All flowers hold different meanings, often based on the flower type, the time of year in which they bloom, the flower’s color, or all of the above, but the same is true of the story that makes them so meaningful to us. This Berkshire Botanical Garden workshop, held December 6 through December 8, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., will work with seasonal plants such as tree nuts, winter berries, or mushrooms; since our substrate will be vellum (calf skin), our subjects need to be small. Dry brush is a watercolor painting technique used in traditional botanical illustration. The method involves a “skin” of dried paint on the palette and a small, slightly damp brush. We will also create botanical tints for the base layer, generating shape by adding a luminous shadow. Students will receive a photograph and an outline of the seasonal flora. This workshop will meet for three consecutive days, for five hours each session.
Anastasia Traina, is a writer and botanical artist. Her illustrations were published in the children’s book, BITSY and RAFF written by David Caudle, highlighting the power of friendship and inclusion. She is a member of the American Society of Botanical Art, the Tri-State Botanical Artists of NYBG, the Writer’s Guild of America and the Dramatists Guild of America. Her most recent exhibition, “Alchemy and Innocents” was on display at the BBG’s Leonhardt Galleries in 2023. Commissioned for the Berkshire Botanical Garden to create Lucy’s Garden, featuring topiary animals and other ‘live’ structures on paper. Donated by Lucy and Nat Day. $245 for BBG members, $265 for nonmembers. Register at https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/events/language-flowers-vellum
Explore stories from the Indigenous Land and Seed Sovereignty movement, which embodies the vision of sustainable relational agriculture and shares the depth of the cultural dimension of plant biodiversity in North America.
Mohawk Seedkeeper Rowen White will share insight into the collective vision of intercultural healing that emerges when we center Indigenous leadership, ecological knowledge, cultural memory, and sovereignty of living in relationship with the inheritance of land, seeds, and other non-human kin. She’ll share her personal experience at the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance to paint an uplifting picture of cultural and climate sanity for the regenerative land stewardship movement in these times of great transformation.
This lecture on November 9 at 6 pm, online, is part of NYBG’s celebration of Native American Heritage Month. $35 for NYBG members, $39 for nonmembers. Register HERE
Pen and ink, among the most versatile and useful media, can be used to create high quality, easily reproducible drawings. Learn how to produce different strokes and how to create tone by using stipple, line, and crosshatch techniques. Carol Ann Morley will present a six part class, online, for the New York Botanic Garden Prerequisite: Botanical Drawing IIor equivalent. Please note, this course requires the purchase of materials. Please refer to the materials list on the registration page for more information. NYBG members $460, nonmembers $505. Click HERE for complete schedule and information.
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
Embark on an historical exploration of botanical art with instructor Giovanni Aloi and New York Botanic Garden on Tuesdays, September 19 – October 24 from 6 – 8 Eastern, online. You’ll trace the globe with author and curator Giovanni Aloi as he uncovers the critical role that botany has played in the advancement of movements, styles, and invention of new media. From Japan’s Edo Period featuring artist Kano Sansetsu’s Old Plum to present day work by visual artist Christi Belcourt inspired by Métis and First Nations beadwork, you’ll review the depiction of plants and flowers found in a variety of influential artworks across time.
Please note, this course will be facilitated through Canvas, a learning management system that will allow access to course materials, course communication, and links to live Zoom sessions all in one place. Canvas is intuitive to use and complements live sessions with an efficient means to stay in touch with the course in between classes. In case of any issues, 24/7 support will be offered.
NYGB member price $475, nonmember $525. Register HERE.
This New York Botanical Garden user-friendly online introductory course surveys the major plant groups-flowering plants, conifers, ferns, and bryophytes – focusing on their form and structure. Become botanically literate and gain practical experience in dissecting and analyzing plant structures. Class meets every week from on Wednesday, starting September 6 and ending October 25. The instructor is Martha Bucuvalas, and the required text is Brian Capon’s Botany for Gardeners, 3rd Edition. NYBG members $420, nonmembers $470. Register at http://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.
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
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
On February 23 from 11 – noon online with the New York Botanical Garden, Susana Rojas Saviñón and Hortense Blanchard share what makes their Mexico City practice unique, including their use of aromatic, edible, medicinal, and native Mexican plants, some of which they propagate from wild seeds they collect. The pair will discuss their award-winning Forest Garden, a residential landscape located within an ecological reserve that features a vegetable garden, natural pool, and fern garden. They will also provide a look at Lava Garden, which turned a lawn-covered suburban backyard into a lush oasis that realigns the garden with the land’s original volcanic ecology and the house’s midcentury modernist architecture.
Led by Susana Rojas Saviñón and Hortense Blanchard, Estudio Ome designs gardens that strike the perfect balance between what is built and what is alive. The recipient of Mexico’s 2020 Young Creators Grant and Professor at Mexico City’s Universidad Iberoamericana, Rojas Saviñón holds a MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design. A French landscape architect, Blanchard previously worked for Dan Pearson, Rozana Montiel, and Irène Djao Rakitine.
The webinar is $35 and registration is at www.nybg.org
