Boston Flora

Tag: Newsday

  • Thursday, March 11, 6:30 pm – Harbor Hill & Beacon Towers: Long Island “Gold Coast” Mansions and the Women Who Created Them, Online

    Join architecture historian and lecturer Gary Lawrance and the Friends of Morven on March 11 at 6:30 online on a trip to the “Gold Coast” of 1920’s Long Island to meet Katherine Duer, wife of Silver heir Clarence Mackay and her fabulous over 60 room Harbor Hill mansion once located at Roslyn. Mrs. Mackay not only managed the home when completed, but also oversaw the planning with “Gilded Age”, architect Stanford White and during Harbor Hill’s construction. We will also meet Alva Vanderbilt Belmont. Known as a force to be reckoned with, Alva Erskin Smith first married a Vanderbilt and built one of the most dazzling mansions on New York’s Fifth Avenue, then the equally splendid summer cottage, “Marble House” at Newport, Rhode Island. With her second husband Oliver Hazard Belmont she enlarged his Newport mansion and then a home at East Meadow, Long Island. After his passing Mrs. Belmont built a Castle on the Long Island Sound at Sands Point, Long Island, that many believe was used by Author F. Scott Fitzgerald as the inspiration for the magnificent mansion of Jay Gatsby in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”. It was at this house that Mrs. Belmont held suffragist women’s events and reigned over her version of a Scottish Castle. The evening will also provide a brief look at other estates and an aerial tour, circa 1926, to give an idea of the extensiveness of the great estates that were once world famous as the land of elegance, splendor and lavishness. This evening’s lecture sponsored by Heidi A. Hartmann of Coldwell Banker Princeton.

    $18 for Friends of Morven, $25 for the public. Register HERE.

    Architect, Author, and Historian Gary Lawrance is an architect from Stony Brook, New York. His firm, Lawrance Architectural Presentations, provides design presentations, architectural models, digital renderings, and design development services to architects, landscape architects and interior designers. Mr. Lawrance has an extensive background in the history of Gilded Age architecture, landscapes, and society, and co-authored the bestselling book, Houses of the Hamptons 1880-1930 with Anne Surchin (Acanthus Press 2007, Revised 3rd Printing 2013).

    Mr. Lawrance’s work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Hamptons Cottages & Gardens, Newsday, New York Social Diary, Southampton Press, and more. Mr. Lawrance has written for Architectural Digest, Dan’s Papers, Quest magazine, and his two blogs, Mansions of the Gilded Age and Houses of the Hamptons in addition to founding and contributing to the two very successful Facebook groups, Mansions of the Gilded Age & The Gilded Age Society with over 160,000 members combined. Mr. Lawrance also manages two equally popular Instagram accounts, Mansions of the Gilded Age & The Gilded Age Society.

  • Saturday, March 2, 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm – Two Lives, Two Books, and Some Common Themes

    Join two beloved authors, Katrina Kenison and Margaret Roach, on Saturday, March 2 at 1 pm at the Berkshire Botanical Garden for readings and conversation inspired by their much-anticipated new books, Magical Journey: an Apprenticeship in Contentment and The Backyard Parables: a Meditation on Gardening, and Life. Katrina has spent 25 years nurturing a marriage, raising two sons to adulthood and tending to the myriad demands of home and family life. Margaret has spent precisely the same amount of time nurturing countless plants in the garden—a generous plot that has proven to be as worthy and complicated a life partner as any human mate. Now, despite different paths and charges, they find themselves in much the same spot, asking “What next?”—even as they learn to let go of what was, clearing space for new growth. Come connect with two authors, two friends, two lives, two books—and some common themes for discussion by all.

    Margaret Roach is the author of A Way to Garden and the memoir, And I Shall Have Some Peace There. She has been an editor at The New York Times, fashion editor and garden editor at Newsday, the first garden editor for Martha Stewart Living and the editorial director of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. Margaret is now a consultant and avid gardener, keeping fans up to date on her website, awaytogarden.com.

    Katrina Kenison is the author of The Gift of an Ordinary Day and Mitten Strings for God: Reflections for Mothers in a Hurry, and, with Rolf Gates, Meditations from the Mat: Daily Reflections on the Path of Yoga. Her writing has appeared in O: the Oprah Magazine, Real Simple, Family Circle, Redbook, Woman’s Day and Health. From 1990 until 2006, Kenison was the series editor of The Best American Short Stories, published annually by Houghton Mifflin. She co-edited, with John Updike, The Best American Short Stories of the Century. A certified Reiki master and Kripalu yoga teacher, Katrina lives with her family in rural New Hampshire.

    Register on line at www.berkshirebotanical.org.  $15 for BBG members, $20 for nonmembers.

  • Saturday, February 19, 2:00 pm – At Home in the 365-Day Garden

    Berkshire Botanical Garden presents noted author Margaret Roach on Saturday, February 19, (snow date February 20) 2 pm, at Monument Mountain Regional High School, Great Barrington, MA, for the 2011 Winter Lecture, “At Home in the 365-Day Garden.”

    Margaret will discuss her own gardening journey – highlighting personal experiences leading to the creation of a beautiful, year-round landscape. She will present slides of plants and vistas of her own inspirational garden to illustrate her approach to making a non-stop, year-round garden along with sprinklings of her unique and irreverent sense of humor. This is a wonderful opportunity to meet the woman behind the highly successful garden blog, Awaytogarden.com, where she provides informative posts, photos, links, and whimsical meanderings from her 2.3 acre zone 5B garden in the neighboring Hudson Valley.

    This lecture also marks the debut of Margaret’s memoir, And I Shall Have Some Peace There, documenting her transition from working at high-powered jobs in Manhattan, (Martha Stewart Living, New York Times, Newsday), to living full time in the country, reinventing her life, and creating a 365-day garden. A recent gold-star rating by Kirkus Reviews describes And I Shall Have Some Peace There as “a moving, eloquent and joyously idiosyncratic memoir.” A reception and book signing will follow the lecture.

    Proceeds from the Winter Lecture support Berkshire Botanical Garden’s popular Horticulture Certificate Program and other Education Programs, which provide hands-on workshops and classes to children and adults year-round. Additional information on education programs can be obtained through the Garden’s web site, www.berkshirebotanical.org.

    Tickets to the lecture are: $35 Garden Members / $42 non-members, and group discounts are available. Seating is limited and reservations are required. For more information and to reserve tickets, call Berkshire Botanical Garden at 413 298 3926, or visit the web site, www.berkshirebotanical.org.