Boston Flora

Tag: University Of Delaware

  • Monday, June 5 – Friday, June 9 – The Metcalf Institute 2017 Public Lecture Series

    The Metcalf Institute for Marine & Environmental Reporting will hold its 2017 Annual Public Lecture Series at the Corless Auditorium, University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography, 218 South Ferry Road in Narragansett, June 5 – 9.  All lectures are free and open to the public.  The Institute is celebrating 20 years of excellence in bringing science to the conversation.  The stellar lineup includes:

    Monday, June 5, 3:30 p.m.
    Johanna Polsenberg, The Ocean Health Index
    Assessing the Health of Our Oceans
    How can we protect the health of our oceans? Large-scale ocean datasets provide critical information for sustaining marine resources. Dr. Polsenberg of Conservation International will discuss the global Ocean Health Index and how it uses data to drive science-based policy and identify the research relevant for marine and coastal conservation.

    Tuesday, June 6, 3:30 p.m.
    Dan Kahan, Yale University
    Science Communication in the Age of Fake News and Public Distrust of the Press
    How do we effectively weigh the credibility of scientific information? Some would argue that greater public science literacy is the key, but this is not necessarily borne out by research. Dr. Kahan will describe how cultural barriers affect views of scientific evidence, and how we can use this knowledge to improve science communication.

    Wednesday, June 7, 3:30 p.m.
    Shreeram Inamdar, University of Delaware
    Extreme Weather at the Watershed Scale: How to Protect Water Quality
    Climate forecasts show that many regions will experience increased frequency or intensity of large storms, which could have serious consequences for water quality and aquatic ecosystems. Dr. Inamdar will discuss how these storms affect watershed health, management and policy, and how new research can identify ways to adapt.

    Thursday, June 8, 3:30 p.m.
    Cynthia Giles, Former U.S. EPA Assistant Administrator
    Environmental Enforcement: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
    Delivering on the promise of environmental laws requires tough enforcement and innovative thinking about protecting the environment, including using cutting-edge monitoring and information technologies. Giles will talk about the past and future of these essential protections for communities across the country.

    Friday, June 9, 11 a.m.
    David Baron, Author and former Health and Science Editor for PRI’s The World.
    The Great Eclipse of 1878 and the Dawn of American Science
    On August 21, 2017, a total solar eclipse will cross the U.S. for the first time in 99 years, offering a rare national opportunity to rally around a scientific event. Baron’s new story of the 1878 eclipse describes the event’s role in spurring America’s rise as a global scientific power. Author book signing to follow for American Eclipse: A Nation’s Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World.

    For more information visit http://metcalfinstitute.org/lectures/als-2017/

  • Tower Hill Botanic Garden Announces Appointment of Grace Elton as CEO

    Tower Hill Botanic Garden is pleased to announce that Grace Elton will become CEO of the Boylston-based nonprofit this spring.

    Elton has been the director of horticulture at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden in Richmond, Va., since 2011, where she has established herself as a forward-thinking leader of one of the nation’s premier gardens.  Among Elton’s achievements at Lewis Ginter are a new apiary with demonstration beehives, partnerships to grow hops for a local brewery and expansion of a vegetable garden which contributes produce for an area food bank, and the planting of Lewis Ginter’s first native plant garden.

    A Florida native, Elton was first turned on to the importance of plants as a child living in Everglades National Park, where her parents worked. She received a Bachelor of Science degree in Agricultural Interdisciplinary Studies with a specialization in public garden management from the University of Florida and a Masters in Public Horticulture from the Longwood Graduate Program of the University of Delaware. After experiences interning at London’s Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania, Elton returned to the UK to work with five separate gardens as a recipient of the Garden Club of America’s prestigious Martin McLaren Horticulture Scholarship.

    Prior to joining Lewis Ginter, Elton served as adjunct professor and arboretum supervisor at the Ambler Arboretum of Temple University.  Currently, she serves on the Board of the American Public Gardens Association, the leading association for professionals in public horticulture.

    Elton will succeed interim CEO Suzanne Maas. Maas has led Tower Hill since the departure of Kathy Abbott, who in May 2016 returned to her roots in Boston to work on waterfront and harbor issues.

    Elton will join Tower Hill during a period of tremendous growth for the organization, which welcomed 137,000 visitors and celebrated its 30th year at its Boylston location in 2016. This year is the 175th anniversary of Tower Hill’s parent organization, the Worcester County Horticultural Society. Tower Hill is also offering more programs and welcoming more members than ever before. Elton will take the reins as the organization moves closer to implementing the first phases of its new Master Plan, which calls for more gardens and programs for visitors to enjoy.

    Tower Hill Botanic Garden is a nonprofit organization dedicated to connecting plants and people. Its mission is to inspire the use and appreciation of horticulture to improve lives, enrich communities and strengthen commitment to the natural world. The Tower Hill property includes 15 gardens, an historic apple orchard, a restaurant, gift shop, conservatories, library, and art galleries, as well as year-round programs for all ages.

  • Wednesday, March 2, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – Restoring Nature’s Relationships at Home

    If we are to make our residential landscapes truly living ecosystems once again, we need to understand the specialized relationships that make plants and animals interdependent. Who better to take us on an in-depth journey into this fascinating and complex world than Doug Tallamy? On Wednesday, March 2 at 7 pm at the Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway, he will give us detailed examples of these co-evolutionary relationships, showing us how they determine the stability and complexity of local food webs providing birds with insects and berries, dispersing bloodroot seeds, pollinating goldenrod, and much more. This knowledge equips us to knowingly select plants and to construct landscapes that restore nature’s relationships at home.

    Doug Tallamy is a Professor of Entomology and Wildlife Biology at the University of Delaware. His groundbreaking book, Bringing Nature Home, was published in 2007 and continues to have national impact; it was awarded the 2008 Silver Medal by the Garden Writers Association. In 2014, he co-authored The Living Landscape with Rick Darke. Doug’s conservation work and science-based advocacy for native plants has earned him numerous awards. Sponsored by Grow Native Massachusetts – admission free.

  • Wednesday, October 21, 7:00 pm – The Mythology of Plants

    To enter the ancient Roman Garden and experience its plantings is to immerse oneself in the world of myth and the divine, as all plants, both wild and cultivated, were believed to have an intimate connection to the realm of gods and heroes. In this Tower Hill Botanic Garden hour with Annette Giesecke on Wednesday, October 21 at 7 pm, we will visit a selection of ancient Roman gardens, reconstruct their plantings, and learn the tales of lust, blood, and vengeance behind common garden plants such as narcissus and hyacinth, pomegranate and apple, which still grace our orchards and landscapes, and exotica such as frankincense and myrrh.

    Dr. Annette Giesecke is Professor of ancient Greek and Roman Studies at the University of Delaware, and holds her degrees from Harvard (Ph.D.) and UCLA. Her research interests include gardens in the Classical World, Greek and Roman art and architecture, and urbanism and ethics of land use in classical antiquity. For her extensive research on the ‘meaning’ of gardens, Giesecke was the Archaeological Institute of America Jashemski Lecturer for 2013-2014. Her publications include: The Epic City: Urbanism, Utopia, and the Garden in Ancient Greece and Rome and Earth Perfect: Nature, Utopia, and the Garden. Two books recently published include The Mythology of Plants: Botanical Lore from Ancient Greece and Rome and The Good Gardener: Nature, Humanity and the Garden. Free with admission to garden. For more information visit www.towerhillbg.org.

  • Mark Richardson Becomes the New England Wild Flower Society’s Director of Horticulture

    The New England Wild Flower Society welcomes Mark Richardson as its new Director of Horticulture. Mark has an intriguing combination of strategic vision, skills, and experience that impressed everyone who interviewed him. A native of Rhode Island, Mark worked for four years as the assistant manager of a 45-acre nursery while earning his degree in Urban Horticulture at the University of Rhode Island. He then received his Master of Science in Public Horticulture from the Longwood Graduate Program as part of the University of Delaware. New degree in hand, he was asked by Longwood Gardens to run the undergraduate programs, and he spent his five years on staff in roles that encompassed strategic program development, design and development of a new garden area, and even leading the entire Education Department (with its $2.6 million budget) for seven months during the search for a new director. He left Longwood for Brookside Gardens, a botanic garden that is part of the Parks Department of Montgomery County, Maryland, where he served as the manager of adult education programs and frequent horticulture instructor/lecturer/author (and he developed a strategic plan for technology in the garden!). While he has enjoyed his work in education, his passion is plants, and he is excited to be shifting back to horticulture and his roots in New England.

  • Arnold Arboretum Appoints Iris Gestram as Deputy Director

    The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University is pleased to announce that Iris Gestram has been appointed as the new Deputy Director. She will join the organization in May 2012. Iris comes to the Arboretum from the National Association for Olmsted Parks where she served as Executive Director. Previously, Iris headed the Education and Visitor Services Department at historic Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, PA, where she oversaw guest services, education, public programs, public relations, and marketing for the 1,000-acre public garden. Iris also served as Director of Education and Visitor Services at the Olmsted-designed Bok Tower Gardens in Lake Wales, FL, adjacent to Mountain Lake Community with its numerous residential landscapes designed by the Olmsted firm. Iris offers the Arboretum extensive experience in non-profit management, strategic planning, and program development. She holds a master’s degree in plant science from Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany, and a master of science degree in public horticulture administration from the Longwood Graduate Program, University of Delaware. While in the Longwood Program, Iris developed a preservation plan for the historic landscape of Gibraltar in Wilmington, DE, designed by pioneer woman landscape architect Marian Cruger Coffin.

    An active participant nationally in the fields of historic landscape preservation and public horticulture, Iris has served on the Longwood Graduate Program Executive Committee and the Gibraltar Landscape Advisory Committee for Preservation Delaware, Inc. She recently completed a strategic plan for the Smithsonian Horticulture Services Division that initiated a name change to Smithsonian Gardens to better reflect the organization’s stature and operations as a public garden, educational institution, and horticultural display garden.

  • Thursday, June 10, 6:30 pm – An Evening with National Expert Douglas Tallamy

    Douglas Tallamy’s book, Bringing Nature Home, has captured the nation’s attention since it was first released two years ago. Since then, he has been in demand all over the country, speaking to more than 600 different audiences—at venues ranging from the American Society of Landscape Architects National Conference, to the Hummingbird Festival in Mississippi, to the Tyler Arboretum in Pennsylvania, and many more. He also has been featured on National Public Radio’s Science Friday and on other media programs.

    As Chair of the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware, he has done groundbreaking work on the role of insects as intermediaries in the food web, discovering the extent to which exotic plants, even if they are not invasive, host relatively few insects. His work reveals how important it is to restore native plant communities, if we are to reverse the declines in migrating songbirds, butterfly populations, and biodiversity as a whole. Tallamy makes an urgent plea about the importance of native plants to our landscapes, and indeed, to our survival. And he embraces the importance of land stewardship throughout urban and suburban America as critical components of this effort.

    This event, taking place Thursday, June 10,  is co-sponsored by the Cambridge Plant & Garden Club, the Ecological Landscaping Association, and the Friends of the Cambridge Public Library. The talk will begin at 6:30 at the Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway in Cambridge, and will be followed by a reception at 8 pm with book signing. The event is free and open to all. For more information, log on to www.grownativecambridge.org.

    http://www.plantanative.com/images/douglas-tallamy.jpg

  • Wednesday, August 12, 7:30 p.m. – Bringing Nature Home

    Can gardeners make a difference for the future of biodiversity in our communities? Come to the Polly Hill Arboretum in West Tisbury, Massachusetts for the Annual David H. Smith Memorial Lecture on Wednesday, August 12, beginning at 7:30 p.m.

    Yes we can! In this talk based on his book, Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens, Douglas Tallamy, professor and chair of the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware, reveals the importance of the interaction between plants and insects in our own backyards.

    Tallamy will illustrate the unbreakable link between native plant species and native wildlife: when native plants disappear, native insects disappear, impoverishing the food source for birds as well as other animals. Learn how as gardeners we can help sustain this link by planting native species that support our native wildlife population. Book signing after lecture. $10/$5 for PHA members. Begins at 7:30 pm.  Sponsored by SBS: the Grain Store.  For more information contact Karin Stanley at karin@pollyhillarboretum.org, or call her at 508-693-9426.