Boston Flora

Tag: Vineyard Conservation Society

  • Tuesday, July 18, 1:00 pm – Love Song for the Vineyard Lawn

    The Vineyard Conservation Society (VCS) is the Island’s local environmental organization, dedicated to preserving our land and water through advocacy, education, and legal defense. In this Martha’s Vineyard Garden Club program on July 18, Samantha Look will share the details of the VCS “Vineyard Lawns” initiative. Due to rising concerns for how the health of our ponds, our wildlife, our pets and our own bodies are impacted by lawn care practices, VCS is advocating for a more holistic and ecologically friendly approach to how we maintain our lawns. The collective area dedicated to lawn space in the United States is roughly equivalent to the combined landmass of Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. How we reduce and manage these spaces has significant impacts. Sam will share information about how the seemingly simple act of caring for a lawn intersects strongly with climate change, water quality and personal health, as well as tips and resources for how to apply the Vineyard Lawn approach in your own backyard. 

    Samantha is the newly-appointed Executive Director of VCS. She began working with the organization in 2014 and helped lead plastic pollution reduction efforts, including the island-wide plastic bag ban. She is one of the three member team that maintains the Island Climate Action Network and is the liaison for the Land Use, Natural Resources and Biodiversity section of the MV Climate Action Plan. She helped lead efforts to draft and campaign the house size bylaw that was successfully adopted in West Tisbury in 2022. Sam is an avid gardener, and before working for VCS, was an assistant designer in her mother, Carly Look’s, landscape design office. Understanding the role that home gardeners can play in the protection of biodiversity and the ways in which our yards can act as extensions of our local ecosystems is a central interest to Sam and VCS. 


    FREE to MVGC Members / Open to non-members @ $10.00 pp. The program will take place at 1 pm at The Old Mill in West Tisbury. Oak Bluffs members and VP to provide snacks & refreshments

  • Wednesday, July 26, 5:30 pm – Global Environmental Threats: How Medical Models Can Help Us Understand Them

    On Wednesday, July 26 at 5:30 pm at the Polly Hill Arboretum, 809 State Road in West Tisbury, Dr. Eric Chivian, founder and former director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, will present a talk on recognizing and addressing global environmental threats. His lecture will also touch on Lyme and other tick-borne diseases, a topic of great importance to the Island community. In 1980, Dr. Chivian co-founded the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, recipient of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize. During the past 26 years, he has worked to involve physicians in the United States and abroad in efforts to increase public understanding of the potential human health consequences of global environmental change, and in 2008 was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. Dr. Chivian is the senior editor and author of Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity, named “Best Biology Book of 2008” by Library Journal. He currently directs a new nonprofit, the Program for Preserving the Natural World. The lecture is co-sponsored with the Vineyard Conservation Society. $10 / $5 for PHA and VCS members.