Boston Flora

Tag: Ruth Bancroft

  • Wednesday, September 23, 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm Eastern – Designing the Lush Dry Garden, Online

    On September 23 at 7 pm Eastern on Zoom, Cricket Riley will share the inspiration behind the book Designing the Lush Dry Garden and discuss how personal experience, place, and climate shape the way we design and experience our landscapes. She will explore what it means to create gardens that are vibrant, resilient in the face of a changing climate, and expressive of individual values and aesthetics. The talk will highlight influences from the Ruth Bancroft Garden as well as practical design strategies and thoughtful plant choices that balance beauty with sustainability, offering attendees approachable ideas they can adapt to their own spaces. Cricket will also touch on how observation, experimentation, and seasonal change inform successful garden design over time. The American Horticultural Society presentation will conclude with an interactive Q&A, inviting audience members to ask questions and explore how the concepts, tools, and inspiration from the book can be applied to their own unique landscapes and gardening goals.

    CRICKET RILEY is co-owner of Lush Dry Gardens, a landscape design firm specializing in low-water garden design, and worked at the Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek, CA, from 2017 to 2025. During her tenure she held multiple roles, including founding and serving as Director of the Design Services department. She was the primary instructor for the Dry Garden Design Certificate Program, which she co-created with Alice Kitajima in 2020.

    ALICE KITAJIMA’s deep connection to gardens and landscape design began early, inspired by her father, who immigrated to Los Angeles to design and install Japanese-style gardens. After completing her forestry and music studies at the University of California, Berkeley, she worked at botanical gardens and arboreta across the United States. As Program Director at the Ruth Bancroft Garden, she led the education department with a passion for helping people build meaningful, lasting connections with plants.

    $15 AHS members, $20 for nonmembers. Register at https://ahsgardening.org/ahs-live-designing-the-lush-dry-garden/

  • Wednesday, July 10, 11:30 am – 2:00 pm – Great American Gardens: Historic, Personal, & Visionary from the 19th to the 21st Century

    As director of preservation for the Garden Conservancy, Bill Noble is fortunate to work with garden owners and community activists who are working to save great American gardens. He will draw examples from the estate gardens of the early twentieth century, such as Shelburne Farms, as well as more recent gardens that give voice to regional and cultural expressions of a time and place, such as Ruth Bancroft’s Garden in Walnut Creek, CA; George Schoellkopf’s Hollister House Garden in Washington, CT; Pearl Fryar’s Topiary Garden in Bishopville, SC and the Gardens of Alcatraz. Bill will tell the stories of the individual creators of these extraordinary gardens. He will also show how some of the garden ideas (and plants) he has picked up through his work with gardens across the country have shown up in his own Vermont garden. This July 10 program will take place at The Inn at Shelburne Farms, in the Marble Dining Room, and the $75 fee includes lunch, program, and a $50 donation to the Formal Gardens Restoration Project at Shelburne Farms. To register, and for complete information, visit www.shelburnefarms.org.

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