Boston Flora

Tag: Winter Lecture

  • Saturday, February 20, 2:00 pm – Berkshire Botanical Garden Winter Lecture, Online

    Berkshire Botanical Garden’s 24th annual Winter Lecture, Make Visible, Instill Value and Engage the Public in Our Shared Landscape Heritage will be held online on Saturday, February 20, 2021 featuring Charles Birnbaum, FASLA, FAAR, President and CEO of The Cultural Landscape Foundation, Washington, D.C.

    Drawing heavily on both the work of The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) and many of their collaborators, this lecture will highlight a diversity of resource types throughout the U.S., emphasizing stewardship strategies and opportunities for public engagement in the Berkshires region. What is the foundational knowledge that informs stewardship/interpretation of our shared landscape legacy? How do we assign value and assess significance for our cultural landscape legacy? How can we work (and communicate) holistically across multiple disciplines? How do we make a landscape’s layers of history, (a.k.a. “palimpsest”), at a cultural landscape like Naumkeag, The Mount or Elm Court understood? Then, armed with this foundational knowledge, how can we tell these stories to the broadest possible public?

    Finally, the interface between history/historic preservation and natural systems/ecology in weighing decisions will provide an armature for new ideas and strategies.

    The Winter Lecture Series began in 1997 to bring inspiring and noted speakers to the region to talk about horticulture, landscape design and history, plants and plant exploration, and home gardening. Past speakers have included such luminaries as Marco Polo Stufano, Dan Hinkley, Penelope Hobhouse, Bill Cullina, Fergus Garrett, Debs Goodenough, Dr. Michael Dirr, Ken Druse, Anna Pavord, Thomas Woltz and Margaret Roach. Proceeds from ticket sales support the Garden’s educational efforts. Sponsored by The Red Lion Inn, Stockbridge, MA.

    Online registration for this program is temporarily unavailable. Please call 413 354-8410 to register. 

  • Saturday, January 13, 2:00 pm – The New Shade Garden: Creating a Lush Oasis in the Age of Climate Change

    Berkshire Botanical Garden’s 2018 Annual Winter Lecture will take place Saturday, January 13 at 2 pm at Lenox Memorial High School in Lenox.

    Ken Druse plumbs the depths of shade once again – 20 years after the publication of his best seller, The Natural Shade Garden. This time, it’s to tackle the challenges that have arisen due to our changing climate. The low-stress environment of shade (lower temperatures, fewer water demands, carbon sequestration) is extremely beneficial for our plants, our planet, and us. Ken details new ways of looking at all aspects of the gardening process, in topics such as designing your garden, choosing and planting trees, preparing soil, solving the deer problem, and the vast array of flowers and foliage – all within the challenges of a changing climate, shrinking resources, and new weather patterns. Ken knows that the best defense is to create a cool, verdant retreat – he says, “The garden of the future will be in the shade.”

    Ken Druse is a celebrated lecturer, an award-winning photographer, and an author, who has been called “the guru of natural gardening” by the New York Times. He is best known for his twenty gar­den books published over the last twenty-five years. The American Horticultural Society listed his first large-format work, The Natural Garden (Clarkson Potter, 1988), among the best books of all time. His book, Making More Plants (Stewart Tabori & Chang, 2012) won the award of the year from the prestigious Garden Writers Association. That group gave Ken the 2013 gold medal for photography and the silver for writing. Also in 2013, the Smithsonian Institute announced the acquisition of the Ken Druse Collection of Garden Photography comprising 100,000 images of American gardens and plants.

    The Garden Club of America presented Ken with the Sarah Chapman Francis medal for lifetime achievement in garden communication.

    KenDruse.com is a blog with ten years of archived podcast interviews. He also appears monthly on Margaret Roach’s radio show, A Way to Garden.

    The Winter Lecture Series was begun by the Berkshire Botanical Garden in 1997 and was established to bring inspiring speakers to the region to talk about horticulture, landscape design and history, plants and plant exploration, and home gardening.

    Over the years, the Garden has invited such luminaries as Marco Polo Stufano, Anna Pavord, Joe Eck, Tovah Martin, Dan Hinkley, W. Gary Smith, Penelope Hobhouse, Ken Druse, Gordon Hayward, Lauren Springer and Scott Ogden, Bill Cullina, Fergus Garrett, Debs Goodenough, Margaret Roach, Michael Dirr, Glyn Jones, Louis Benech, Alan Power and Thomas Woltz to share their knowledge of plants, gardening, design and history with an interested audience of gardeners and horticulturists from the region. The series has proven to be a popular event in the region and is held annually in mid-winter. Proceeds from ticket sales are used to further the Garden’s education and horticulture efforts.

    Advance registration is highly recommended, but walk-ins are always welcome, space permitting.  Many thanks to the Winter Lecture sponsor: The Red Lion Inn. Register online at https://berkshirebotanical.org/see-and-do/winter-lecture-series/

  • Saturday, February 11, 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm – Design Philosophy, Plantsmanship, and More

    On Saturday, February 11 from 2 – 4, Thomas Woltz shares his design philosophy, his superb sense of plantsmanship focused on selecting species and varieties that have a connection to the local flora and fauna, and his use of indigenous materials. He will focus on landscapes he has created in the region, private gardens, Hudson’s Olana and Coastal Maine Botanical Garden.

    Woltz is a principal at the landscape architecture firm Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects, where he helped establish the firm’s Conservation Agriculture Studio.  This Berkshire Botanical Garden Winter Lecture will be held at the Monument Mountain Regional High School Auditorium, 600 Stockbridge Road in Great Barrington. BBG members $35, nonmembers $45. To register visit http://www.berkshirebotanical.org/