Boston Flora

Tag: New York Times

  • Friday, September 22, 7:00 pm – Bean-To-Bar Chocolate: America’s Craft Chocolate Revolution

    Author Megan Giller invites fellow chocoholics on a fascinating journey through America’s craft chocolate revolution. Learn what to look for in a chocolate bar and how to successfully pair chocolate with coffee, beer, spirits, cheese, and bread. This comprehensive celebration of chocolate busts some popular myths (like “white chocolate isn’t chocolate”) and introduces you to more than a dozen of the hottest artisanal chocolate makers in the US today. You’ll get a taste for the chocolate-making process and how chocolate’s flavor depends on where the cocoa beans were grown — then turn your artisanal bars into unexpected treats with 22 recipes from master chefs. Meet the author at Porter Square Books, 25 White Street in Cambridge, at 7 pm on Friday, September 22. She will also sign copies of her book Bean-To-Bar Chocolate: America’s Craft Chocolate Revolution.

    Megan Giller is a Brooklyn-based writer and editor with strong connections to the food world in both New York City and Austin, TX. Giller writes for many publications, including the New York Times, Slate, Texas Monthly, Zagat Austin, Food & Wine, and Modern Farmer.

  • Monday, September 25, 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm – The Liberated Landscape: Letting Nature Do the Work Webinar

    Over thousands of years plants have evolved to reproduce and proliferate on their own, yet we often go to great effort and expense to carefully place every plant in our designed landscapes. How can we capitalize on the reproductive abilities of plants and actively encourage planted as well as existing species to colonize our landscapes? In this lecture, well-known landscape designer Larry Weaner will discuss principles and protocols for creating dynamic, ecologically rich landscapes where nature does much of the planting.

    This Ecological Landscape Alliance September 25 webinar from 4 – 5 pm will include detailed case studies that demonstrate how practical plant proliferation strategies can be applied at diverse scales, from the intimate garden to large multi-acre landscapes. Larry Weaner has been creating landscapes focusing on native plants since 1977. His firm Larry Weaner Landscape Associates has a national reputation for combining ecological restoration with the traditions of garden design. The firm’s work has received numerous awards, been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Garden Design, and Landscape Architecture Magazine, among other publications, and been included on tours with The Garden Conservancy, The Cultural Landscape Foundation, and the American Horticultural Society. Larry lectures throughout the U.S., and in 1990, he founded New Directions in the American Landscape, a conference series with a national following. He recently coauthored Garden Revolution: How Our Landscapes Can Be a Source of Environmental Change.

    Free for ELA members, $10 for nonmembers. Register at http://www.ecolandscaping.org/event/webinar-liberated-landscape-letting-nature-work/

  • Tuesday, April 25, 1:30 pm – 3:00 pm – Bees in Springtime

    Bees pollinate dozens of plants that bloom in the springtime, so now is the time to set up beehives in gardens, on rooftops, at home or even at work. Engage with bee expert Noah Wilson-Rich, Ph.D. and a beekeepers from The Best Bees Company to learn how to set up habitat in springtime with bees in mind. This Massachusetts Horticultural Society event will take place at the Gardens at Elm Bank on Tuesday, April 25 from 1:30 – 3.

    Noah Wilson-Rich, Ph.D. is a biologist, professor, New York Times & Los Angeles Times contributor, two-time TEDx speaker, beekeeper, uncle, and author of The Bee: A Natural History published by Princeton University Press. Noah’s research focuses on bee immunology. Noah is the Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of The Best Bees Company, a beekeeping service that delivers, installs, and manages beehives for residential and commercial properties nation-wide. Proceeds from The Best Bees Company go toward research to improve bee health. This research is based out of the Urban Beekeeping Laboratory and Bee Sanctuary, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization in Boston’s South End.

    Mass Hort Member Cost: $12; Non Member Cost $20. Register online at www.masshort.org.

  • Saturday, April 15, 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm – Thoreau and the Language of Trees

    Richard Higgins will speak at Tower Hill Botanic Garden on Saturday, April 15 beginning at 12:30 on his new book, Thoreau and the Language of Trees. Free with admission. pre-registration requested at www.towerhillbg.org. Trees were central to Henry David Thoreau’s creativity as a writer, his work as a naturalist, his thought, and his inner life. His portraits of them were so perfect, it was as if he could see the sap flowing beneath their bark. When Thoreau wrote that the poet loves the pine tree as his own shadow in the air, he was speaking about himself. In short, he spoke their language.

    In this original book, Richard Higgins explores Thoreau’s deep connections to trees: his keen perception of them, the joy they gave him, the poetry he saw in them, his philosophical view of them, and how they fed his soul. His lively essays show that trees were a thread connecting all parts of Thoreau’s being-heart, mind, and spirit. Included are one hundred excerpts from Thoreau’s writings about trees, paired with over sixty of the author’s photographs. Thoreau’s words are as vivid now as they were in 1890, when an English naturalist wrote that he was unusually able to “to preserve the flashing forest colors in unfading light.” Thoreau and the Language of Trees shows that Thoreau, with uncanny foresight, believed trees were essential to the preservation of the world.

    Richard Higgins is a former longtime staff writer for the Boston Globe whose writing has appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, Christian Century, and Smithsonian. He lives in Concord, Massachusetts.

  • Wednesday, April 12, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – The Songs of Trees

    Award-winning teacher and writer David George Haskell, PhD, Professor of Biology, Sewanee, The University of the South, expands his focus from one square meter (The Forest Unseen) to the expansive networked communities of life as observed in the presence of trees around the world. A keen observer of all living things, Haskell brings together ecological understanding with poetic narrative as he describes discoveries from root to branch tip, from one specimen to a forest of collaborators. Join The Arnold Arboretum on Wednesday, April 12 at 7 pm as Haskell expounds upon webs of connections that weave through the environment, human nature, science, and ethics. His book, The Songs of Trees, will be available for purchase and signing. Fees: Free Arboretum member and student; $10 nonmember.

    David George Haskell’s work integrates scientific, literary, and contemplative studies of the natural world. He is a professor at the University of the South and a Guggenheim Fellow. A profile in The New York Times said of Haskell that he “thinks like a biologist, writes like a poet, and gives the natural world the kind of open-minded attention one expects from a Zen monk rather than a hypothesis-driven scientist.”

    Offered with the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture. Register at my.arboretum.harvard.edu or call 617-384-5277.

  • Saturday, October 1, 10:00 am – 12:00 noon – Combining Perennials

    The whole can be more than the sum of the parts when you garden skillfully. A flowering perennial that is pretty by itself may be spectacular when contrasted with the right neighbor. And one plant can make up for the deficiencies of another when properly paired; a compact partner can hide the stems of a leggy beauty, another pairing can share their glory simultaneously or hold their own in two different seasons when artfully chosen. Garden writer and horticulturist Thomas Christopher, who recently authored Essential Perennials with Ruth Rogers Clausen, will share some of his favorite combinations and pass along tips that will set you on the road to creating many more of your own. The lecture will take place Saturday, October 1 beginning at 10 am at Berkshire Botanical Gardens in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. BBG members $20, nonmembers $25. Register online at https://berkshirebotanical.org/education/lectures-and-workshops/

    A graduate of the New York Botanical Garden School of Professional Horticulture, Thomas Christopher has written for numerous publications, including the New York Times and Better Homes and Gardens, and has served as a contributing editor to Martha Stewart Living. He is the co-author with Ruth Rogers Clausen of Essential Perennials, a complete reference to 2,700 perennials for the home garden.

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  • Friday, February 12, 7:00 pm – Where Have All The Animals Gone?

    From the biographer of Jane Goodall comes an eccentric blend of travels and adventures based on the underlying story of two men, sometime friends and allies, who uncover through personal experience the tragedy of animal extinctions in Africa and Asia. By turns ironic, funny, and tender, it contemplates changing landscapes and a vanishing world.

    Over the last fifteen years, nature historian Dale Peterson has collaborated with photographer Karl Ammann to produce three books about apes, elephants, and giraffes. For this new memoir, Peterson recounts his travels with the iconoclastic Swiss photographer through Africa and Southeast Asia, serving as his Boswell and discovering along the way magnificent splendor, unexpected humor, and tragic loss.

    Dale Peterson is the coauthor, with Jane Goodall, of Visions of Caliban (a New York Times Notable Book and a Library Journal Best Book) and the editor of her two books of letters, Africa in My Blood and Beyond Innocence. His other books include The Deluge and the Ark, Chimpanzee Travels, Storyville USA, Eating Apes, and (with Richard Wrangham) Demonic Males. They have been distinguished as an Economist Best Book, a Discover Top Science Book, a Bloomsbury Review Editor’s Favorite, a Village Voice Best Book, and a finalist for the PEN New England Award and the Sir Peter Kent Conservation Book Prize in England. He resides in Massachusetts. He will speak on Friday, February 12 at 7 pm at Porter Square Books, 25 White Street in Cambridge, beginning at 7 pm, and copies of the book will be available for purchase and signing. For more information visit www.portersquarebooks.com.

  • Monday, July 7, 7:00 pm – Crafty Bastards

    Join Lauren Clark at Porter Square Books, 25 White Street in Cambridge on Monday, July 7 at 7 pm for a celebration of the New England tradition of brewing beer — complete with samples!

    The region that defined Yankee ingenuity has a beer heritage in keeping with its character. Brewing in New England goes back four centuries, beginning with the Pilgrims who dropped anchor in Plymouth because their supply of beer was running low. (After barely surviving the winter, they planted a crop of barley and soon brewed their first ale.) Making beer in New England hasn’t always been easy. Puritan housewives, Industrial Era beer moguls, and contemporary craft brewers alike have concocted humankind’s oldest beverage in the face of scarce ingredients, legal hurdles, and public indifference. But despite these challenges, beer continues to be a staple of New England life.

    With Crafty Bastards: Beer in New England from the Mayflower to Modern Day, Lauren Clark deepens our appreciation for the perfect pint. Giving voice to the inimitable Yankee spirit that allows New Englanders to faithfully produce some of the best beers in the nation, Clark invites readers to take a giant swig of brewing past and present.

    Lauren Clark is a journalist and former bartender and brewer. Her articles have appeared in the New York Times, The Boston Globe, Jane, and Yankee Magazine. Clark is the founder of drinkboston.com, which was featured in several Boston newspapers and magazines, the Massachusetts Beverage Business Journal, and Vintage Spirits & Forgotten Cocktails by Ted Haigh.

  • Saturday, April 19 – Monday, September 1 – Wicked Plants, The Exhibit

    Heritage Museums & Gardens in East Sandwich is preparing to mount a showcase exhibit.  Visitors will discover the evildoers of the plant world lurking in their own backyards and beyond in Wicked Plants: The Exhibit.  This exhibit is inspired by Amy Stewart’s New York Times bestselling book, Wicked Plants: The Weed that Killed Lincoln’s Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities, and was created by the North Carolina Arboretum.  It will be on view in the Special Exhibitions Gallery from April 19 to September 1, 2014.  For more information visit www.heritagemuseumsandgardens.org.

    http://www.penick.net/digging/images/2012_06_01_NC_Arboretum/Wicked_Plants_Exhibit_flyer.JPG

  • Saturday, April 5, 4:00 pm – Private Gardens of the Hudson Valley

    This Berkshire Botanical Garden presentation features gardens that emphasize the majestic landscape that borders New York State’s Hudson River. Based on her latest book, Private Gardens of the Hudson Valley, Jane Garmey will discuss the development of 26 private gardens chosen to give a sense of place and convey the romance of the landscape. The location of these gardens plays a vital role in the making of each one. Learn how the owners deal with the transitions between the cultivated garden and its natural surroundings. The gardens include those of Gregory Long, director of the New York Botanical Garden, and Amy Goldman, doyenne of heirloom vegetables. A book signing and sale will follow the lecture.

    Jane Garmey is the author of Private Gardens of Connecticut (Monacelli/Random House), the editor of The Writer in the Garden (Algonquin Books) and the author of Great British Cooking: A Well-Kept Secret (Random House) and Great New British Cooking (Simon & Schuster). Her latest book, Private Gardens of the Hudson Valley, is the subject of this lecture. She writes about gardens and interior design for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Elle Decor. For many years she was the garden correspondent for Town & Country.

    You may register at www.berkshirebotanical.org.  $25 for BBG members, $30 for nonmembers.

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