Boston Flora

Tag: The Garden Conservancy

  • Sunday, June 16, 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm – An Afternoon with Polly Nicholson, Discussing the History of Tulips

    The Trustees are delighted to welcome tulip expert Polly Nicholson to celebrate The Tulip Garden, a new, lavishly illustrated tribute to tulips. In this book, Nicholson, a specialist flower grower and holder of the National Collection of Tulipa (historic), introduces the art of growing and collecting tulips against the backdrop of her beautiful English country garden. Join her as she delves into the rich cultural history of the tulip, one of the world’s most popular flowers.

    Specialist flower grower and tulip expert Polly Nicholson is the owner of Bayntun Flowers in Wiltshire, England – growers of organic flowers cultivated in walled gardens and a one-acre field at the foot of the Marlborough Downs in Wiltshire. Nicholson holds the National Collection of Tulipa (Historic) with Plant Heritage, and has featured on BBC Gardener’s World, Radio 4, in Gardens Illustrated, Country Life, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, The World of Interiors, and House & Garden.

    The event takes place at Long Hill, 576 Essex Street in Beverly, on June 16 at 2 pm, and is $30 for Trustees members, $35 General Admission, and $60 for members, $65 for nonmembers, which will include a copy of the book.

    Lecture by Polly Nicholson takes place at 2 p.m. on the events terrace at Long Hill (approximately 1 hour) followed by a wine reception and book signing from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. Participants who purchase the book bundle can pick up their copies the day of the event. Copies will be available for purchase the day of the event.

    This event is presented in partnership with The Garden Conservancy in support of its mission to preserve, share, and celebrate America’s gardens and diverse gardening traditions for the education and inspiration of the public. To sign up, visit https://thetrustees.org/event/419090/

  • Saturday, June 24, 7:00 pm – Hedge

    The Garden Conservancy recommends a new novel by Jane Delury, Hedge. Garden historian Maud Bentley packs up her daughters to spend a summer at a Hudson Valley estate, leaving her husband behind in California.  An idyllic return to days in the sun restoring a 19th century garden takes an unexpected turn when Maud becomes entangled with her archeologist neighbor. Just as Maud’s life seems set on a new, exciting course, her eldest daughter reveals an explosive secret that drives the family back to Marin. The lies and passions of that summer continue to haunt Maud years later, as she restores the garden of one of San Francisco’s founders. Another unexpected encounter and a growing friendship—this time with the reclusive artist funding Maud’s project—resurrects old questions and patterns, bringing the past back to the surface and forever changing Maud’s life.

    The author will give a talk and book signing at Newtonville Books on June 24 at 7 pm.

  • Thursday, November 3, 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm – Cold-Hardy Fruit and Nuts, Online

    Cold-Hardy Fruits and Nuts is a one-stop compendium of the most productive, edible fruit-and nut-bearing crops that push the boundaries of what can survive winters in cold-temperate growing regions. While most nurseries and guidebooks feature plants that are riddled with pest problems (such as apples and peaches), veteran growers and founders of the Hortus Arboretum and Botanical Gardens, Allyson Levy and Scott Serrano, focus on both common and unfamiliar fruits that have few, if any, pest or disease problems and an overall higher level of resilience. With beautiful and instructive color photographs throughout, the book is also full of concise, clearly written botanical and cultural information based on the authors’ years of growing experience. The fifty fruits and nuts featured provide a nice balance of the familiar and the exotic: from almonds and pecans to more unexpected fruits like maypop and Himalayan chocolate berry. Cold-Hardy Fruits and Nuts gives adventurous gardeners all they need to get growing.

    Allyson Levy and Scott Serrano are both visual artists and codirectors of Hortus Arboretum and Botanical Gardens in New York’s Hudson Valley. Their garden began as a source of inspiration and raw materials for their art. Over time, their interest in growing a wider selection of plants expanded until the garden encompassed eleven acres and became their primary passion. Along the way, they began planting a vast diversity of plants, both edible and ornamental. This grew into an extensive collection of cold-hardy cactus, magnolia trees, viburnums, and grafted fruit trees, with a focus on rare, underutilized plants. The arboretum is a nonprofit organization and level II arboretum. Levy and Serrano have been opening Hortus Arboretum for Open Days for many years.

    The webinar with the authors, sponsored by The Garden Conservancy, takes place November 3 beginning at 2 pm. Conservancy Members $5 per person; General admission $15 A recording of this webinar will be sent to all registrants a few days after the event. We encourage you to register, even if you cannot attend the live webinar. Register at www.gardenconservancy.org

  • Thursday, April 21, 2:00 pm – Ecological Horticulture in an Evolving World, Online

    Horticulture is a practice that is as ancient as civilization. But modern ecological and political drivers demand we adapt to these changing times. Gardeners now want to help the environment with their practice, rather than dominate it; with that, many of our gardening techniques are falling into question. Why do we mulch? Why do we cut back in spring? And where do we learn new strategies for stewardship in a rapidly evolving world? On April 21, join the Garden Conservancy to find out more.

    Rebecca McMackin has been trying to answer these questions as well as asking many more. Through her work at Brooklyn Bridge Park and in private practice, she works to develop and share techniques for ecological horticulture: a field which centers the dynamics among plants, animals, and fungi, while still creating and maintaining aesthetically stunning gardens. In this presentation, Rebecca will discuss the evolution of this work, as well as the new ways gardeners share knowledge in this rapidly developing field. Rebecca is an ecologically obsessed horticulturist and garden designer. She has spent the last decade as Director of Horticulture of Brooklyn Bridge Park, where she manages 85 acres of diverse parkland organically and with an eye towards habitat creation for birds, butterflies, and soil microorganisms.

    DATE AND TIME
    Thursday, April 21
    2:00 p.m. Eastern

    LOCATION
    Live on Zoom

    REGISTRATION
    $5 Garden Conservancy Members
    $15 General Admission 

    A recording of this webinar will be sent to all registrants a few days after the event. We encourage you to register, even if you cannot attend the live webinar.

    Members of the Frank & Anne Cabot Society for Planned Giving have complimentary access to Garden Conservancy webinars. All Cabot Society members will automatically be sent the link to participate on the morning of the webinar. For more information about the Cabot Society, please contact Sarah Parker at sparker@gardenconservancy.org or 845.424.6500, ext. 214.

  • Friday, April 1, 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm – Reimagining Vita Sackville-West’s Sissinghurst Gardens

    In this illustrated talk, Troy Scott Smith recounts his long tenure at Sissinghurst and his efforts to recapture the distinctive vision of its creators, the writers Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, in the 1930s, as a refuge dedicated to natural beauty. He studied not only Sackville-West’s and Nicolson’s gardening style, but also their characters, philosophy, and interests, while balancing the reality of hundreds of thousands of annual visitors and the effects of climate change. In the end, Troy shows how he settled on an approach that allowed past, present, and future to co-exist. The event, sponsored by The Garden Conservancy, will be held at Long Hill, 572 Essex Street, in Beverly, MA. This is an indoor event and masks and proof of vaccination will be required.

    $45 Garden Conservancy and the Trustees of Reservations members
    $55 General admission

    Register at https://www.gardenconservancy.org/

    One of Britain’s best-known head gardeners, Troy Scott Smith has devoted his career to the beauty and romance of gardening. Since joining the National Trust of England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, in 1990, Troy has led some of the world’s most beautiful gardens, among them the Courts (Wiltshire), Bodnant (Wales), and two stints at Sissinghurst (Kent), where he has led a remarkable transformation and restoration of the Vita Sackville-West gardens. 

    After spearheading a multi-year plan as head gardener at Sissinghurst, which included the recreation of a Mediterranean-style garden from the Greek Island of Delos, Troy left to assume leadership of the award- winning Iford Manor Garden in Wiltshire, near Bath, where he set in motion a ten-year master plan. After two years, Troy returned to his spiritual home of Sissinghurst.

  • Monday, September 25, 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm – The Liberated Landscape: Letting Nature Do the Work Webinar

    Over thousands of years plants have evolved to reproduce and proliferate on their own, yet we often go to great effort and expense to carefully place every plant in our designed landscapes. How can we capitalize on the reproductive abilities of plants and actively encourage planted as well as existing species to colonize our landscapes? In this lecture, well-known landscape designer Larry Weaner will discuss principles and protocols for creating dynamic, ecologically rich landscapes where nature does much of the planting.

    This Ecological Landscape Alliance September 25 webinar from 4 – 5 pm will include detailed case studies that demonstrate how practical plant proliferation strategies can be applied at diverse scales, from the intimate garden to large multi-acre landscapes. Larry Weaner has been creating landscapes focusing on native plants since 1977. His firm Larry Weaner Landscape Associates has a national reputation for combining ecological restoration with the traditions of garden design. The firm’s work has received numerous awards, been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Garden Design, and Landscape Architecture Magazine, among other publications, and been included on tours with The Garden Conservancy, The Cultural Landscape Foundation, and the American Horticultural Society. Larry lectures throughout the U.S., and in 1990, he founded New Directions in the American Landscape, a conference series with a national following. He recently coauthored Garden Revolution: How Our Landscapes Can Be a Source of Environmental Change.

    Free for ELA members, $10 for nonmembers. Register at http://www.ecolandscaping.org/event/webinar-liberated-landscape-letting-nature-work/

  • Thursday, January 12, 2:00 pm – 5:00 pm – The Alchemy of Creativity

    Thursday, January 12, 2:00 pm – 5:00 pm – The Alchemy of Creativity

    Charles (Chip) H. Sullivan, Professor, Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning, University of California, Berkeley, will present The Alchemy of Creativity on Thursday, January 12, 2:00–5:00pm at the Arnold Arboretum’s Hunnewell Building.

    Author of Drawing the Landscape, and most recently, Cartooning the Landscape, Chip Sullivan will present a series of exercises to help the participant find their own individual sources of intuition, inspiration and imagination to elevate ones perception of the environment. We will explore the creative process using such techniques as dream mapping, creative biorhythms, visual note taking, journals and sketchbooks and the sequential narrative.

    This event is offered in collaboration with The Garden Conservancy. One of the singular talents in landscape design, Chip Sullivan has shared his expertise through a seemingly unusual medium that, at second glance, makes perfect sense–the comic strip. For years Sullivan entertained readers of Landscape Architecture Magazine with comic strips that ingeniously illustrated significant concepts and milestones in the creation of our landscapes. These strips gained a large following among architects and illustrators, and now those original works, as well as additional strips, are collected in a new book, Cartooning the Landscape.

    Fee: $45 Arboretum member; $55 nonmember; $35 student. Register at my.arboretum.harvard.edu or call 617-384-5277.(Students must call to register.)

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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

  • Monday, October 29, 9:30 am or 7:00 pm – Gardens for a Beautiful America

    Monday, October 29, 9:30 am or 7:00 pm – Gardens for a Beautiful America

    At the opening of the 20th century, pioneering photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864 – 1952) was front and center in the movement to beautify America. Gilded age industrialism had brought a new prosperity to life in the United States, but at the price of once pristine forests, rivers, and clear air. In response, the Garden Beautiful movement began. Johnston, a progressive and perhaps one of America’s first “house and garden” photojournalists, was enlisted to photograph gardens from coast to coast. Historian Sam Watters will reveal a sampling of Johnston’s images for lectures delivered across America to advance the Garden Beautiful movement. He will speak about her as an artist and the relevance of her work as a cultural history collection. Over the course of 5 years, historian Sam Watters scanned through millions of books and magazines to match Johnston’s unlabeled hand painted glass garden slides (now in the collection of the Library of Congress) to the sites they depicted, bringing them to light again after more than 70 years, and showing them as a collection of significance in his new book Gardens for a Beautiful America.

    The morning lecture will take place at the new Weld Hill Research Building, 1300 Centre Street in Roslindale, and optional tours of the building will be available at 9:30 am for those registered for the morning lecture. For those unable to attend in the morning, an evening session will be held in the Hunnewell Building, 125 Arborway in Jamaica Plain. Due to space considerations, limited spaces are available for both lectures, and early registration will be encouraged. Co-sponsored by The Garden Club of the Back Bay with Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, Friends of Wellesley College Botanic Gardens, Photographic Resource Center at Boston University, and The Garden Conservancy.  Garden Club of the Back Bay members will receive written notification in the mail.  All others may register at www.arboretum.harvard.edu.  Fee to the public  is $20 through October 15, and $25 thereafter.

  • Thursday, October 18, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – A Rich Spot of Earth: Thomas Jefferson’s Revolutionary Garden at Monticello

    Were Thomas Jefferson to walk the grounds of Monticello today, he would no doubt feel fully at home in the 1,000 foot terraced vegetable garden where the very vegetables and herbs he favored are thriving,  Extensively and painstakingly restored under Peter J. Hatch’s brilliant direction, Jefferson’s unique vegetable garden now boasts the same medley of plants he enthusiastically cultivated in the early nineteenth century.  Peter reveals the Monticello garden’s bounty and legacy and its continuing impact on the culinary, garden, and landscape history of the United States.  A Rich Spot of Earth will be available for purchase and signing at this lecture, taking place Thursday, October 18 at the Hunnewell Building of the Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Boston.  Free parking.  Co-sponsored by the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, Friends of Wellesley College Botanic Gardens, The Garden Conservancy, and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Inc.  Fee to attend for a member of any of the participating sponsors is $20, non-members $25.  To register, call Wellesley at 781-283-3094, or you may visit www.arboretum.harvard.edu.