Boston Flora

Tag: The Landscape Institute

  • Monday, February 25, 6:30 pm – 9:00 pm, and Saturday, March 2, 9:30 am – 1:30 pm – Bones of the Garden: Strengthening the Design

    Every memorable landscape has one thing in common – strong “bones.”  The placement of trees and shrubs creates form, directs movement, and organizes the garden.  Learn to select, situate, and integrate these stately elements into the cultivated landscape.  Explore the concepts of scale, creating space and the impact of plant growth over time in locating structural elements.  Using your new knowledge, develop your own site-specific design.  Receive feedback on designs and plant combinations.  During the final session, inspect the “bones” of Garden in the Woods with a late winter walk.  The two session class takes place Monday, February 25, 6:30 – 9, and Saturday, March 2, 9:30 – 1:30.  The instructor is Cheryl Salatino, designer and horticulturist, and the fee is $132 for members of NEWFS and The Landscape Institute, and $160 for nonmembers.  Register at www.newfs.org.  Image from www.masterscapes.com.

    http://www.masterscapes.com/uploads/images/hobhouse-garden-2a-369x369.jpg

  • Saturday, November 13, 9:00 am – 4:00 pm – A Horticultural History Tour

    The Massachusetts Horticultural Society is proud to announce a day-long series of lectures focused on the history of horticulture and landscape design in New England and beyond, to take place Saturday, November 13, from 9 – 4 at the Hunnewell Carriage House, Elm Bank, 900 Washington Street in Wellesley.

    The symposium will be hosted by John Furlong, FALA, emeritus director, Landscape Institute, Arnold Arboretum, faculty member of the Boston Architectural College, Distinguished Radcliffe Instructor, and recipientof the  Gold Medal and emeritus trustee, Massachusetts Horticultural Society.

    9:00 AM – Actor and interpreter Gerry Wright, as Frederick Law Olmsted, presents a biography of the landscape architect who was influenced by the natural landscapes of New England throughout his life. In 1850, at age 28, he traveled to England and was smitten with the countryside and a “democratic park” in Birkenhead. Olmsted’s two styles of landscape architecture were the creation of the “pastoral” and the “picturesque”. Beyond the creation for beauty, there was a sense of “service deeply rooted in his planning of public places.” New York City’s Central Park, Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum and the country estates on the Charles River in Wellesley and Dover are among the legacies of Olmsted and his firm.

    At 10:30, Allyson Hayward, garden historian, popular lecturer for The Garden Club of the Back Bay and author of Norah Lindsay: The Life and Art of a Garden Designer will deliver a new talk on two important New England estates, the Hunnewell estate, known as Wellesley, and Elm Bank, the Cheney/Baltzell estate which is now the home of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. Today, these landscapes reveal a layering of New England’s garden history. Ms. Hayward will take you on an armchair tour of these exciting gardens with an illustrated lecture tracing the landscapes dating from 1850 to the present. You will revel in the beauty of the initial vision of Horatio Hollis Hunnewell and his Italian Garden and Pinetum at Wellesley. The lecture will continue with images of Elm Bank from its Victorian grandeur to its transformation into a 1920s grandiose playground for Boston society, complete with theme gardens that portrayed the owners’ sense of taste and style.

    11:30 AM – David Barnett, PhD., President and CEO of Mount Auburn Cemetery, will present Wilson’s China: A Century On, published by The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, 2009. Wilson was the Arnold Arboretum’s principal plant collector from 1906 and following Sargent’s death he was appointed the self-styled ‘Keep” of the Arboretum. In addition to introducing over 1,200 plants, Wilson was a popular author and lecturer and a MassHort Trustee. His remarkable achievements are a continuing inspiration to botanists, horticulturists and landscapers. The slides have been loaned to MassHort through the courtesy of the English authors, Tony Kirkham and Mark Flanagan, respectively Head of the Arboretum at Kew and Keeper of the Royal Gardens in Windsor Great Park.

    Following lunch, at 1:30 PM, you will hear Elizabeth S. Eustis, a garden historian and guest curator, former Trustee of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, past President of the New England Wild Flower Society and faculty member of The Landscape Institute. She will speak on Romanticism in the Landscape, the subject of a 2010 exhibition that she co-curated for the Morgan Library in New York, Romantic Gardens: Art, Nature and Garden Design, with a catalog published by David R. Godine. Following the transition from formal classicism to more naturalistic garden design, Romanticism added a new emphasis on emotional and spiritual response to the landscape. The pervasive influence of Romanticism inspired artificial ruins, garden cemeteries, wild gardens, and contributed powerfully to the public parks movement. This talk will be extensively illustrated by recent photographs and historic works of art.

    3:00 PM – Meg Muckenhoupf is the author of Boston’s Gardens & Green Spaces, Union Park Press, 2010, which is a guide to the Arnold Arboretum, The Boston Public Garden, Mt. Auburn Cemetery, the Olmsted sites, Elm Bank and Boston’s historic and newer parks. Beautiful photos. You will discover delightful new spots to visit.

    Registration is $65 for MHS members, $75 for non-members, and the price includes lunch. You may register on-line at www.masshort.org/horticultural-history-tour or call 617-933-4995.

  • Thursday, October 29, 5:30 pm – Landscapes for Art with Ann Kearsley

    Come to The Landscape Institute, 30 Chauncy Street, Cambridge, MA on Thursday, October 29 to hear Ann Kearsley speak about her exhibition of landscape design work, including drawings and photographs that document the process from foundations to cranes to finished installation of built landscapes and of sculpture installations.  Ann Kearsley MLA, MLAUD, principal/owner of Ann Kearsley Design, has been designing landscapes for art since 1996. Her lecture will discuss the challenges of designing landscapes for modern sculpture, using examples of her work that include sculpture by Tony Smith, Mark di Suvero, Willem de Kooning and others. Sculpture has been placed in landscapes for millennia. For centuries, figurative forms in public landscapes and private gardens communicated specific meanings through formal expressions of shared cultural iconographies. In the 20th century, as the imagery of abstract art moved away from mainstream culture, the role of sculpture in designed landscapes began to change as well, creating an opportunity for our consideration of the relationship between sculptural and landscape forms.

    This lecture is free and open to the public.  The exhibition will continue through December 3, 2009.  The reception begins at 5:30, the lecture at 6:00.  Please rsvp to landscape@arnarb.harvard.edu, since seating is limited.  For directions and parking information, log on to www.arboretum.harvard.edu.

    http://www.pierrofoundation.org/images/site_2.jpg

  • Thursday, September 24, 5 – 7 pm – Get the Scoop!

    The New England Landscape Design and History Association (NELDHA) Student Reception will take place Thursday, September 24, from 5 – 7 pm. Come meet Landscape Institute alumni and students currently enrolled in the program. Gain valuable insight into the practice of landscape history and design and get advice on how to make your studies easier. Refreshments will be served. Location: The Landscape Institute, 30 Chauncy Street, Cambridge, MA.  For more information, log on to www.arboretum.harvard.edu.

  • Monday, August 17 – It’s a Small World

    It’s a Small World: Color Microscopy and Macro Photography

    by Julie McIntosh Shapiro
    Aug 17–September 10, 2009

    Photographs of visual secrets, macro and micro documentation, these images bring out a love of looking and watching at close range. Ms. Shapiro has spent the last fifteen years using the close up photographic techniques of macroscopy and microphotography to present objects not easily seen with the naked eye. Ultimately, these visual investigations provide hidden insight into things unknown, overlooked and magnificent.

    Julie McIntosh Shapiro is principal of Garden PHI, a photographically based horticulture research and design/build company. She was principal photographer for a digital database project on imaging seeds for the Arnold Arboretum. Her seed images are included in Harvard’s North American Plant Collections Consortium (NAPCC) specimens, Center for Plant Conservation (CPC) specimens, and a myriad of other rare, endangered, and native plant collections. Her work is published in the newly revised publication about Reverend John Fiala, Lilacs: A Gardener’s Encyclopedia (2008).  This exhibit is sponsored by the Arnold Arboretum and takes place at The Landscape Institute, 30 Chauncy Street, Cambridge, MA.  For information on times, log on to www.arboretum.harvard.edu.