Boston Flora

Tag: Real Simple

  • Thursday, May 23, 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm – Seasonal Flower Arranging: Fill Your Home with Blooms, Branches, and Foraged Materials All Year Round

    Meet Ariella Chezar, one of the most sought after and highly regarded floral designers in the world, and the author of the recently released book Seasonal Flower Arranging: Fill Your Home with Blooms, Branches, and Foraged Materials All Year Round. Published by Ten Speed Press, a division of Penguin Random House, this lavishly photographed book provides step-by-step instructions for 39 seasonal floral arrangements and projects that celebrate the splendor of flowers, the bounty of the changing seasons, and the wild beauty of nature in your home. This May 23 Berkshire Botanical Garden talk and book signing is co-presented with Berkshire Magazine.

    Ariella Chezar is the author of The Flower Workshop and Flowers for the Table and a master floral designer who has appeared in numerous magazines, including O, Martha Stewart Living, and Real Simple. She is an instructor and artistic director at FlowerSchool New York, and has designed flower arrangements for the White House.

    $10 for BBG members, $15 for nonmembers. Register at https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/events/seasonal-flower-arranging-talk-and-book-signing-ariella-chezar$10 for BBG members, $15 for nonmembers. Register at https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/events/seasonal-flower-arranging-talk-and-book-signing-ariella-chezar

  • Saturday, October 7, 1:30 pm – 3:30 pm – Fall for Local: Floral Workshop with Little State Flower Farm

    There are few things more indicative of the change of the seasons than the shifting colors and textures of the leaves, flowers and trees surrounding us. Join Jill Rizzo of Studio Choo East and Anna Jane Kocon of Little State Flower Company for a collaborative floral design workshop focusing on bringing the fleeting beauty of autumn into your home. The class will take place at Tower Hill Botanic Garden on Saturday, October 7, from 1:30 – 3:30. We’ll start with a show-and-tell on the basics: selection, flower care, cleaning and seasonality. We’ll discuss the selected color palette and our favorite ways to tweak traditional autumn hues. The arranging demonstration will focus on combining gestural branches and foliage to make a unique structural base, then we’ll show you how to layer and nestle your favorite blooms for a composition that is full of movement and air. Workshop cost ($165 for Tower Hill members, $175 for nonmembers) includes all materials for students to take home (flowers and vessel). Floral snips will be provided for use during the workshop but students are encouraged to bring their own. Register online at www.towerhillbg.org.

    Jill Rizzo is the owner of Studio Choo East, founded in 2009 in San Francisco with best friend Alethea Harampolis. In 2015, she opened a New England branch of the studio focused on creating uniquely wild floral designs for weekly clients, weddings, and workshops. Co-author of The Flower Recipe Book and
    Branches and Blooms, her work has been featured in Martha Stewart Weddings, Real Simple, Veranda and Sunset.

    Anna Jane Kocon is the founder and owner of Little State Flower Company; a five acre specialty-cut flower farm based on Aquidneck Island in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Little State focuses on sustainable, environmentally-friendly growing practices in an effort to create local, healthy options for the wedding and event industry in and around Rhode Island.

  • 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.