Boston Flora

Tag: Rocky Hills

  • Wednesday, May 3, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – The Challenge of a Public Native Plant Garden: Maintenance, Interpretation, and Compromise

    The New York Botanical Garden’s new Native Plant Garden opened in 2013. Designed by Oehme van Sweden, it includes a diversity of microclimates on 3.5 acres of varied terrain with a planting plan of almost 100,000 native trees, shrubs, wildflowers, ferns, and grasses. On Wednesday, May 3 at 7 pm at the Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway in Cambridge, curator Michael Hagen will explain how this garden is successfully maintained, and their criteria for what constitutes “native” in species selection and the use of cultivars. This very public landscape presents native plants in a contemporary style, with an emphasis on aesthetics over recreating habitat. Michael will share his observations about how the public perceives and responds to the value of this native plant palette, along with ideas for inspiring others to “go native.”

    Michael Hagen is Curator of both the Native Plant Garden and the Rock Garden at NYBG. He previously served as Staff Horticulturist for over 11 years at Stonecrop Gardens in Cold Spring, New York and was Garden Manager at Rocky Hills in Mt. Kisco, a preservation project of the Garden Conservancy.
    This lecture co-sponsored by the Boston Society of Landscape Architects and Grow Native Massachusetts.

    Door open at 6:30 for general seating, and the event is free and open to the public.

  • Thursday, May 26, 8:00 am – 6:00 pm – Untermyer Garden and Rocky Hills

    This year’s Berkshire Botanical Garden annual spring field trip takes BBG to two gardens: one just coming into public life and one heading into the private sector. The day begins with a visit to Untermyer Garden in Yonkers, NY, once the private garden and estate of Samuel Untermyer. Beginning in 1899, Untermyer spent the next 40 years attempting to make his garden and greenhouse the most extraordinary private horticultural endeavor in the country. Since 2011, a conservancy, under the guidance of Marco Polo Stufano of Wave Hill fame, has been working along with the city of Yonkers to restore Untermyer Garden to its former glory. The tour will include the Indo-Persian-inspired Walled Garden; the Vista, modeled on a similar series of descending stairs at the Villa D’Este in Italy; the Temple of Love; and other gardens at various stages in the restoration process.

    Following a picnic lunch on the grounds, the tour will travel north to Mt. Kisco to the much-loved Rocky Hills, pictured below, the 12-acre strolling garden that once belonged to Henriette and William Suhr. A Garden Conservancy Project Garden, Rocky Hills was to be turned into a public garden upon its owner’ s death, but for a variety of reasons, is now being sold privately with the proceeds being used to create a foundation to help support horticultural and environmental causes. This may be one of the last times this extraordinary garden, replete with it naturalistic water and rock gardens, azalea and rhododendron borders, and meadows and conifer collections, will be available for public viewing.

    Bring a bag lunch and dress for the weather: comfortable, sturdy footwear and warm, waterproof outerwear, umbrella. Berkshire Botanical Garden members $100, nonmembers $120. Register online at https://berkshirebotanical.org/education/field-trips/