The Garden Club of the Back Bay

Judith Sumner, botanist, author, and educator, celebrates women’s many roles in botany, at Garden in the Woods in Framingham on Sunday, February 26 from 10 – 4. Expert practical botanists – as gardeners, cooks, herbalists, and midwives – women have also become recognized professional botanists contributing significantly to plant science through exploration, research, and publication. Beginning with colonial America and the work of Jane Colden, explore the role of women in botanical studies and documentation. Recognize the role of women in protecting biodiversity (including the origins of the New England Wild Flower Society) and the work of Beatrix Farrand and others in ecology and landscape design.  In addition to lecture, slides, and discussion, peruse primary source materials from the Society library and participate in hands-on activities that commemorate the diverse roles of women in botany. This lecture is offered in collaboration with The Wellesley College Friends of Horticulture. Fee for members of either organization is $72 per person, and for non-members, $87. Register on line at www.newfs.org, or at www.wellesley.edu/WCFH.

The 2012 Esther Steinberg Memorial Architecture Lecture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston will take place Wednesday, March 14, beginning at 7 pm in the Remis Auditorium at the MFA.  Robert Hammond, co-founder and executive director, Friends of the High Line, will share the story of how the High Line, a new public park atop an elevated freight rail structure in Manhattan, became an innovative urban reclamation project.  Hammond and his co-founder collaborated with neighbors, elected officials, artists, local business owners, and leaders in horticulture and landscape architecture, to create a park celebrated as a model for creatively designed, socially vibrant, ecologically sound public space.  A book signing follows.  This is a ticketed event ($15 MFA members, $18 others) and tickets may be reserved by calling 1-800-440-6975, going in person to the Remis Auditorium box office at the Museum, or visiting www.mfa.org.  Because this event will undoubtedly sell out, we recommend buying tickets early.

Instructive examples of gardens full of native plants are hard to find. On Wednesday, February 1, from 7 – 8:30 at The Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway, landscape architect and author Carolyn Summers fills that void with a plethora of images and commentary to fire our imaginations. She reviews the science behind the essential life support function of indigenous plants, takes us on a journey through a variety of formal gardens and more “naturalistic” landscapes, and illustrates the effective use of our northeastern native flora so that we can better visualize their full design potential. Ms. Summers is an adjunct professor at Westchester Community College and has been an effective advocate for native plants in the urban landscapes of New York City.  The lecture is free. For more information, call 617-354-0502.

Plan now for an important horticultural lecture in February. Noted author, educator and researcher Michael Dirr, Ph.D. will present The World According to Dirr: Trees and Shrubs for the 21st Century at the Berkshire Botanical Garden’s 2012 Annual Winter Lecture on Saturday, February 18, beginning at 2 pm.

Dirr’s illustrated lecture will weave a tapestry rich in topics befitting an American icon of horticulture, complete with his signature humor and style. The endearing noble trees, trends in woody plants and the back story of the landscape industry, including plant breeding and development, are among the topics he will present.

Dr. Dirr’s influence in horticulture is far reaching. A prolific author and exceptional hybridizer, he has dedicated his life to educating the public about the importance and use of woody plants in the landscape. In addition to his many well-known books, his newly published Dirr’s Encyclopedia of Trees and Shrubs continues to set the gold standard for horticultural reference. Known alternately as the modern father of woody plants and the hydrangea guru, his contributions to the world of horticulture are remarkable.

Following the lecture, all are invited to a reception and book signing of Dirr’s Encyclopedia of Trees and Shrubs and the Manual of Woody Landscape Plants. Call the Garden today to reserve your advance copies!

Lecture generously sponsored by Hunter Boot.  (Snow date: Sunday, February 19)  The event will take place at Monument Mountain Regional High School, Route 7 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.  BBG member price $35, nonmembers $42, group rates available.  Call 413-298-3926 for more information, or email rparow@berkshirebotanical.org.

Join historian Robert E. Guarino on a nostalgic journey down a highway of history when he discusses his new book Beacon Street: Its Buildings & Residents, at the Boston Public Library’s Rabb Lecture Hall, 700 Boylston Street, on Thursday, January 26 at 2 pm. The grand mansions and the elegant attached row houses of Beacon Street are the homes of Boston’s elite and a backdrop for the city’s long history. The iconic street is crowned with Charles Bulfinch’s magnificent 1798 Massachusetts Statehouse overlooking the legendary Boston Common, where the British occupiers trained and cows once roamed freely. Historian Robert E. Guarino deftly narrates the development of the street, from its expansion as land from the top of Mount Vernon extended its length to Horace Gray’s efforts in 1837 to found the Public Garden. Join Guarino as he takes a fascinating and nostalgic journey down the historic and storied highway of Beacon Street.  Mr. Guarino, currently a resident of Vermont, is a trustee of the Vermont Historical Society.

Renowned astronomer Ray Jayawardhana, University of Toronto and current Radcliffe Institute fellow, will give a lively talk on cutting-edge science of today’s planet hunters, the prospects for discovering alien life, and the debate and controversies at the forefront of extrasolar-planet research, at the Harvard Museum of Natural History on Wednesday, January 18, beginning at 6 pm.  Jayawardhana will also discuss his recent travels to the frigid ice of Antarctica where he went to look for meteorites—and found them. Following the talk, he will sign copies of his recent book, Strange New Worlds. Free and open to the public, Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street. Free parking available in the 52 Oxford Street garage.  For directions, visit www.hmnh.harvard.edu.

The December meeting of the Cambridge Entomological Club will be held Tuesday, December 13, from 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm and will feature Tom Murray, author of a new field guide entitled Insects of New England and New York, who will speak on Amateur Entomologists and Digital Photography.  CEC meetings are held the second Tuesday of the month from October through May. The evening schedule typically includes an informal dinner (6:15 to 7:15 PM) followed by our formal meeting (7:30 – 9:00 PM) in MCZ 101, 26 Oxford Street, Harvard University. The latter begins with club business and is followed by a 50 minute entomology related presentation. Membership is open to amateur and professional entomologists.  For more information, email CEC President Jessica Walden-Gray at jessisoutside@gmail.com.

Eudora Welty’s Mississippi garden ran riot with the camellias, roses, and daylilies that she tended as zealously as her prose. The novelist, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for The Optimist’s Daughter, cultivated characters for her stories along with the flowers that she grew in her modest Jackson garden.

A fine new book by Susan Haltom and Jane Roy Brown looks at Welty’s enduring relationship with her garden, to which she turned as a respite from her travels and the pressures of making a living as a writer. The garden and house where Eudora Welty (1909-2001) lived and wrote is now a museum, and the garden has been restored to its heyday in the 1920s through the ’40s.

Welty’s letters, published for the first time in this book, reveal witty and telling observations about not only gardening, but also fellow gardeners. She wrote to a friend, “The delphiniums I planted in my ignorance have all bloomed like everything and are getting ready to bloom for the second time and Mother says the ladies of the garden club come over each day to worship and grit their teeth.”

On Wednesday, December 7, from 3 – 5, come hear Jane Roy Brown speak about Miss Welty’s garden and how its formation also offers a compelling look at the broader social trends of the time, including the flourishing of womens civic involvement through garden clubs and the development of streetcar suburbs. Brown serves as director of educational outreach at the Library of American Landscape History. Her writing has appeared in the Boston Globe as well as in national publications.

Admission to the book talk is free but an RSVP is requested to mhorn@masshort.org. The event is co-sponsored by COGdesign (www.cogdesign.org) and the Massachusetts Horticultural Society (www.masshort.org).  The event takes place at the Massachusetts Horticultural Society at Elm Bank, 900 Washington Street in Wellesley.

The New England Wild Flower Society hosts a lecture and book signing with Arthur Haines at Garden in the Woods on Saturday, December 3, from 1:30 – 3:30.  Illustrators Elizabeth Farnsworth and Gordon Morrison will also attend. New England Wild Flower Society is thrilled to announce that after nine years of field, herbarium, and literature study Flora Novae Angliae, a Manual for the Identification of Native and Naturalized Higher Vascular Plants of New England, has been published by Yale University Press.

This 1,008 page book is the definitive publication for the study and identification of the plants of New England. Join the author for a discussion of the underlying philosophies, a look at some of the research and novel finds on which the manual was written, and discussion of the many collaborators (and their exciting finds) who helped make the book possible. The lecture will present fascinating botanical information pertinent to each state in New England.

This partly illustrated work presents the latest in nomenclatural, taxonomic, and distribution information for New England’s tracheophytes (i.e., higher vascular plants). The manual makes a departure from its predecessors in several respects. First, well-supported information was incorporated into the text, regardless of how unpopular it may have been viewed. Second, many thousands of herbarium specimens were reviewed to verify not only recent collections but the early ones as well. Third, identification keys were written, where possible, with focus on characteristics that do not display substantial phenotypic (i.e., environmental) variation. And fourth, all hybrid plants that could be verified as part of the New England flora were included (rather than just the well-known or named ones). These underlying philosophies have contributed to building a floristic manual with many substantial changes from earlier works covering the region.

Arthur Haines stated, “The initial view of this manual may be one of greater complexity, but the goal was simply to write a manual that reflected, as accurately as plant taxonomists understood, our best understanding of the species growing on the New England landscape.”  After the lecture, the author will be joined by the two illustrators, Elizabeth Farnsworth and Gordon Morrison, for a book signing in the Garden Shop at Garden in the Woods.  Please RSVP if you plan to attend the December 3 lecture by calling the registrar at 508-877-7630, ext 3303.

With an illustrated lecture on Thursday, November 17, at 10:00 a. m., Pat Leuchtman will take us on a virtual stroll to see her country garden. The talk is part of the Mass Hort Library’s Author Series, and it is free and open to the public. The author of the new book, The Roses at the End of the Road, began planting her Rose Walk 30 years ago and will tell us about romantic old fashioned roses as well as hardy and disease resistant roses. For 30 years, she has written a column for The Recorder in Greenfield, Massachusetts, and other newspapers, which include The New York Times, the Boston Globe, and the Burlington Free Press. She has also written for magazines, including Horticulture and Organic Gardening. Her book is made up of lively essays about life among the roses and with the commonweeder.com blog. Books will be available for purchase.  Pre-registration is desirable but not required. To tell us that you are coming, please call Librarian Maureen Horn at 617-933-4912 or email her at mhorn@masshort.org.

Join holistic orchardist Michael Phillips at the Berkshire Botanical Garden on Saturday, November 19, from 1 – 4,  for an intensive program on growing all kinds of fruit in the back yard. Successfully growing fruit for your family becomes straightforward when you narrow the big picture down to getting the basics right. Harvesting sunlight through smart pruning is what renews fruit buds. Fungal disease becomes manageable with wise variety choices and enhanced soil biology. Even major insect challenges can be resolved safely when you perceive who, what, and when. All sorts of fruits—from apples and pears to peaches and cherries and onward to berries—make for a diverse home orchard planting. Confidence to integrate tree fruits into your landscape begins with embracing biodiversity and knowing how to steward system health. This program will be useful for both backyard growers as well as small-market fruit growers with a focus on growing healthy organic fruit. Michael’s new book The Holistic Orchard, published by Chelsea Green Publishing, will be hot off the press and available for sale at the lecture.

Michael Phillips is known across the country for helping people grow healthy apples and understand the healing virtues of plant medicines. Information about the “community orchard movement” he helped found is available at www.GrowOrganicApples.com and provides a full immersion into the holistic approach to orcharding. His Lost Nation Orchard has two acres of trees and supplies local families with many varieties of organic apples. Michael was honored by Slow Food USA to receive the first Betsy Lydon Ark Award for his work promoting healthy ways to grow fruit.  The fee to attend is $45, and you may register online at www.berkshirebotanical.org.

In his newest book, Relics, world-renowned zoologist Piotr Naskrecki travels the globe to photograph “relics,” creatures or habitats that, while acted upon by evolution, remain remarkably similar to their earliest manifestations in the fossil record. From horseshoe crabs of the Atlantic to orchids of New Guinea, Naskrecki has created a time-lapse tour of life that has persisted nearly untouched for hundreds of millions of years.  This lecture and booksigning will be held on Wednesday, November 30, beginning at 6 pm. Free and open to the public, Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street.

Science writer/NPR commentator Richard Conniff tells the story of the bold and colorful adventurers who risked death to discover strange life-forms in the farthest corners of planet Earth. The lecture will take place Sunday, November 20, beginning at 4 pm at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, 26 Oxford Street in Cambridge.  Mr. Conniff will sign copies of his most recent book,  The Species Seekers: Heroes, Fools, and the Mad Pursuit of Life on Earth.

Learn about daredevil species seekers, ranging from the father of modern taxonomy, Carl Linneaus, and Thomas Jefferson, who laid out mastodon bones on the White House floor, to the Harvard anatomist who helped introduce the world to the most spectacular species discovery of the nineteenth century. For more information, call 617-495-3045, or visit www.hmnh.harvard.edu.

Trinity Church, Copley Square, Boston, and the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University team up once again as part of their Garden and Spirit: The Power of Landscapes to Transform series on Tuesday, November 29, from 7 – 8:30, hosting Wade Graham, designer, historian, and Adjunct Professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine University. In his book, American Eden, Wade Graham argues that how we design and garden shows more than simply how green are our thumbs. Gardens reveal information about who we are as a nation—where we have come from, and where we might be headed. From ethics to aesthetics, from politics to political correctness, Graham will speak about the history of gardening in America and how it has shaped and been shaped by daily life. The lecture is entitled American Eden: What Our Gardens Tell Us About Who We Are.  The event will take place at Trinity Church, and the fee is $15 for Arboretum members, $20 for non-members.  You may register online at  www.my.arboretum.harvard.edu.

On Monday, November 14, beginning at 4:30 pm at the Wellesley College Botanic Garden, John Varriano will examine two aspects of the cultural history of wine – its central role in theories of medicine from ancient Greece to the present and its changing meaning over the ages in art and meditations on the afterlife. Recently retired from the faculty of Mount Holyoke College where he taught courses in European art and architecture since 1970, John Varriano’s special interest is the art and architecture of seventeenth century Rome. He is also the author of over three dozen specialized studies in his field including several books, the most recent being Wine: A Cultural History.  This is a free program, and you may call 781-283-3094 for more details.

David Gessner eats, drinks, and talks his way into the heart of Gulf country, exploring the region’s birds, sea life, and ecosystems with the oceanographers, activists, and subsistence fishermen who call it home. Part absurdist travelogue, part manifesto, The Tarball Chronicles is overall a love song for the Gulf that asks one simple question: how much are we willing to sacrifice to keep living the way we do? Hear him speak at Porter Square Books, 25 White Street in Cambridge on Monday, October 24, beginning at 7 pm.

Gessner has written eight books and numerous essays about the wild world. He has been redefining what it means to write about nature for the last twenty years. He is the winner of a John Burroughs Award and has been selected for publication in The Best American Nonrequired Reading. He founded the journal Ecotone and also published My Green Manifesto: Down the Charles River in Pursuit of a New Environmentalism in 2011. This event is free and open to the public, but please rsvp to ellen@portersquarebooks.com, or call 617-491-2220.

In  her book Wicked Bugs, a darkly comical look at the sinister side of man’s relationship with the natural world, author Amy Stewart tracks down more than 100 of the worst entomological foes – creatures that infest, infect, and generally wreak havoc on human affairs. Ms. Stewart is the bestselling author of five books on the perils and pleasures of the natural world, including Wicked Plants. Her essays and commentaries have appeared on NPR, in the New York Times, and in Fine Gardening, where she is a contributing editor. Stewart is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and the American Horticultural Society’s 2010 Book Award. She lives in Eureka, California, where she and her husband own an antiquarian bookstore.  Amy Stewart will make an appearance at Porter Square Books in the Porter Square Shopping Center, 25 White Street, Cambridge, this Friday, October 21, beginning at 7 pm.  If you plan to attend this free event, call 617-491-2220, or email ellen@portersquarebooks.com.

The True North Author Series, a joint presentation of the Library of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society and North Hill, opens Tuesday, October 18 at 10 am  with Justin Martin, the author of Genius of Place: The Life of Frederick Law Olmsted, a biography of the pioneering landscape architect of Central Park and 50 other green spaces around the United States. There will be no charge to attend the event, which will be held in the Hunnewell Carriage House at Elm Bank.  Martin, a former staff writer at Fortune magazine, is the author of two previous biographies, Greenspan: The Man Behind Money and Nader: Crusader, Spoiler, Icon. Martin’s bestselling Greenspan biography was chosen as a notable book by the New York Times Book Review.  To enroll and for more information, please contact North Hill Courses & Events at 781-433-6400.

KitchenWares, 215 Newbury Street in Boston, is pleased to have local New England cookbook author Terry Walters back on Thursday, October 13, from 4 – 6, for a second book signing / cooking demo based on her popular books – Clean Start and Clean Food. For this event, Terry will focus her cooking demo on our CSA seasonal produce from Sweet Georgia P’s. Mark Knoblauch writes: “Walters advocates a fully vegan regimen as key to good health. For her, clean food means less processed food, more whole grains, no dairy products, and certainly no meat, but she insists that food offer plenty of appealing, assertive flavors if it is to satisfy consumers. She believes in the healthy virtues of thorough chewing, disciplined eating, and balanced living. These recipes will not surprise those comfortable in a tofu and brown-rice environment, but she contributes some useful new ideas for such dishes as Caesar salad and surprisingly rich chocolate desserts. Some of Walters’ ingredients may be difficult to obtain outside big-city organic markets, but in this age of Internet shopping, online sources are always an option. In a unique approach to book production, each of the four seasons into which the cookbook is divided appears on a different color of paper stock.”

The American Institute of Wine and Food, with Newbury College, 129 Fisher Avenue in Brookline, will host a program on Tuesday, October 18, from 6:30 – 8:30 featuring one of the Garden Club of the Back Bay’s favorite speakers. Russ Cohen, professional environmentalist and wild food enthusiast, will be giving a talk, with slides, called “Wild Edibles I Have Known (and Eaten)”. He will also be selling his cookbooks, the proceeds of which go to one of the organizations that he supports. Sometime during the evening, snacks made from the recipes in his book will be passed. These will be prepared by Guida Ponte, a chef at Verrill Farm in Concord, assisted by some of the Newbury culinary students. The cost is $25, and the event will take place in Mitton Hall. You may purchase tickets by sending a check made out to AIWF Boston, c/o Jerry Dreher, 1284 Beacon Street, #701, Brookline, MA 02446, or on line at http://www.aiwf.org/boston/chapter_calendar/event.html?calendarevent_id=3266&date=2011-10-18&.