Boston Flora

Tag: University of Wisconsin-Madison

  • Wednesday, December 6, 12:00 noon – 1:00 pm Eastern – From Milkweed Soup to Hmong Sticky Corn: Community Connection through Culturally Relevant Food Gardens, Online

    Explore the vibrant community-driven gardening projects at Olbrich Botanical Gardens in this engaging webinar. A free admission 16-acre public garden in Madison, Wisconsin, Olbrich Botanical Gardens seeks to be a community resource where everyone feels a sense of belonging. Join Olbrich’s Herb Garden horticulturist, Erin Presley, as she spins the tale of two community-based gardening projects at Olbrich. The Indigenous Garden, created with local Ho-Chunk tribal members, offers opportunities to connect, converse, and appreciate the history and majesty of food plants significant in Midwestern First Nations cultures. Meanwhile, the Hmong Garden, which debuted in 2023, honors the traditions and resourcefulness of the 60,000 Hmong residents who migrated to Wisconsin after the Vietnam War. Both gardening projects were led by young women from their respective cultural groups and engaged guests with hands-on activities, bilingual signage, and of course – veggie tastings! Please join The Philadelphia Horticultural Society and Erin Presley to learn more about these uplifting, collaborative gardening projects and principles that could be applied in your own community.

    Erin Presley left her heart at Olbrich Botanical Gardens while interning there in 2005. After earning a bachelor’s degree in Horticulture from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she gardened for nearly a decade in the private sector before returning to Olbrich in 2014, where she manages the Herb, Woodland, and Pond Gardens. Her interests include native woodland plantings, sedges, low-maintenance and drought-tolerant gardening styles, recycling woody debris, and all things related to herbs, vegetables, and cooking. In addition to teaching at OBG, Erin loves talking plants and collaborating with herb societies, master gardeners, and local community organizations. Never shy when it comes to sharing the joy of gardening, she has appeared on the nationally syndicated podcast Cultivating Place and Wisconsin Public Radio’s Garden Talk and is a contributor to the print and online content of Fine Gardening magazine. PHS members free, $20 for nonmembers. Register at https://phsonline.org/events/milkweed-soup

  • Wednesday, April 5, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – How Native Plant Cultivars Affect Pollinators

    On Wednesday, April 5 at 7 pm at the Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway in Cambridge, Grow Native Massachusetts presents a free talk by Annie White, a Landscape Designer and University of Vermont Adjunct Professor.

    Initiatives to address pollinator decline are widespread and native plants are the preferred choice for pollinator habitat restoration. The growing demand for natives, coupled with a longstanding desire of horticulturalists for enhanced bloom, color, or other characteristics, has led to the increased selection and breeding of native cultivars. Although these cultivars are typically marketed for their ecological benefits, until now there have been no scientific studies to support or refute these claims. So are native cultivars as valuable in pollinator habitat gardens as the true native species?

    Annie White will help answer this question by sharing the results of four years of field data. Her research is groundbreaking and remarkable. She is the founder of Nectar Landscape Design Studio and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Vermont. She earned her MS in Landscape Architecture from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her recent PhD in Plant & Soil Science from the University of Vermont was focused on this exceptional new research on native plant cultivars. For more information visit http://grownativemass.org.