The Boston Committee of The Garden Club of America invites members of its constituent fourteen clubs to its Spring Meeting and Luncheon on Thursday, May 9, beginning with registration and coffee at 10:30 am at The Country Club, 191 Clyde Street in Brookline. The featured speaker will be John Tschirch, Director of Museum Affairs for the Preservation Society of Newport County, speaking on The Eden of America.
John Tschirch is an architectural historian specializing the in the artistic and social evolution of historic houses and landscapes. He joined the Preservation Society of Newport County in 1986; in 2010, he became the director of the newly created Department of Museum Affairs, where he oversees curatorial, conservation and academic program functions. Mr. Tschirch has lectured widely on houses and gardens from the Renaissance through the nineteenth century. He is the author of the Preservation Society publication Newport Landscapes (2004) and The Evolution of a Beaux Arts Landscape: The Breakers in Newport, RI for the Journal of the New England Garden History Society (Fall 1999) and serves as historic advisor for the Preservation Society’s 11 historic landscapes.
Newport was referred to as the “Eden of America†by Jedediah Morse in the First Geography of the United States (1789). This illustrated lecture presents landscape paintings by leading American artists and rare photographic views that capture Newport’s distinguished gardens from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Avid patrons, talented gardeners, legendary garden parties and present-day efforts to preserve this remarkable landscape heritage will come alive as historian and raconteur John Tschirch evokes the history he sees— quite literally—thick on the ground.
The cost of the lecture and luncheon is $60, lecture only $30. Please make your check payable to The Boston Committee of the GCA and mail to Karen Gregg, 238 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02116 before Monday, May 6 and note on the memo portion of your check your Garden Club affiliation. All reservations will be held at the door. Garden Club of the Back Bay members will receive written invitations and a car pool notice in the mail.
