Boston Flora

Tag: Royal Botanic Gardens

  • Friday, November 1, 6:45 pm – Ginkgo: An Evolutionary and Cultural Biography

    Dr. Peter Crane, Carl W. Knobloch, Jr. Dean of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and Professor of Botany, Yale University, will speak on Friday, November 1 on Ginkgo: An Evolutionary and Cultural Biography, at the meeting of the New England Botanical Club in the Haller Lecture Hall (Room 102), Geological Museum, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge.

    Dean Crane’s work focuses on the diversity of plant life: its origin and fossil history, current status, and conservation and use. From 1992 to 1999 he was director of the Field Museum in Chicago with overall responsibility for the museum’s scientific programs. During this time he established the Office of Environmental and Conservation Programs and the Center for Cultural Understanding and Change, which today make up the Division of Environment, Culture, and Conservation (ECCo). From 1999 to 2006 he was director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, one of the largest and most influential botanical gardens in the world. His tenure at Kew saw strengthening and expansion of the gardens’ scientific, conservation, and public programs. Dean Crane was elected to the Royal Society (the U.K. academy of sciences) in 1998. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, foreign associate of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and a member of the German Academy Leopoldina. He was knighted in the U.K. for services to horticulture and conservation in 2004. Dean Crane currently serves on the Board of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, the Missouri Botanical Garden, the Chicago Botanic Garden, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center at the University of Texas, and the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation.

    For information visit www.rhodora.org.

    http://news.yale.edu/sites/default/files/imce/Dean-Peter-Crane-browser_0.jpg

  • Thursday, August 22 – Friday, August 23, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm – Botanical Painting with Watercolor Master Class with Carol Woodin

    Gain confidence and comfort in this Berkshire Botanical Garden class devoted to techniques of botanical painting in watercolor. Using anemones as subjects, students will learn to capture the vitality and drama of these flowers. After creating a base watercolor layer for guidance, artists will add a series of dry-brush layers, gradually increasing color intensity and form. Through demonstration and individualized attention, the instructor will guide students through mixing believable greens and maintaining color clarity.By the end of the class, each student will have a painting either finished or nearly so. Click here for Materials List.

    Carol Woodin has been painting botanicals in watercolor for over 20 years. Her focus is orchids, rare plants and heirlooms. Her work is included in collections around the world, including those of the Smithsonian Institution, Shirley Sherwood Collection and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK. Director of Exhibitions for the American Society of Botanical Artists, she has organized exhibitions of botanical art throughout the US.

    This is a two-day course, August 22 and 23, 10 – 4. BBG members $260, nonmembers $290. Register on line at www.berkshirebotanical.org, or call 413-298-3926.

    http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4006/4667485611_72e01c7e76.jpg

  • Saturday, November 13, 9:00 am – 4:00 pm – A Horticultural History Tour

    The Massachusetts Horticultural Society is proud to announce a day-long series of lectures focused on the history of horticulture and landscape design in New England and beyond, to take place Saturday, November 13, from 9 – 4 at the Hunnewell Carriage House, Elm Bank, 900 Washington Street in Wellesley.

    The symposium will be hosted by John Furlong, FALA, emeritus director, Landscape Institute, Arnold Arboretum, faculty member of the Boston Architectural College, Distinguished Radcliffe Instructor, and recipientof the  Gold Medal and emeritus trustee, Massachusetts Horticultural Society.

    9:00 AM – Actor and interpreter Gerry Wright, as Frederick Law Olmsted, presents a biography of the landscape architect who was influenced by the natural landscapes of New England throughout his life. In 1850, at age 28, he traveled to England and was smitten with the countryside and a “democratic park” in Birkenhead. Olmsted’s two styles of landscape architecture were the creation of the “pastoral” and the “picturesque”. Beyond the creation for beauty, there was a sense of “service deeply rooted in his planning of public places.” New York City’s Central Park, Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum and the country estates on the Charles River in Wellesley and Dover are among the legacies of Olmsted and his firm.

    At 10:30, Allyson Hayward, garden historian, popular lecturer for The Garden Club of the Back Bay and author of Norah Lindsay: The Life and Art of a Garden Designer will deliver a new talk on two important New England estates, the Hunnewell estate, known as Wellesley, and Elm Bank, the Cheney/Baltzell estate which is now the home of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. Today, these landscapes reveal a layering of New England’s garden history. Ms. Hayward will take you on an armchair tour of these exciting gardens with an illustrated lecture tracing the landscapes dating from 1850 to the present. You will revel in the beauty of the initial vision of Horatio Hollis Hunnewell and his Italian Garden and Pinetum at Wellesley. The lecture will continue with images of Elm Bank from its Victorian grandeur to its transformation into a 1920s grandiose playground for Boston society, complete with theme gardens that portrayed the owners’ sense of taste and style.

    11:30 AM – David Barnett, PhD., President and CEO of Mount Auburn Cemetery, will present Wilson’s China: A Century On, published by The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, 2009. Wilson was the Arnold Arboretum’s principal plant collector from 1906 and following Sargent’s death he was appointed the self-styled ‘Keep” of the Arboretum. In addition to introducing over 1,200 plants, Wilson was a popular author and lecturer and a MassHort Trustee. His remarkable achievements are a continuing inspiration to botanists, horticulturists and landscapers. The slides have been loaned to MassHort through the courtesy of the English authors, Tony Kirkham and Mark Flanagan, respectively Head of the Arboretum at Kew and Keeper of the Royal Gardens in Windsor Great Park.

    Following lunch, at 1:30 PM, you will hear Elizabeth S. Eustis, a garden historian and guest curator, former Trustee of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, past President of the New England Wild Flower Society and faculty member of The Landscape Institute. She will speak on Romanticism in the Landscape, the subject of a 2010 exhibition that she co-curated for the Morgan Library in New York, Romantic Gardens: Art, Nature and Garden Design, with a catalog published by David R. Godine. Following the transition from formal classicism to more naturalistic garden design, Romanticism added a new emphasis on emotional and spiritual response to the landscape. The pervasive influence of Romanticism inspired artificial ruins, garden cemeteries, wild gardens, and contributed powerfully to the public parks movement. This talk will be extensively illustrated by recent photographs and historic works of art.

    3:00 PM – Meg Muckenhoupf is the author of Boston’s Gardens & Green Spaces, Union Park Press, 2010, which is a guide to the Arnold Arboretum, The Boston Public Garden, Mt. Auburn Cemetery, the Olmsted sites, Elm Bank and Boston’s historic and newer parks. Beautiful photos. You will discover delightful new spots to visit.

    Registration is $65 for MHS members, $75 for non-members, and the price includes lunch. You may register on-line at www.masshort.org/horticultural-history-tour or call 617-933-4995.

  • Reminder: Tuesday, January 19, 7 – 8:30 pm – Spirit: Garden Inspiration

    Dan Pearson is one of the most important and influential landscape designers working today. At the heart of all his gardens lies an unshakable theme – his reverence for the power and delicacy of nature. In this lecture on Tuesday, January 19, beginning at 7 pm at Trinity Church on Copley Square,  Dan will demonstrate his design process, in which he extrapolates on the spirit of place as it emerges through geography, history, architecture, and native flora. Dan will explain how he believes landscapes—both wild and designed—speak to us, how human interventions in the landscape can animate and inform, and how they can serve to memorialize and to heal.
    Fee $20 Arnold Arboretum member, $25 nonmember
    Dan Pearson is a landscape designer with an international reputation for design and planting excellence. His key strengths are horticultural expertise, an informed and intuitive approach to the organization of space, and the practice of ecological and sustainable design principles. Dan trained at Wisley, a Royal Horticultural Society garden, and at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. He is a weekly gardening columnist for The Observer, before which he was a columnist for The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times. He is co-author of The Essential Garden Book (with Sir Terence Conran) and author of The Garden: A Year at Home Farm. He has presented and appeared in several TV series and has designed five award-winning Chelsea Flower Show gardens. To register, log on to www.arboretum.harvard.edu.

    http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/allotment/main%20dan.jpg

  • Tuesday, January 19, 7 – 8:30 pm – Spirit: Garden Inspiration

    Dan Pearson is one of the most important and influential landscape designers working today. At the heart of all his gardens lies an unshakable theme – his reverence for the power and delicacy of nature. In this lecture on Tuesday, January 19, beginning at 7 pm at Trinity Church on Copley Square,  Dan will demonstrate his design process, in which he extrapolates on the spirit of place as it emerges through geography, history, architecture, and native flora. Dan will explain how he believes landscapes—both wild and designed—speak to us, how human interventions in the landscape can animate and inform, and how they can serve to memorialize and to heal.
    Fee $20 Arnold Arboretum member, $25 nonmember
    Dan Pearson is a landscape designer with an international reputation for design and planting excellence. His key strengths are horticultural expertise, an informed and intuitive approach to the organization of space, and the practice of ecological and sustainable design principles. Dan trained at Wisley, a Royal Horticultural Society garden, and at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. He is a weekly gardening columnist for The Observer, before which he was a columnist for The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times. He is co-author of The Essential Garden Book (with Sir Terence Conran) and author of The Garden: A Year at Home Farm. He has presented and appeared in several TV series and has designed five award-winning Chelsea Flower Show gardens. To register, log on to www.arboretum.harvard.edu.

    http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/allotment/main%20dan.jpg