Boston Flora

Tag: Rutgers

  • Wednesday, July 1, 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm – Keeping Your Eyes to the Ground: Essential Strategies for Dynamic Herbaceous Landscape Design

    A successful dynamic landscape requires a fully expressed ground plane planting that yields benefits that extend well beyond aesthetics, from managing stormwater to supporting pollinators and more. In this Polly Hill Arboretum program on July 1 at 5:30 pm, Patrick Cullina will review essential design strategies for the design of successful herbaceous landscapes — including assessments of the ecological regions (including Martha’s Vineyard) that offer so many valuable cues, plant selection, integration, spacing, establishment, and more, often through the lens of project precedents.

    Patrick Cullina is an award-winning horticulturist, landscape designer, photographer, lecturer, and planning consultant with more than thirty years of experience in landscape-related fields. Formerly, he served as the founding V.P. of Horticulture & Operations for New York City’s High Line Park, as Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s V.P. of Horticulture, Operations, & Science Research, and Associate Director of the Rutgers University Gardens in affiliation with the school’s Department of Landscape Architecture. His current consulting practice is dedicated to the design, creation, development, and management of transformational dynamic landscapes through the innovative integration of plants and management strategies — often in collaboration with some of the world’s leading landscape architects and architects.

    Pre-registration required. PHA Members: $10; Non-Members: $20. Register HERE.

  • Monday, February 10, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – Déjà vu all over again: Denialism of Climate Change and of Evolution

    Eugenie Scott, PhD, Director of the National Center for Science Education, will speak at The Arnold Arboretum on Monday, February 10, from 7 – 8:30 as part of the Director’s Lecture Series.  This program is sold out but you may join the waiting list by calling 617-384-5277.

    Both evolution and global warming are “controversial issues” in education, but are not controversial in the world of science. There is remarkable similarity in the techniques that are used by both camps to promote their views. The scientific issues are presented as “not being settled”, or that there is considerable debate among scientists over the validity of claims. Both camps practice “anomaly mongering”, in which a small detail, seemingly incompatible with either evolution or global warming, is held up as dispositive of either evolution or of climate science. Although in both cases, reputable, established science is under attack for ideological reasons, the underlying ideology differs: for denying evolution, the ideology of course is religious; for denying global warming, the ideology is political and/or economic. Eugenie Scott will deconstruct the arguments and identify the ideologies that hinder widespread understanding of evolution and responsiveness to climate change.

    Eugenie Scott, a former university professor, served as the executive director of NCSE from 1987 to 2014; she now serves as the chair of NCSE’s Advisory Council. She has been both a researcher and an activist in the creationism/evolution controversy for over twenty-five years, and can address many components of this controversy, including educational, legal, scientific, religious, and social issues. She has received national recognition for her NCSE activities, including awards from scientific societies, educational societies, skeptics groups, and humanist groups. She holds nine honorary degrees, from McGill, Rutgers, Mt. Holyoke, the University of New Mexico, Ohio State, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Colorado College, the University of Missouri-Columbia, and Chapman University. A dynamic speaker, she offers stimulating and thought-provoking as well as entertaining lectures and workshops. Scott is the author of Evolution vs Creationism and co-editor, with Glenn Branch, of Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design Is Wrong for Our Schools.

    http://b.vimeocdn.com/ts/274/020/274020896_640.jpg

  • Suburbia Transformed Design Competition

    We know many of our readers live outside the City of Boston.  Applications are now available online for an exciting design competition. The James Rose Center announces its third biennial design competition and exhibition Suburbia Transformed 3.0, One Garden at a Time: Exploring the Aesthetics of Landscape Experience in the Age of Sustainability. The goal of Suburbia Transformed 3.0 is to promote and celebrate residential designs that go beyond “green” by explicitly using sustainable strategies, tactics, and technologies to enrich the aesthetic spatial experience of people. The emphasis is on how such sustainable landscapes can be beautiful, inspiring, perhaps profound, and serve as examples for transforming the suburban residential fabric, one garden at a time. This is an international competition for built and visionary (unbuilt) residential landscapes in professional and student categories. Entries are due before February 18, 2014. Details for Suburbia Transformed 3.0 are available at www.jamesrosecenter.org. ST3.0 is co-sponsored by Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey and the NJASLA.  Pictured is an image from past winner danespencer-landscapearchitect.com.

    http://danespencer-landscapearchitect.com/wp-content/themes/danespencer/images/wisconsin_slideshow/wisconsin_image_1.jpg

  • Sunday, June 23, 3:30 pm – The Human Shore: Seacoasts in History

    More than half of Americans now live within 50 miles of ocean, but should they? John Gillis (Rutgers University), in his new book The Human Shore: Seacoasts in History, argues that an inadequate understanding of the natural and human history of our shores has left communities unprepared for coastal dwelling.  John will speak at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, 26 Oxford Street in Cambridge, on Sunday, June 23 beginning at 3:30 pm.  For more information visit www.hmnh.harvard.edu/lectures_and_special_events/index.php.  Regular Museum admission rates apply.

    http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51YqwaSvWPL._SL500_AA300_.jpg