworth Park in Chicago.
On October 17, Michelle Delk speaks on the Playful Dualities of Public Spaces. For over 20 years, landscape architect Michelle Delk, partner at New York-based firm, Sn∅hetta, has led projects ranging from master plans and brownfield redevelopments to urban parks, streetscapes, and riverfronts. Her work follows her firm’s foundational premise: to create places that enhance the positive relationships between people and their environments.
From urban canopies to canyons; intimate sculpture gardens to wild west landscapes; rocking seesaws to post-modern histories, Delk will share the intriguing dualities she has explored in recent projects, including the Willamette Falls Riverwalk in Oregon, a transformation of a 22-acre post-industrial site; the innovation collaborative design of the Calgary Public Library Plaza in Alberta, Canada; and the re-imagining of a significant public plaza in midtown Manhattan.
Michelle Delk is a passionate advocate and designer of the public realm. She encourages innovative approaches to collaboration that are non-hierarchical and trans-disciplinary. Throughout her career, Delk has engaged with a variety of landscape advocacy organizations, curatorial projects, and academic institutions. For her exceptional contributions to the landscape architecture profession and society at large, she has been named a 2023 member of the ASLA Council of Fellows.
Finally, on November 14, Sierra Bainbridge will present Learning from Rwanda: Designing for One Health. In 2008, the innovative MASS Design Group co-founded by Sierra Bainbridge, began its work in Rwanda, focusing on the Butaro District Hospital. Lessons learned in collaboration with community partners, clinicians, and government officials continuously informed MASS’s one health design approach-which focuses on the interconnection of human, animal, and ecological health and the development of “no harm” design solutions. Bainbridge will share insights into why this design approach is essential to creating a balanced, biodiverse, and mutually supportive future as she presents the Butaro project as well as the Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture and The Ellen DeGeneres Campus of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.
As cross-disciplinary Senior Principal and Managing Director, architect, licensed landscape architect, and educator, Sierra Bainbridge oversees MASS’s landscape architecture department and the design and implementation of MASS’s projects in the United States and Africa. Bainbridge has served as Head of the Architecture Department at the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology in Rwanda. She lectures widely, including at the Harvard GSD, and served as a Sasaki Distinguished Visiting Critic at the Boston Architectural College. She holds a Masters in both Landscape Architecture and Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania.
The series is $85 for NYBG members, $95 for nonmembers. Register at http://nybg.org
