Boston Flora

Tag: The Grove

  • Wednesday, October 30, 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm Eastern – Marcell Proust and the Gardens of the Belle Epoque, Online

    Through an exploration of drama, diaries, novels and magazines, this Gardens Trust Wednesday five part series will examine how writers have used gardens and plants to evoke memories, capture ideas of taste and fashion, satirize attitudes, champion social change and give deeper meaning to the world. The chosen authors cover almost four centuries of literature and, through examining their words, we can gain new understandings of the roles, meanings and emotive power of historic landscapes and horticulture. This ticket link https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/gardens-and-the-written-word-tickets-930348275737 is for the entire series of 5 talks, or you may purchase a ticket for individual talks, costing £8 via the links on that page. (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 5 for £26.25). All purchases are handled through Eventbrite.

    Ticket holders can join each session live and/or view a recording for up to 1 week afterwards. Ticket sales close 4 hours before the first talk. Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days (and again a few hours) prior to the start of the first talk (If you do not receive this link please contact us), and a link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 1 weeks.

    On October 30, Ben Dark will speak on Marcell Proust. Real and remembered gardens weave through the seven volumes of In Search of Lost Time. This talk will shake some of them loose, blossom hopefully intact, and examine what makes Proust the greatest ever writer on plants and the feelings they evoke.

    In doing so we will explore the Pré Catelan Garden in Illiers (Proust’s Combray), the Bois de Boulogne, the hôtels of the Faubourg Saint-Germain and the seaside villas of the Côte Fleurie, examining how their unique treatments provide a window on changing attitudes to garden space in nineteenth and early twentieth century France. We’ll finish with a guide to planting your own Proustian Garden — one capable of provoking involuntary memories in visitors’ decades after they once called round for tea.

    Ben Dark is an author, head gardener, broadcaster and landscape historian. He studied Horticulture at Capel Manor, before completing a traineeship at the Garden Museum and an MA in Garden and Landscape History at the Institute of Historical Research. As a gardener he has worked for embassies, cemeteries, heritage bodies and oligarchs. He hosts the award-winning Garden Log and Dear Gardener podcasts, while his book The Grove: A Nature Odyssey in 19 1/2 Front Gardens (Mitchell Beazley, 2022) contains stories of life, death, love and flowers told by the plants of a single street. In 2022 he won the Journalist of the Year award from the Garden Media Guild. Image below: Le Déjeuner (1873), Claude Monet, public domain via Wikimedia Commons

  • Saturday, May 13, 2:00 pm – Free Tour of Charlesgate Park

    This past November, MassDOT held a public announcement that funding had been secured for two bridge projects the Bowker Overpass. While the designs are not yet ready for public comment, the Charlesgate Alliance, the Emerald Necklace Conservancy, and the Esplanade Association have partnered to advocate for the greenest possible outcomes for these transformational projects.

    Promised outcomes include removing the offramp over the Muddy River at Charlesgate East and Commonwealth Avenue and, in collaboration with our partners at the Esplanade Association, daylighting the terminus of the Muddy River as it enters the Charles. These two MassDOT improvements will act as bookends as we work to improve the heart of the park between the Mass. Turnpike and Beacon Street. Join us on a free tour of Charlesgate Park about the vision for its future on Saturday, May 13 at 2:00 pm.

    Register  here so that we can get a head count and tell you if a rain cancellation occurs.

    Tours start in The Grove area of the park (just in from the NW corner of Beacon St. and Charlesgate East), where we planted new trees last June. Look for buds on the maple trees! Allow two hours for the complete tour. Below is an image of the area circa 1954, for reference.

  • Thursday, October 6, 5:00 am – The 19th Century Garden – Boating Lakes and Backhanders, Online

    The Gardens Trust’s third series of lectures on Victorian gardens continues on October 6 with Ben Dark’s exploration of Boating Lakes and Backhanders: J.J. Sexby and the Politics of the Public Park.

    Lieutenant Colonel J. J. Sexby, Chief Officer of the London County Council’s Parks Department, has been credited with creating the model for twentieth century public parks. To contemporaries it seemed that at a wave of his magic wand ‘bandstands blossom forth, lakes sparkle, shelters spring up, delightful refreshment rooms, not to mention drinking fountains, abound and playgrounds leap into joyful existence’. But these features were far from universally popular. Contemporary landscape architects accused Sexby of being ‘the merest amateur’ and advocates for naturalistic planting derided the Parks Department for their ‘ugly tea gardens’. Meanwhile, behind the Council’s rockeries and ‘Old English’ gardens lay a bitter soup of political infighting, official corruption and bureaucratic incompetence.

    This talk will re-examine Sexby and the parks he created in the light of the economic, aesthetic and moral arguments that raged around him, and will argue that his true genius has long been misunderstood.

    Ben Dark is an author, gardener and horticultural journalist with a particular interest in the history of plants and landscapes. His book The Grove: A Natural Odyssey in 19½ Front Gardens (Octopus, 2022) used the plants of a single street in South London to weave together stories of the city, its people and their flowers and was called ‘the best gardening book of 2022’ by the Daily Telegraph, as well as being praised by The Sunday Times, the New Statesman and The Mail on Sunday.

    Alongside writing Ben also hosts the award-winning Garden Log podcast, providing a discursive look at the culture, literature and practice of gardening. He has a degree in history from Bristol University and an MA in garden and landscape history from the University of London, writing his dissertation on J. J. Sexby and London’s Municipal Public Parks, 1889-1910.

    £5 each or all 6 for £30. Register at Eventbrite HERE. The recording will be available for a week following the Zoom lecture.

  • New Trees for Charlesgate

    The Boston Planning and Development Agency announced that the Charlesgate Alliance will receive $10,000 to plant five new trees in Charlesgate next Spring. The money comes from the Fenway Demonstration Project, which is funded by the Red Sox. This exciting news will show concrete commitment to the area as we work on longer range goals. We will be consulting over the winter with DCR about the final locations and species. Most new plantings will likely be in the area of The Grove, where several trees have been removed.