Boston Flora

Tag: Yale University

  • Tuesday, April 16, 5:00 am – 6:30 am Eastern (but recorded) – History of Gardens: Elizabethan Gardens, Online

    This five week online course from the Gardens Trust will be suitable for anyone curious about gardens and their stories – whether absolute beginners or those with some garden history knowledge. Running from April 14 – May 14, the course aims to help participants recognize important eras, themes and styles in mainly British garden history from the earliest times to today, grasp something of the social, economic, political and international contexts in which gardens have been created and find greater pleasure in visiting historic gardens. You can sign up for whole series or dip into individual talks. There will be opportunities to discuss issues with speakers after each talk, and short reading lists for further exploration.

    Week One on April 16 is Elizabethan Gardens with Jill Francis. From the magnificent gardens of the Queen’s Royal palaces to the fabulous show gardens of her courtiers which acted as a backdrop to elaborate entertainments, to the creation of the gardens of the gentry, to the productive plots of land that would have surrounded all but the smallest of dwellings, Elizabethan gardens were characterized by symmetry, proportion and harmony, in tune with the relative peace and prosperity of the age. This talk will explore a range of gardens right across the social spectrum, looking at how they were created, how they were used and how they reflected the social status of their owners.

    Jill Francis is an early modern historian, specializing in gardens and gardening in the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries. She was awarded her PhD in 2011 by the University of Birmingham where she teaches as a visiting lecturer for both the Centre for Midlands History and Cultures and contributes to the Winterbourne House and Gardens program of activities. She is an occasional lecturer in a variety of Garden History fora and is now specifically involved with delivering the online program for the Gardens Trust. She also works at the Shakespeare Institute Library in Stratford-upon-Avon. Her book, Gardens and Gardening in Early Modern England and Wales, was published by Yale University Press in June 2018.

    For tickets, visit www.eventbrite.co.uk Ticket holders can join each session live or view a recording for up to 2 weeks afterwards. £8 each or all 5 for £35 (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 5 for £26.25) Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days (and again a few hours) prior to the start of the first talk (If you do not receive this link please contact us), and a link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 2 weeks.

  • Thursday, February 8, 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm Eastern – Art and Nature: New Lessons from Russell Page, Online

    Russell Page (1906-1985) was one of the most talented and celebrated landscape architects of the twentieth century, and his memoir, The Education of a Gardener, has become a classic. While Page is remembered for old-fashioned, formal designs, a closer look at his career reveals a more complicated, forward-looking artist who explored preservation, native plant groupings, and the beauty of wildness. With Page as a guide, Professor Caleb Smith asks: What is the role of the designer in shaping a living, natural landscapes? How can gardens become both wild spaces and works of art? The Garden Conservancy will sponsor this online talk on February 8 from 2 pm – 3 pm, live on Zoom. $5 for Garden Conservancy members, $15 general admission. A recording of this webinar will be sent to all registrants a few days after the event. We encourage you to register, even if you cannot attend the live webinar. Register at https://www.gardenconservancy.org/education/education-events/virtual-talk-art-and-nature-new-lessons-from-russell-page

    Caleb Smith is a professor of English and American Studies at Yale University. A scholar of cultural history, focusing on literature, religion, and the built environment, Smith’s books include The Prison and the American Imagination (2009) and Thoreau’s Axe: Distraction and Discipline in American Culture (2023). He has written about culture and the arts for Harper’s, n+1, and Los Angeles Review of Books, and his feature essay on the landscape designer Russell Page appeared in Aeon Magazine in fall 2023.

    For those wishing to learn more about Russell Page, we encourage you to explore his online archive hosted by the Garden Museum in London.

  • Tuesday, October 26, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm – Daniela Bleichmar, Online

    Daniela Bleichmar is Professor of Art History and History at the University of Southern California, where she also serves as the founding director of the Levan Institute for the Humanities and director of the USC Society of Fellows in the Humanities. Her research and teaching address the history of images, objects, and texts in colonial Latin America and early modern Europe, focusing on the histories of science and knowledge production, cultural encounters and exchanges, collecting, and books. Her research has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, the Getty Foundation, the Getty Research Institute, and the ACLS. Her publications include the books Visible Empire: Botanical Expeditions and Visual Culture in the Hispanic Enlightenment (University of Chicago Press, 2012) and Visual Voyages: Images of Latin American Nature from Columbus to Darwin (Yale University Press, 2017).  She is currently writing a cultural biography of the Codex Mendoza, an Indigenous illustrated manuscript produced in early colonial Mexico, which traces the extraordinary life of this transcultural object from Mexico City in the 1540s to London in the 1830s.

    Daniela will speak on October 26 at 6:30 pm in a Harvard Graduate School of Design virtual lecture.

    Click here to register for the Public Lecture with Daniela Bleichmar. The event will also be live streamed to the Harvard GSD YouTube page. Only viewers who are attending the lecture via Zoom will be able to submit questions for the Q+A. If you would like to submit questions for the speaker in advance of the event, please click here. Live captioning will be provided during this event. 

  • Thursday, March 18, 6:00 pm – The Life and Gardens of Beatrix Farrand

    Thursday, March 18, 6:00 pm – The Life and Gardens of Beatrix Farrand

    The compelling film The Life and Gardens of Beatrix Farrand chronicles the life of one of the founders of the American Society of Landscape Architects, Beatrix Farrand (1872-1959) who was the niece of Edith Wharton. Beatrix grew up in the privileged world of the East Coast elite and fought through the challenges of working in a male-dominated profession to successfully design over 200 landscapes during her remarkable 50-year career.


    The narrative is recounted through interviews with Farrand scholar Diana Balmori, landscape historian Judith Tankard (a GCBB member!), and landscape architect Shavaun Towers. Current photographs and footage of more than 50 Farrand-related sites along with archival images from the Beatrix Farrand Archives at the University of California Berkeley are woven together to bring to life Beatrix Farrand’s extraordinary story, reminding us why her awe-inspiring work is still relevant to this day.

    This March 18 Garden Club of the Back Bay Zoom screening followed by a discussion with the director, Karyl Evans. Respond by March 12 by clicking HERE. A Zoom link will be sent a few days before the program.

    Karyl Evans is a six-time Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker. Ms. Evans, owner of Karyl Evans Productions LLC in North Haven, Connecticut has produced more than 50 historical documentary projects over her 30 year career. Karyl is on the National Speakers List for the Garden Club of America and is a Fellow at Yale University. 

  • Wednesday, January 13, 12:00 noon – 1:00 pm – The Challenges of Restoring Urban Native Habitat, Online

    Patches of native habitat in urban and other degraded areas provide important ecological services. A design team developed and tested a series of planting that attempted to restore ecological connections between fragmented and degraded remnant habitats in large, urban areas. Old, urban landfills were planted with woodland patches of various sizes to determine how quickly mutualisms, including seed dispersal and pollination, occurred. Focusing on Brooklyn Bridge Park in New York and Orange County Great Park in California, where complex habitat was integrated with civic needs, Dr. Handel, in this January 13 Ecological Landscape Alliance webinar, will explore how these types of ecological solutions can be applied to many urban designs. The event begins at 12 noon and is free for ELA members, $10 for nonmembers. Register at https://www.ecolandscaping.org/event/the-challenges-of-restoring-urban-native-habitat/

    Dr. Steven Handel is a Distinguished Professor of Ecology and Evolution at Rutgers University where he studies the potential to restore native plant communities, adding sustainable ecological services, biodiversity, and amenities to the landscape. His research explores pollination, seed dispersal, population growth, and problems of urban and heavily degraded lands.
    Previously, Dr. Handel was Director of the Marsh Botanic Garden at Yale University, a Visiting Professor at Stockholm University, and Research Scholar at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He is the Editor of the professional journal Ecological Restoration and an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow of the Ecological Society of America. He was elected an Honorary Member of the American Society of Landscape Architects and also received the Society for Ecological Restoration’s highest research honor, the Theodore M. Sperry Award. Dr. Handel received his BA from Columbia College in Biology and MS and PhD degrees from Cornell University in the Field of Ecology and Evolution.

  • Monday, August 24, 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm – A Virtual Community Conversation: The Power of Public Monuments in a Time of Racial Reckoning

    Black Lives Matter has ignited public conversation about racial equity and justice. Public monuments have become lightning rods as people take issue with the messages some convey about who we are as a nation and a people.

    As calls for the removal of public monuments intensify, what questions should we be asking of ourselves? What impact will today’s decisions have on our national memory, identity, and drive to shape a more just and equitable way forward?

    Join The Friends of the Public Garden on August 24 at 6 pm online for this timely, virtual conversation featuring:

    Renée Ater
    Associate Professor Emerita of American Art at the University of Maryland and Visiting Professor, Brown University.

    David W. Blight
    Sterling Professor of History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University.

    Moderator
    Karen Holmes Ward
    WCVB Director of Public Affairs and Host of “CityLine.”

    Introduction
    Michael Creasey
    Superintendent to General Superintendent
    National Parks of Boston

    Maximum capacity in the Shaw 54th Zoom Room is 500 attendees. Additional guests will be welcome to join us on Facebook Live or via livestream on WCVB/Channel 5’s social media channels.

    Everyone in the Shaw 54th Zoom Room will be entered in a drawing to win a Swag gift from the Partners to Renew the Shaw 54th.

    For more information, and to register, visit www.shaw54thmemorialrestoration.org.

    Sponsored by the Partnership to Renew the Shaw 54th Memorial.

  • Tuesday, February 26, 5:15 pm – 7:30 pm – Our Own Orient: Mecca, California, and Dates

    The Massachusetts Historical Society will hold a free Modern American Society and Culture Seminar on February 26 at 5:15 at its headquarters on Boylston Street, with Eleanor Daly Finnegan of Harvard University and comment by Laura Barraclough of Yale University on the topic of dates. Residents changed the name of Walters, California to Mecca in 1904. They were trying to use the exoticism of the Middle East to sell dates. This paper will focus on Mecca, California and the Indio Date Festival, looking at the complicated ways in which Orientalism has changed in the United States, its relationship to consumerism, and the economic connections made to the Middle East.

    To RSVP: email seminars@masshist.org or call (617) 646-0579.

    Image result for historical postcard Mecca California date trees

  • Friday, November 2, 7:30 pm – American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic

    Family doctor and friend to both Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, and attending doctor at the famous duel, David Hosack is today a shadowy figure; the great achievements of his life forgotten. In this Smith College Chrysanthemum Show Opening Lecture on November 2 at 7:30 in the Campus Center Carroll Room, featuring her book, American Eden, Victoria Johnson rescues Hosack from obscurity and highlights his significant contributions to botany and medicine.

    In 1801, on twenty acres of Manhattan farmland, Hosack founded the first botanical garden in the new nation, amassing a spectacular collection of medicinal, agricultural, and ornamental plants that brought him worldwide praise from the likes of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander von Humboldt. Hosack used his pioneering institution to train the next generation of American doctors and naturalists and to conduct some of the first pharmaceutical research in the United States. Today, his former garden is home to Rockefeller Center.

    Victoria Johnson is an Associate Professor of Urban Policy and Planning at Hunter College in New York City. She earned her undergraduate degree in philosophy from Yale University and her PhD in sociology from Columbia University. Before joining Hunter College, she taught at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor for thirteen years. Her first book, Backstage at the Revolution, a history of the Paris Opera under the Old Regime, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2008. In the 2015-2016 academic year, she was a Fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and in the summer of 2016 she was a Mellon Visiting Scholar at the New York Botanical Garden, where she conducted some of the research for her new book, American Eden. The lecture is free and open to the public, and will be followed by a reception, book signing, and view of the Chrysanthemum Show at the Lyman Plant House. For more information visit www.smith.edu/garden/

    Image result for victoria johnson american eden

  • On the Chesapeake: A Precarious Future of Rising Seas and High Tides

    Maryland’s Dorchester County is ground zero for climate change on Chesapeake Bay, as rising seas claim more and more land. High Tide in Dorchester, a film by Tom Horton, Dave Harp, and Sandy Cannon-Brown, explores the beauty of this liquid landscape and how the bay’s communities are at risk from high tides and erosion.

    Tom Horton has covered the environment for newspapers and magazines since 1972 and has authored several books on Chesapeake Bay. He currently writes for the monthly Bay Journal and teaches at Salisbury University in Maryland. Sandy Cannon-Brown, founder and president of VideoTakes, Inc., is an award-winning environmental filmmaker and teacher. She was an associate director for American University’s Center for Environmental Filmmaking. She lives in St. Michaels, Maryland and focuses her independent films on issues affecting the Chesapeake Bay. A lifelong Marylander, Dave Harp operates a corporate and editorial photography business in Cambridge, Maryland. He served as the staff photographer for the Hagerstown Morning Herald and was the photographer for The Baltimore Sun Magazine for nearly a decade.

    The short film may be viewed in its entirety at http://e360.yale.edu/features/on-the-chesapeake-a-precarious-future-of-rising-seas-and-high-tides

  • Thursday, March 1, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm – A Common Treasury for All: Toward a Deeper History of Environmental Justice

    Thursday, March 1, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm – A Common Treasury for All: Toward a Deeper History of Environmental Justice

    In recent years, environmental justice scholarship has exploded. But virtually every relevant piece of work has understood the history of environmental justice as dating only to the late 20th century. The Harvard University Graduate School of Design Frederick Law Olmsted Lecture on Thursday, March 1 at 6:30 pm in the Gund Hall Piper Auditorium goes back to the 17th century, seeking to trace and analyze the evolution of a positive environmental rights discourse in European and American history. Having established our opposition to environmental injustice, we might want to ask: what exactly are we aiming for, in positive terms? What are the components of environmental justice? Is there any common ground left to stand on? And how might a deeper historical perspective help us answer these questions?

    Speaker Aaron Sachs is Professor of History and American Studies at Cornell University, where he has taught since 2004. In 2006, he published The Humboldt Current: Nineteenth-Century Exploration and the Roots of American Environmentalism (Viking), which won Honorable Mention for the Frederick Jackson Turner Award, given to the best first book in the field of U.S. history by the Organization of American Historians (OAH). In 2013, he published Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition (Yale U. Press), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction. Sachs has also published articles in such journals as Environmental History, Rethinking History, American Quarterly, and History and Theory. In his graduate teaching, he works with students not only in History but also in English, Science and Technology Studies, History of Architecture, City and Regional Planning, Anthropology, and Natural Resources. At Cornell, Sachs is the faculty sponsor of a radical underground organization called Historians Are Writers, which brings together graduate students who believe that academic writing can be moving on a deeply human level. He is also the founder and coordinator of the Cornell Roundtable on Environmental Studies Topics (CREST). Sachs is currently at work on book projects focusing on environmental modernity; environmental justice; and environmental humor. Free and open to the public.

    Anyone requiring accessibility accommodations should contact the events office at (617) 496-2414 or events@gsd.harvard.edu.