Native plants are beautiful, drought-resistant, and beneficial to wildlife, but how do you make them look their best in your home landscape? Learn design principles and native plant selection in this free two-part workshop sponsored by conservation@home, Illinois Extension of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and Forest Preserves of Cook County. Register at https://go.illinois.edu/NativeLandscapes
The New York Botanical Garden’s 23rd Annual Landscape Design Series kicks off October 4 at 6:30 online with Lisa Switkin speaking on Cohabitation. As a senior principal at James Corner Field Operations, Lisa Switkin
has led many of thefirm’s most complex, bold, and transformative projects and has helped to reshape New York
City’s public realm for the past 20 years. Switkin will discuss new forms of public space that foster environmental
health and resilience, social cohesion and well-being, and connection to place. She will examine “cohabitation” and our evolving human relationship with nature, showcasing projects such as the High Line in Manhattan; Domino Park and River Ring in Brooklyn; the transformative master plan for Freshkills Parkland in Staten Island; and Shelby
Farms Park in Memphis. Lisa Switkin, FA AR, ASL A, is the former President of the Landscape Architecture
Foundation and a 2008 Rome Prize recipient at the American Academy in Rome. She earned a Bachelor in Urban Planning from the University of Illinois and a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania. She continues to teach design studios and lecture at universities, symposia, and institutions around the world.
Registration fee for each lecture: $15/$18. Register for the series and receive a discount: 222L AN801AO | $39/$49 For more information, click HERE
Landscapers and gardeners have long known that soil is not simply the stuff that props up plants. But not everyone knows that organic and native plant gardening practices can help mitigate climate change by building and protecting soil health.
In this December 4 Ecological Landscape Alliance free webinar presentation at 1:30 pm, Adrian Ayres Fisher will review the characteristics of healthy soil, how plants and soil life work together to store carbon below ground, and how gardeners and landscapers can make a difference in the fight against climate change.
Adrian Ayres Fisher, a Chicago-area native, is Sustainability Coordinator at Triton College in River Grove, Illinois. Among other duties, she is in charge of two large rain gardens and a small prairie area that is certified as a Monarch Waystation. She is active in Chicago Wilderness initiatives, the West Cook Chapter of Wild Ones, and volunteers with the Plants of Concern rare-plant-monitoring program in Cook County Forest Preserves. She has trained and volunteered as a University of Illinois Extension Master Gardener and was the native plant buyer for an independent nursery. Her backyard pollinator reserve has been included in local garden walks. Ms. Ayres blogs at http://ecologicalgardening.net and is a featured writer at http://Resilience.org.
To register, visit https://www.ecolandscaping.org/event/webinar-backyard-carbon-sequestration-how-you-can-help/
The 2014 Wellesley-Deerfield Symposium on Saturday, March 15, from 9 – 4, will explore visual representations of scientific inquiry produced, collected, distributed or otherwise circulating in New England from the start of the 18th century to the first decades of the 20th century. Scholars from a wide range of disciplines will address a variety of topics from the use of anatomical and biological models in scientific pedagogy to the impact of mechanical inventions for enhancing vision on artistic and scientific practice. Presenters include Daria D’Arienzo, Archival Consultant, Nancy Siegel, Associate Professor of History, Towson University, Ellery Foutch, Terra Foundation Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Adam M. Thomas, Ph.D. Candidate, Art History, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Dennis Carr, Carolyn and Peter Lynch Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture, Art of the Americas, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Lita Tirak, Ph.D. Candidate, American Studies, The College of William and Mary, Peter Benes, Co-Founder, Director, and Editor of the Dubin Seminar for New England Folklife, Naomi Slipp, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of the History of Art & Architecture, Boston University, Catherine Newman Howe, Research Associate, Department of Art, Williams College, and Kathleen M. Raley-Susman, Professor of Biology and Jacob P. Giroud, Jr. Chair of Natural History, Vassar College.
The Symposium will take place in the Collins Cinema, Davis Museum at Wellesley College. Free and open to the public, but seating is limited. For further information call 781-283-2043. Sponsored by the Grace Slack McNeil Program for Studies in American Art at Wellesley College, the Office of Academic Programs at Historic Deerfield, and the Barra Foundation.
Accompanying the Symposium is the Davis Museum exhibit “The Art of Science: Object Lessons at Wellesley College, 1870 – 1940,” in the Robert and Claire Freedman Lober Viewing Alcove, on view through June 22, 2014.
