Boston Flora

Tag: Oprah

  • 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.

  • Thursday, August 16, 7:00 pm – Season to Taste

    When a head injury obliterated twenty-two-year-old Molly Birnbaum’s sense of smell, it destroyed her dream of becoming a chef. Determined to reawaken her nose, she bravely sets off on a quest to rediscover the scented world. A moving personal story packed with surprising facts about the senses, Season to Taste brims with the scents of Molly’s world–cinnamon, cedarwood, fresh bagels, and lavender–lost and finally found.

    Birnbaum is the recipient of the Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship in Arts and Culture from Columbia Journalism School. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, O, The Oprah Magazine, and ARTnews magazine, and she writes the popular food blog “My Madeline”.  Hear her discuss her book on Thursday, August 16, beginning at 7 pm at Porter Square Books, 25 White Street in Cambridge.  For more information call 617-491-2220.

  • Tuesday, April 6, 8:00 pm – Webinar: Slow Death By Rubber Duck

    On Tuesday April 6th, please join the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics for a free book club Webinar featuring the “fascinating and frightening,” “cheeky” and “hard-hitting” new book, Slow Death By Rubber Duck.  RSVP now for this free Webinar (which, by the way, is an interactive presentation over the phone and online) on Tuesday, April 6 at 5 p.m. Pacific/8 p.m. Eastern.

    Studies show that harmful toxic chemicals are common in household items, including rubber ducks and bubble bath, and that many of these chemicals are also found inside of our bodies. Over a four-day period, Slow Death By Rubber Duck authors Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie used every day household products suspected of causing harm to our ecosystem and to human health. By revealing the pollution load in their bodies before and after the experiment, Rick and Bruce tell a unique inside story of common toxins and body burden.

    On the April 6 Webinar, author and Executive Director of Environmental Defense Canada Rick Smith will read from Slow Death By Rubber Duck, and together we’ll discuss toxic chemicals found in products as common as hand soap and what you can do to protect your family and the planet.

    All you need to join is a phone, a computer with Internet access and an interest in making the world less toxic. Simply RSVP online, an the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics will e-mail you the call-in info and the Web address so you can see the slides during the reading and discussion.

    Can’t make the Webinar on April 6? No worries – the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics is going to record it and make it available through a link on its web site later on. See what Oprah.com and The Washington Post had to say about Slow Death By Rubber Duck.

    http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_yq0locAP5J4/S0pgYXXSgUI/AAAAAAAABpA/5uHl-saWDE4/s320/rubberduck.jpg

  • Sunday, June 28, 10 – 4 – Berkshire County Open Day

    The Garden Conservancy’s Berkshire County Open Day will include the following superb properties. For more information, log on to www.gardenconservancy.org.

    Seekonk Farm – Honey Sharp’s Garden: 296 Division Street, Great Barrington, Massachusetts

    Featured in the 2008 book, Great Gardens of the Berkshires, this eighteenth-century Seekonk Farm is set amidst New England fieldstone walls, antique iron gates, and a handmade fence. A natural arbor beyond an American elm and a large katsura tree invites one to a woodland path where Honey Sharp continues to labor on re-introducing native plants. Closer to the house, a lavender edged walkway follows a small herb garden while the old-fashioned perennial beds now feature pale pink penstemon and dark fuchsia-colored sanguisorba rubbing shoulders. Leading to the pool garden are old-fashioned climbing roses spilling over a fence that borders the small vegetable garden. The pool garden enjoys a chartreuse, silver, and burgundy palette. Contrasting textures and shapes abound amidst the grasses, Japanese maples, smoke bush, ‘Black Lace’ sambucus, and small conifers. An old stone well cover, highlighted by rust colored lichens, remains a focal point. Golden Trowel Award in 2000.

    Under the Hemlocks,258 Great Barrington Road, Housatonic, Massachusetts

    This bowl-shaped garden in the foothills of Tom Ball Mountain came with many natural gifts: boulders, hemlocks, black birch, pines, etc. Adding shrubs, bulbs, and perennials rich in textures and color, Goshen stone paths, and various sculptures completed it. The owners were lucky to uncover a perfect place within the given ledge for water to gracefully fall into a small lily pond. This is a major focal point in the garden. It’s the flow of these gardens that seems to please: from the sunken “fairy woodland”, with a succession of bluebells, foxgloves then in fall, echinacea, to the over-scale rock garden, topped out by hydrangeas. Look for the secretive, mossy “Othello Boudoir” engulfed by ligularias next to the outdoor living room. Going behind the huge rhodies up the secretive path to the “upstairs” hosta path garden and around back to view the water garden, with perhaps a lotus in bloom will complete your tour. In June a few tulips and other bulbs may still be in bloom. This garden is one that is featured in the new book: Great Gardens of the Berkshires, by V. Small & R. Pomerantz.

    Good Dogs Farm – Maria Nation and Roberto Flores, 334 West Stahl Road, Sheffield, Massachusetts

    This is a distinctly handmade garden that includes the whims and accidents and (let’s be honest) half-baked ideas that would never end up in a professional “landscape.” It’s a place that reflects the owners’ philosophy that, like life, the garden is best when shared with friends, when simple pleasures are part of the plan, and when things aren’t taken too seriously. Here, good dogs romp and friends linger. Garden paths lead to numerous garden rooms, “secret” sitting areas, an outdoor shower, and an outdoor sleeping room. A handmade, rough-cedar fence surrounds our large vegetable/cutting garden where a very crowded bat house towers above. A wood burning bake oven gave Maria and Roberto an excuse to add a hedge garden that defines the pea-stone cooking courtyard. A new greenhouse-type-thing gave them another reason to add yet another garden area. The gardens have been featured in Cottage Living, Berkshire Living, The Litchfield County Times, and Oprah’s O at Home magazine. In 2008 they were honored to be included in the book Great Gardens of the Berkshires, and are still blushing to be included in such august company.