The Garden Club of the Back Bay

On Tuesday April 6th, please join the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics for a free book club Webinar featuring the “fascinating and frightening,” “cheeky” and “hard-hitting” new book, Slow Death By Rubber Duck.  RSVP now for this free Webinar (which, by the way, is an interactive presentation over the phone and online) on Tuesday, April 6 at 5 p.m. Pacific/8 p.m. Eastern.

Studies show that harmful toxic chemicals are common in household items, including rubber ducks and bubble bath, and that many of these chemicals are also found inside of our bodies. Over a four-day period, Slow Death By Rubber Duck authors Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie used every day household products suspected of causing harm to our ecosystem and to human health. By revealing the pollution load in their bodies before and after the experiment, Rick and Bruce tell a unique inside story of common toxins and body burden.

On the April 6 Webinar, author and Executive Director of Environmental Defense Canada Rick Smith will read from Slow Death By Rubber Duck, and together we’ll discuss toxic chemicals found in products as common as hand soap and what you can do to protect your family and the planet.

All you need to join is a phone, a computer with Internet access and an interest in making the world less toxic. Simply RSVP online, an the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics will e-mail you the call-in info and the Web address so you can see the slides during the reading and discussion.

Can’t make the Webinar on April 6? No worries – the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics is going to record it and make it available through a link on its web site later on. See what Oprah.com and The Washington Post had to say about Slow Death By Rubber Duck.

Taking its inspiration from the Slow Food movement, Slow Landscaping seeks to counteract fast or instant landscaping, by showing the way to more fulfilling, equitable, and sustainable landscape practices. This approach to landscaping human settlements mimics the relationships found in natural ecologies. It seeks to preserve native plants, associated ecosystems and wildlife within an ecoregion. It also supports the use of local materials, reducing waste and carbon outputs and education about plants and their importance in the larger environment. Join two veteran garden designers, Hasso Ewing and Robin Wilkerson, to explore this novel concept and then walk the Garden in the Woods to see how these practices can play out on the landscape.  Sponsored by The New England Wild Flower Society, the class will take place at Garden in the Woods on Wednesday, April 28, from 10 – 1, and members of NEWFS will pay $33, nonmembers $39.  Log on to www.newfs.org to register, or for more information.

The Berkshire Botanical Garden again scores a winning program with this hands on workshop on Saturday, April 24 beginning at 10:30 am.  Learn how to work with willow in both a large and small format.  Willow has been used in British gardens for centuries for both fencing and garden structures.  Participants will learn how to work with willow by constructing a free standing willow tower designed to grow a variety of vining plants.  Topics will include growing willow species, selecting, harvesting, preparing and building simple living willow constructions, and more.  Take home a flower tower and the know-how for making willow projects.  Instructor Wendy Jensen is a basket maker located in Monterey, Massachusetts.  Her baskets are sold nationwide and her popular workshops are offered throughout the country.  She builds and installs garden structures throughout the area, including wattle fencing on the the Housatonic  Riverwalk.  Dress for outdoor work, bring hand pruners and a bagged lunch.  The workshop will cost $50 for BBG members, $55 for non members, and an additional $20 materials fee will be paid to the instructor at the class. To register, log on to www.berkshirebotanical.org.

Learn about how children play with plants, then and now, and what parents can do to instill a sense of wonderment and appreciation of the natural world in them. For centuries children have played outdoors with leaves, roots, flowers, stems and fruits. Only recently have children become “too busy” for unstructured play outdoors. Consider how to sip honeysuckle, make pine needle dolls, flower chains, cattail ducks, and tulip tree leaf baskets.
Jeanné  Chesanow is a Master Gardener, author of Gardening in CT, former anthropology instructor,  Cheshire Land Trust director, and Chairman of the Cheshire CT Historic District Commission. She is the author of Honeysuckle Sipping: The Plant Lore of Childhood , a book devoted to the history and traditions of children’s fascination with plants.

The lecture will be held at the Berkshire Botanical Gardens on Saturday, April 17, from 10:30 – noon, and will cost $16 if you are a member of BBG, and $21 if you are not a member.  For directions, log on to www.berkshirebotanical.org.