Boston Flora

Tag: Rosemary Verey

  • Sunday, November 11, 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm – Heroes of Horticulture: Americans Who Transformed the Landscape

    Author Barbara Paul Robinson will speak at Tower Hill Botanic Garden on November 11 from 1 – 2 on her new book Heroes of Horticulture: Americans Who Transformed the Landscape. Here are the vibrant stories of eighteen contemporary heroes of horticulture – institution builders, plant explorers and garden creators who have all had a major impact on the American landscape. Three of them established The Garden Conservancy. Others worked to revitalize and establish botanical and other exceptional public gardens. Some intrepid plant explorers (one with a Tower Hill connection) have even traveled to remote parts of the globe to bring back and disseminate plants unknown in the West. Over the course of their careers, these heroes have worked to preserve and enhance our public spaces, setting new standards for aesthetics and encouraging wider public participation. Whether you work the soil or not, you’ll read their stories with a sense of wonder and admiration, and there’s a good chance you’ll derive some practical horticultural benefits from their passion, their lives and their work.

    During a sabbatical from the leading international law firm, Debevoise & Plimpton where she was the first woman partner, Barbara Paul Robinson worked as a gardener for Rosemary Verey at Barnsley House. A hands-in-the-dirt gardener herself, she and her husband have created their own gardens at Brush Hill in northwestern Connecticut, featured in articles, books and television. Her first book was Rosemary Verey: The Life and Lessons of a Legendary Gardener (Godine 2012). A frequent speaker, Barbara has published articles in the New York Times, Horticulture, Fine Gardening and Hortus; she has also written a chapter in Rosemary Verey’s The Secret Garden.

    $10 for Tower Hill members, $20 for nonmembers. Register at www.towerhillbg.org.

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  • Wednesday, March 27, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm – Rosemary Verey: The Life & Lessons of a Legendary Gardener

    On Wednesday, March 27, from 6:30 – 8 at the Arnold Arboretum, Barbara Paul Robinson will talk from her personal experience as a gardener with Rosemary Verey and from her research for her book, Rosemary Verey: The Life & Lessons of a Legendary Gardener, which was published by David R. Godine in August 2012. This event is co-sponsored by the Garden Conservancy, Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, and the Friends of Wellesley College Botanic Gardens. Rosemary Verey was an internationally acclaimed garden legend. Although she embraced gardening late in life, she quickly achieved international renown. She was the acknowledged apostle of the “English style,” on display at her home at Barnsley House, the “must have” adviser to the rich and famous, including Prince Charles and Elton John, and a beloved and wildly popular lecturer in America. A child of a generation born between the two World Wars, she went on to create the gardens at her home that became a mandatory stop on every garden tour in the 1980s and 1990s.

    During a sabbatical from law firm Debevoise & Plimpton where she was the first woman partner, Barbara Paul Robinson worked as a gardener for Rosemary Verey at Barnsley House. A hands-in-the-dirt gardener herself, she and her husband created their own gardens at Brush Hill in northwestern Connecticut, featured in articles, books, and on television. Barbara has published articles in the New York Times, Horticulture, Fine Gardening, and Hortus; she wrote a chapter in Rosemary Verey’s The Secret Garden, and she is a frequent speaker.  $5 for members of one of the sponsoring organizations, $15 general admission.  To register, call the Arnold Arboretum’s adult education department at 617-384-5277.

    http://hereandnow.wbur.org/files/2012/12/1221_rosemary-verey-624x476.jpg

  • Thursday, January 31, 1:30 pm – Rosemary Verey: The Life & Lessons of a Legendary Gardener

    Barbara Paul Robinson, author of Rosemary Verey: the Life and Lessons of a Legendary Gardener, will come to the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, 900 Washington Street in Wellesley, on Thursday, January 31 at 1:30 pm, to give an illustrated talk.

    The book recounts how Ms. Robinson, in mid-career as a New York City lawyer, took a sabbatical to work at Ms. Verey’s famous garden at Barnsley House in the Cotswalds, England. The short internship led to a longtime friendship, so the author was able to observe the rising fame of the great English gardener and to enlist Ms. Verey’s many other associates to contribute their memories to this intimate biography.  After her talk, Barbara Paul Robinson will be open to questions and to signing books. Light refreshments will be served. $10 for Mass Hort members, $15 for non-members. To register for the event, visit www.masshort.org or call Maureen Horn at 617-933-4912.

  • Saturday, June 20, 10 – 4 – Newport Area Open Day

    The Garden Conservancy will sponsor an Open Day in Newport, Rhode Island on Saturday, June 20, from 10 – 4.  Visit Green Animals Topiary Garden at 380 Cory’s Lane, Portsmouth, Rhode Island, and Blithewold Mansion, Gardens & Arboretum at 101 Ferry Road and Route 114, for more information.

    The Purviance Garden,  47 Kane Avenue, Middletown, Rhode Island

    For more than thirty years the owners have lovingly tended their gardens. The house is sheltered by two venerable lindens of astonishing form and framed by a billowing boxwood hedge, shaped by an artist. The border by the terrace holds flowering shrubs, a whimsical collection of potted plants, a garden pool, roses, perennials, and evergreens. A tiny playhouse is tucked under a copper beech. Other small gardens are constantly changing, rearranged by the owners who cannot resist tinkering.

    Bellevue House Gardens, Newport, Rhode Island

    This walled three-and-one-half-acre property serves as the private park of an estate designed by Ogden Codman Jr. for his cousin Martha. The gardens have recently been restored, embellished, and re-imagined. They pay homage to the garden designers of the American Renaissance period (1885-1930), and include a series of follies, exedras, and tea houses which form axes and vistas inviting diversions beyond the contemplation of the magnificent specimen trees set in sweeping lawns. The most recent additions include the American Renaissance Water Garden on the east side of the house. A carved granite statue of the goddess Pomona as a metaphorical deity passes energy to the current family over time. The waters gush forward from the her fruit-laden cornucopia, then rise up to a Villa Lante-like table, spill out the father’s lips, under a bridge, and down a long rill to a children’s fountain. A pergola nearby pays homage to Rosemary Verey’s laburnums and wisteria and frames the new tea house, replicating the work of Salem architect Samuel McIntyre (1800). At the rear of the property, stands the newest folly—the cupola of McIntyre’s 1809 Branch (now Howard Street) Church in Salem as redesigned by J. P. Couture of Providence. It is adjacent to an English water garden that reflects the cupola in its symmetrical pool. Completed in the fall of 2008, a new Oriental Vale extends the view to the south. Here a Chinese Chippendale bridge frames a cascade running from a lily-lined lagoon into the pond. A hillock blocks street views and sends a waterfall down to stepping stones that edge the lagoon, which is embraced by a shoal of large beach stones, Japanese maples, and granite lanterns. We regret that fishing for the multi-colored koi is not allowed. Nor will we in turn fish for compliments, though your comments and suggestions for this evolving work will be appreciated.

    Parterre, Newport, Rhode Island

    Recalling the romance of eighteenth-century France, a series of formal gardens with whimsical outbuildings surround the house, built just ten years ago amidst a park-like setting. Always a work in progress, inspiration from other gardens continue to provide precious details. The existing woodland had been reclaimed, with a fall “flame border” of Japanese maples as its accent (a la Sheffield Park, England.) From the fourteen-foot copper beech tapestry hedge to the evergreen “winter garden”, the focus at Parterre is on horticultural specimens and diversity.