The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, the international best-selling novel by Holly Ringland, has been adapted into a Prime Video series starring NYBG Trustee Sigourney Weaver starting August 4, 2023.
The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart follows the story of a 9-year-old girl taken to live with her grandmother June (played by Weaver) at Thornfield flower farm, after tragically losing her parents in a mysterious fire. On the flower farm, Alice learns to find solace amongst the native wildflowers and plants that sweep Australia’s breath-taking natural landscape. Family secrets come to light as Alice’s journey unfolds and she is forced to weed her way through her family’s past. In a tale that explores the symbolic language of flowers and indigenous connections to the land, Alice discovers that to move forwards, she needs to unlock the past.
Join author Holly Ringland and show-runner and producer Sarah Lambert for an exclusive conversation about how they brought these pages to life on screen, their deep respect for each other’s work, and the transformative power of the language of flowers across both time and cultures. This online New York Botanical Garden talk will take place August 24 at 7 pm, and is $35 for NYBG members, $39 for nonmembers. Register at www.nybg.org.
Gather plants and urban detritus (like rust!) from the surrounding landscape to make beautiful dyes-bright magenta pokeweed, dark black walnut, and rich purple wild grape. In the first online New York Botanical Garden session on August 12, artist and founder of the Toronto Ink Company Jason Logan will teach you which organic and non-organic materials work best and where to look for them. In the second session, on August 19, you’ll mix, test, and transform what you’ve foraged into rich, vibrant inks using simple household ingredients.
Please note, this course requires the purchase of materials. Please refer to the Materials List linked HERE for more information. The two session course is $90 for NYBG members, $100 for nonmembers. Register at www.nybg.org
The Garden Futures Summitis a two-day, in-person event that looks to sustain the remarkable passion and interest in gardening today by presenting a selection of the most exciting ideas shaping the future of gardens and society at large. The Summit, on September 29th and 30th, will focus on three essential topics within contemporary gardening: environment, community, and culture.
On the first day of the Summit, to be held at The New York Botanical Garden, more than a dozen influential speakers from across the gardening world will participate in sessions organized around the Summit topics. They will discuss the extraordinary potential of gardens and gardening to improve our physical, cultural, and emotional health and well-being.
On the second day of the Summit, attendees will be treated to exclusive experiences at both private and public gardens throughout New York City and the greater metropolitan area that embody the forward-thinking and transformative potential in gardens today. Tours will be announced later this summer.
The breadth of speakers at the Summit and the combination of talks and tours will be of interest to all gardeners, designers, architects, and students who are passionate about gardens and their enormous potential in society. The Keynote Address will be given by Lady Isabella Tree (pictured below) on The Book of Wilding – A Practical Guide to Rewilding Big and Small. Isabella Tree is an award-winning journalist and author of five books. Her first best-selling book, Wilding, tells the story of the daring wildlife experiment she began in 2000: rewilding her and her husband Charlie Burrell’s 3,500 acres of unprofitable farmland at Knepp Estate in West Sussex, UK. In less than twenty years their degraded land has become a functioning ecosystem again, wildlife has rocketed, and numerous endangered species have made Knepp their home. What has happened at Knepp challenges conventional ideas about nature, wildlife, and how we manage and envisage our land. It reveals the potential for the landscapes of the future. Isabella also writes for The Guardian, National GeographicMagazine, and Granta.
Other speakers include Edwina von Gal, founder of The Perfect Earth Project. Edwina von Galis a leading voice in sustainable gardening and landscape design. She founded the Perfect Earth Project in 2013 to promote nature-based, toxic-free land care for the health of people, their pets, and the planet. As principal of her eponymous landscape design firm since 1984, Edwina creates landscapes with a focus on simplicity and sustainability for private and public clients around the world. Joining her as session speakers will be Horatio Joyce of The Garden Conservancy, Vanessa Keith of StudioTEKA Design, Jeff Lorenz of Refugia Design, and Rebecca McMackin, horticulturist and garden designer.
You will also have the opportunity to hear Jennifer Jewell, Radio Host and Author of Cultivating Place. This year, Jewell was awarded the American Horticultural Society’s Great Gardener Morrison Award for outstanding horticultural communication. Her third book, What We Sow, On the Personal, Ecological, and Cultural Significance of Seedswill be published in September. On the topic of Community, session speakers will include Ivi Diamantopoulou, Jaffer Kolb, and Sam Stewart-Halevy of New Affiliates, Adam Greenspan of PWP Landscape Architects, Peter Lefkovits of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and Nicole Thomas of Urban Health Lab.
In another thread, horticulture and culture are on a collision course—and that’s a good thing. Forgotten garden histories, the challenges of preserving mid-century landscapes, and the growing engagement of the visual arts with the natural environment are the animating topics in a session to be led by Melissa Chiu. She is director of the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the national museum of modern and contemporary art. Dr. Chiu’s current organizational focus is transforming the Hirshhorn into a 21st-century institution through the revitalization of the museum’s campus, including a new design for the Hirshhorn’s Sculpture Garden by artist and architect Hiroshi Sugimoto. Joining Melissa will be Cindy Brockway of The Trustees of Reservations, David Godshall of Terremoto of LA, Abra Lee, horticulturist and historian, and Brent Leggs of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund.
Take your composition skills to the next level and learn how the Golden Ratio, Fibonacci Sequence, Golden Spiral, and Golden Angle can be incorporated into your artistic work. This New York Botanic Garden online class on August 12 from 10 – 3 with Betsy Rogers-Knox also explores the step-by-step approach to organizing and planning a more complex composition. Life cycles, habitats, and a series of related work all require careful placement of color, value and visual hierarchy to create overall balance and harmony. A slideshow, demos, and exercises will be included. $130 for NYBG members, $145 for nonmembers. This course requires the purchase of materials. Please refer to the Materials List on the Registration Page: HERE.
Join Innisfree Gardens and renowned horticulturist and Innisfree trustee Brad Roeller as he presents his top native plant picks for Northeastern gardens. Drawing on over four decades of expertise, Brad will explain the value, versatility, and adaptability of his curated selections of native perennials that should be known and used more widely. He will also introduce the ecological and design principles essential to successfully integrating native species into our gardens. The first lunchtime lecture on March 22 will focus on shade loving native perennials, and the second on March 29 will focus on those that love sun. Detailed plant lists and Zoom links will be emailed to registrants prior to both virtual talks and Brad will answer questions at the end of each presentation. Lecture recordings will be shared afterwards with ticket holders.
Brad Roeller is retired but is actively involved in planning for and managing the Innisfree landscape. Brad offers a wealth of ideas and expertise to gardeners at every level. He held top horticultural positions at the Cary Institute of Ecosystems Studies, the New York Botanical Garden, and a storied private estate, has published widely, and has been teaching at NYBG and similar institutions for forty years. Reflecting his own interests, his research has focused on ecologically-driven and sustainable landscape practices, gardening in areas with high deer populations, and landscape plants for Northern gardens.
Tickets are $15 for each lecture or $25 for the series. Innisfree members receive a discount. Register HERE
Noting the number of urban dwellers who want more plants in their lives but don’t have green thumbs yet, plant consultant and former elementary educator Maryah Greene stepped up to provide support so these new plant parents can create functional, long-term green spaces of their own. She’ll share how she turned an Instagram account full of plant care tips and tricks into Greene Piece, a Brooklyn-based business that provides individualized repotting workshops, plant problem diagnosis, full-service interior plant design, and more. Join the New York Botanical Garden online on March 23 at 6:30 pm to hear Greene’s success stories from the field that have been profiled in The New York Times, Architectural Digest, Vogue, and more. $18. Register at www.nybg.org.
Dubbed “pioneering design talents of their generation” by the Royal Horticultural Society, Charlotte Harris and Hugo Bugg believe both the landscapes they design and the business they run must be respectful, inclusive, and ethically responsible. The duo will highlight their progressive ethos as they discuss Kitchen Garden at RHS Bridgewater, which includes an edible forest garden, a classic kitchen garden, and an apothecary/herbal garden, all situated amid the stunning historic walls of a previously derelict site. They will also provide a rare glimpse into the series of productive, traditional, and experimental garden rooms they designed for a private, rural estate in Oxfordshire, England.
Formed in 2017 when Charlotte Harris and Hugo Bugg merged their separate practices, Harris Bugg Studio is a values-driven, award-winning landscape design practice. The studio creates inclusive and immersive gardens located in the U.K. and Europe encompassing high-end residential, public, botanic, commercial, historic, and conservation landscapes. The studio has won five Gold medals, two Silver Gilts and a Best in Show at RHS shows, including three Gold medals at Chelsea Flower Show, including most recently for its pocket park garden in 2021.
This March 30 webinar is hosted by the New York Botanical Garden. $35. Register at www.nybg.org.
Study three pioneering women designers – Beatrix Farrand, Marian Coffin, and Ellen Shipman – who shaped America’s tastes in the early 20th century. We’ll focus on gardens that showcase Farrand’s knack for innovation and infallible eye for design, Coffin’s use of contrasts in color, texture, and space, and Shipman’s rich planting style that exploded formal organization. You will also be able to view original plans of NYBG gardens they designed, such as Rockefeller Rose Garden, Benenson Ornamental Conifers, and Ladies’ Border, respectively. This New York Botanical Garden online talk with Paula Capps Sarathy takes place on three successive Thursdays from March 9 – 23, from 6 – 8, and is $125 for NYBG members, $139 for nonmembers. Register at www.nybg.org
Scientists have engineered so many new products from mycelium that Scientific American heralds the dawn of the “Mycelium Revolution” and Harper’s Bazaar dubs fungi “The Future of Fashion.” Explore how scientists have harnessed mycelium’s ability to create complex structures that are now being used as eco-friendly alternatives to plastic, leather, meat, and Styrofoam. This online lecture with John Michelotti is sponsored by the New York Botanical Garden on Tuesday, February 28, and is $45 for NYBG members, $49 for nonmembers. Register at www.nybg.org
From “mushroom leather” fashion to best-selling books on how mycelial networks create webs of interconnectivity between species, fungi continue to capture the contemporary imagination. Join the New York Botanical Garden on February 16 online to view stunning artwork created by botanical artists Christiane Fashek, Lucy Martin, and Margaret Saylor, who have long focused their artistic lenses on mushrooms and lichens. Each artist will show a curated selection of their work and discuss how they collect, prepare, or photograph specimens for study, how they depict these tiny organisms in such intimate detail, and why they too remain fascinated by fungi. Those interested in submitting work for Unsung Allies, The Fifth NYBG Triennial, will gain invaluable insights from these experts. $18. Register at www.nybg.org.
