The Garden Club of the Back Bay

Are you an avid walker/runner/biker who would like to see more of the city’s green spaces connected? Would you like to find a more attractive and easier access route to the Charles River? Are you new to the Back Bay and want to get more involved in your community?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you might be the perfect candidate to join a working group that will provide feedback to the design team developing a park path link from Beacon Street to the Harvard Bridge and Charles River. This is Phase 1 of the Charlesgate Greenway.

To volunteer and/or for further information, contact Herb Nolan at: 781-431-1440, or e-mail: herbnolan@solomonfund.org

The first public meeting to solicit input from potential users of the path is scheduled for Monday, May 21 from 6-8 p.m. at the Mass. Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street. The meeting will focus on context and site analysis and will include a site walk–a walk and talk!

Leadership from every major national plant society has been invited to a summit meeting in Shreveport on May 25-26. The meeting is hosted by the American Rose Society and is intended to gather leaders from similar plant organizations in order to share common challenges and solutions. The theme of the meeting is “Relevance: National Plant Societies in the 21st Century.”

Both the American Camellia Society and the American Horticultural Society are taking major roles in the meeting through planning and participation. We expect members of the National Garden Clubs, American Orchid Society, American Dahlia Society, American Daylily (Hemerocallis) Society, and others to join us. ARS Executive Director Jeff Ware states, “I hope this meeting proves to be so valuable to our participants that it becomes an annual event hosted at the headquarters of various national groups on a rotating basis.”

The event begins with a Get Acquainted Reception sponsored and hosted by the American Horticultural Society on Friday evening, May 25, at 7:00 p.m. at the Gardens of the American Rose Center. The Summit itself will take place on Saturday, May 26, beginning at 9:00 a.m. at Klima Rose Hall: The American Rose Society Education and Visitor Center. This meeting will provide opportunities for everyone to share ideas and best practices around 3 major topics: membership, volunteerism, technology and social media. Harry Rissetto, Chairman of the Board for the American Horticultural Society, will present the keynote address on Saturday, “Social Capital – Challenges for Plant and Flower Clubs and Societies.” A luncheon will be provided.

There is no fee to attend the National Plant Society Summit. However we ask that you RSVP to Jeff Ware, execdirector@ars-hq.org. We hope to make this meeting financially accessible for all groups, both large and small. The event is held at Courtyard Marriott at the Shreveport Airport. Call the hotel directly at 318-686-0102 for reservations. Ask for the American Rose Society Center rate of $84.

The Boston Parks and Recreation Department and The Friends of Copley Square will co-host a public information meeting from 6 – 8 on Wednesday, May 9 in the Rabb Lecture Hall in the Boston Public Library, Central Branch, in Copley Square, to discuss the scheduled removal of 20 diseased London plane trees in Copley Square.  The trees have canker stain fungal infection.  The Parks Department staff will be on hand to present details about the tree removal and the remedies planned for the site, including planting of replacement trees and enhanced tree care needed for the park’s remaining trees. All are invited to attend. For additional questions or information, visit www.friendsofcopleysquare.org.  Picture from www.universalhub.com.

The yearly Perennial Plant Symposium is the only annual symposium devoted entirely to perennials. It is also the oldest with the first symposium presented in 1983. The location changes each year. Enjoy learning about and observing perennials, gardens, and production facilities all across the USA and Canada. This summer the annual meeting of the Perennial Plant Association takes place in Boston, Massachusetts. The conference includes optional tours before and after the symposium, trips to public and private gardens, a trade show, and retail, grower, or designer’s talks and tours. Selected highlights include:

July 4th: Optional walking horticultural tour of Boston, historical tour by bus of Boston, Lexington and Concord,  and fireworks cruise

July 5th: Public Day Seminar Speakers

Julie Merservy:  Home Outside – Creating the Landscape You Love

Debra Knape: Good Enough To Eat – Designing Edible Landscapes

David Culp:  Best of Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow

Adrian Bloom:   Bloom’s Best Perennials and Grasses

Roger Swain: Ace of Shovels: Finding the Perfect Garden Tool

Laura Deeter: Bringing Your Perennials Up Right

July 6th: Eleven fascinating presentations featuring growers, landscape designers, and retailers, plus Keynote by Julie Merservy:  Hearing the Stream With Open Eyes – The Evolution of a Designer

July 7th: Morning Bench to Border Tours of Cavicchio Greenhouses, Stonegate Gardens, Russell’s Garden Center, Garden in the Woods, Weston Nursery, and Tower Hill Botanic Garden.

Afternoon Divine by Design Garden Tours of four private gardens, Elm Bank (Massachusetts Horticultural Society), Weston Nursery, and Tower Hill Botanic Garden.

July 8th – Trade Show and Sixteen Lectures on topics ranging from Biological Controls to New and Upcoming Coreopsis Cultivars to Container Gardening.

July 9 – Optional Tour to garden centers and Newport gardens

July 10 – Option Tour:  Journey to the Edge!  The Maine Event.  Visit five wholesale and retail growers in New Hampshire and Maine, and experience a lobster bake at the Coastal Maine Botanic Garden.

Lectures, reception and the trade show will take place at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel, 50 Park Plaza at Arlington Street. The room rate is: $129 for Single or $129 for Double.  Non Perennial Plant Association members are invited to register for the entire conference at non-member rates, or just for the public day on July 5th.  Registration information will be available at www.perennialplant.org.  This is a fabulous opportunity for our Boston area gardening community to participate in one of the nation’s premier horticultural events.

The Garden Club Federation of Massachusetts will hold its Annual Meeting on Tuesday, June 5 at the Holiday Inn, Mansfield, 31 Hampshire Street, Mansfield, Massachusetts.  The day will begin with registration and coffee from 7:30 am.  Registrants may select one workshop to attend from 8:15 – 9, either How to Take Minutes and Write Reports, taught by Nancy Donaldson, GCFM Parliamentarian pro tem, or How to Develop Your Club’s Web Site and Service It, instructor to be announced.  At 10:15 the Acton Garden Club will present Problems with Lyme Disease, and at 10:30, Nancy Brennan, Executive Director of the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy, will speak.  President’s Certificates and Club Awards will be announced at 11:30 am, followed by a social hour and boutique shopping.  Lunch will be served at 12:45, and the 2012 Life Members will be introduced.  At 2 pm, there will be a floral design program, with four GCFM floral designers honoring four major visionaries of New England’s cultural landscapes – Frederick Law Olmsted, Fletcher Steele, Charles Eliot, and Beatrix Farrand.  Following a registration report, the meeting will adjourn.   Below, Heidi Kost-Gross is presented the Landscape Design Council Award for Excellence by Joan Butler (right) at the 2010 meeting.

To register (please mail registration before May 29), send your name, address, telephone, email, and Club affiliation with a check for $55 ($50 if you do not intend to attend the workshop)  made payable to GCFM,Inc. to Linda Yuele, 38 Nevins Road, Methuen, MA 01844.  Please indicate also your luncheon menu choice preference of chicken marsala, grilled salmon, London broil, or eggplant parmesan.  Any questions may be sent by email to denlinyuele@comcast.net.

Please join The Massachusetts Watershed Coalition on April 12th at Worcester State University for an important stormwater conference, Community Stormwater Solutions: Keeping Streams & Lakes Healthy. This year’s conference will feature practical guidance for municipal boards, community groups, businesses and homeowners.  The keynote speaker will be Curt Spalding, EPA Region 1 Administrator, on the topic Soak Up the Rain Campaign. Featured workshops: “growing greener”, aquatic ecosystems, low-cost runoff remedies, erosion control, porous paving, BMP ratings and more. Expert speakers will offer practical guidance for municipal officials, town planners, lake and pond groups, watershed organizations, highway departments, home builders, engineers and concerned citizens. Visit www.commonwaters.org/events or call 978-534-0379.

The American Horticultural Society celebrates 20 years of promoting garden-based teaching and learning at the National Children & Youth Garden Symposium, taking place Thursday, July 19 through Saturday, July 21 at the University of Maryland in College Park.  Registration opens this month,  April, 2012.  For more information, email youthprograms@ahs.org, or call 703-768-5700, x 137.

The Boston Committee of The Garden Club of America invites members of its constituent fourteen clubs to its Spring Meeting and Luncheon on Thursday, April 26, beginning with registration at 10:30 am at The Country Club, 191 Clyde Street in Brookline. The featured speaker will be Steve Curwood.

In 1970, as a writer for the Boston Phoenix just out of Harvard University, Steve broke the story that Polaroid’s instant photo system was key to apartheid pass system in South Africa. Steve moved on to the Boston Globe as an investigative reporter and columnist and shared the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service as part of the Boston Globe’s education team.  His production credits in public broadcasting include reporter and host for NPR’s Weekend All Things Considered, host of NPR’s World of Opera, producer for the PBS series The Advocates with Mike Dukakis, and creator, host and executive producer of Living on Earth, the prize-winning weekly environmental radio program heard for more than 20 years on public radio stations  and distributed by Public Radio International (PRI) since 2006.

The cost of the lecture and luncheon is $50, lecture only $25. Please make your check payable to The Boston Committee of the GCA and mail to Jensie Shipley, 40 Dunster Road, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts 02467 before April 19, 2012, and note on the memo portion of your check your Garden Club affiliation. All reservations will be held at the door. Garden Club of the Back Bay members will receive written invitations and a car pool notice in the mail.

Tufts Professor Frances Chew will be the featured speaker at the Cambridge Entomological Club’s April meeting on Tuesday, April 10, from 7:30 – 9.  She will talk about the Consequences of Multiple Species Invasions: A Native Butterfly Confronts Exotic Plants and Parasitoids.   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.  Photo from www.lepcurious.blogspot.com.

The Andover Garden Club will hold a meeting, open to the public, on Tuesday, April 3, beginning at 10 am at South Church, 41 Central Street in Andover.  A $5 suggested donation is requested. Garden designer, writer, and lecturer Donna Lane, speaking on Creating Lush Containers, will demonstrate how to create lush container gardens that will be the envy of the neighborhood. She will discuss color, texture, form, mass, and scale; how to select plants; the best soil for planters; which plants are best suited to containers; professional secrets; and use of accessories.

Founded in 1927, the Andover Garden Club is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization that encourages the study and practice of horticulture, landscape design, and floral design; aids in the beautification of the town of Andover; and helps protect and conserve natural resources. For more information telephone 978-475-7119.

How big is agriculture in Massachusetts?  Approximately $489 million dollars of revenue is generated annually, and Commonwealth farmers are responsible for maintaining almost 520,000 acres of open space.  Please join the Massachusetts State Grange on Tuesday, April 3, when farmers and agriculture officials from across the Bay State come together to visit their legislators to discuss issues and legislation which affects their farms and local communities.  The day’s events include a program of speakers, presentations of “Agriculture Day” awards, informational exhibits and a hotly anticipated reception featuring Massachusetts’ farm and specialty food products.  You are invited to help recognize Massachusetts’ agriculture specialists and learn more about their efforts to maintain the long-term viability of Massachusetts agriculture.  Registration will take place at Bartlett Hall at the State House from 9:30 – 11:30 am.  At 10 am, there will be a Farmer Orientation on Agricultural Issues in Nurses Hall, and visits with legislators from 10 – 11:15.  At noon, the Taste of Massachusetts reception will take place in the Great Hall & Grand Staircase area.  For more information call the Massachusetts Farm Bureau Federation at 508-481-4766, or email info@mfbf.net.

Vital Spaces, Vibrant Lives: A New Vision for Symphony Park is a panel discussion about the collaborative process of developing a design concept for Symphony Park in the East Fenway neighborhood of Boston. To be held Thursday, March 29 from 5:30 – 7:30 pm, it is one of a series of special events in 2012 organized by COGdesign to celebrate 15 years of providing pro bono landscape design services to community groups throughout greater Boston. The free program (donations appreciated) will take place at Church Park Apartments Penthouse, 221 Massachusetts Avenue (across from the Christian Science Center.) For more information, call 781-642-6662, or email info@cogdesign.org.

See the art of Ikebana, Japanese floral design, utilizing spring plant materials. Ikebana Instructor of the Sogetsu School Kaye Vosburgh will explain the technique to both novice and experienced students in this linear form of flower arranging. This Garden Club of the Back Bay meeting will be held at The College Club, 44 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, on Wednesday, April 4, beginning at 10 am, and will be followed by an optional lunch. Members will receive written notice of the program. Non-members may contact info@gardenclubbackbay.org if interested in attending.

Ms. Vosburgh, a member of The Garden Club of the Back Bay as well as Noannet Garden Club, has studied, exhibited and taught in Massachusetts, New York, Japan and Ecuador. She is also a Master Judge in the Federated Garden Clubs and a First Grade Ikebana Teacher in the Sogetsu School. A frequent speaker at flower shows and with garden clubs, Kaye and has earned numerous awards for her designs including the two top awards in the 2008 Boston Flower Show’s Molten Lava category.

The Muddy River Maintenance and Management Oversight Committee (the “MMOC”) consists of Secretary-appointed citizen members of the original Emerald Necklace Citizens Advisory Committee (the “ENCAC”) appointed to represent the public to protect the significant investment of over $90 million and ensure that improvements are properly maintained for many years. Other members are various organizations representing the myriad of cultural, educational and medical institutions in the area, the City of Boston and the Town of Brookline (the “Proponents”), and DCR. Other members of the MMOC come from Boards and Commissions and organizations with related interests. In effect, MMOC is a separate entity serving as ombudsman for the public, with frequent meetings and site visits to oversee and guide the performance of the Proponents.  The MMOC will hold its Annual Meeting on Monday, March 19 at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, which is an awfully good reason to go.  RSVP to brilliant@fenwayculture.org.  Photo courtesy National Park Service, Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site.

A community meeting will take place Monday, March 19, from 6 – 8, at the William Devine Golf Course Club House, 1 Circuit Drive, off Columbia Road entrance, Boston, to discuss proposed Renovations for Franklin Park: Entrances, Pathways and Cross Country Course. This meeting will be the first in a series of public forums. Free.

A two-day symposium at Harvard University, 48 Quincy Street, Piper Auditorium, Gund Hall in Cambridge (below), exploring the future of infrastructure and urbanization beyond the dogma of civil engineering and transportation planning, is scheduled to take place Friday, March 23 and Saturday, March 24. Presentations and panel discussions focus on the growing agency of ecology to propose responsive strategies that address the predominant challenges facing urban economies today including climate dynamics, carbon and nitrogen accumulation, population mobilities, and resource economies.

Urban life is sustained by technological infrastructure. Highways, harbors, airports, power lines, landfills and mines largely figure as the dominant effigies of contemporary urbanization. The sheer size of these elements renders their understanding as a single system practically impossible, yet their operations depend precisely on their continuity to support the flow of capital and cultural mobility. Often found underground, or beyond the periphery of cities, the presence of urban infrastructure remains largely invisible until the precise moment at which it fails or breaks down. Floods, blackouts and shortages serve as a few reminders of the limited capacity and fragility of this large operating structure that unilaterally depends on constant control and micro-management for its sustenance.

As the invisible background of contemporary society, the smooth functioning of infrastructure has literally naturalized the processes of urbanization whereas less than a century ago, a basic level of collective, essential services barely existed. Rarely, do we stop to interrogate the functioning, let alone the effects – geospatially, metabolically, or semiotically – of this Taylorist, technological superstructure. Yet recent events – from the sudden collapse of highway bridges, the rise and fall of water levels, the growing hazards of coastal storms and coastal eutrophication, the accumulating effects of carbon emissions, the surge in foreign oil prices and spike in food prices, the drop in credit markets, to the increase in population mobility and dispersal – are instigating a critical review of the basic foundation upon which urban economies depend on.

Emerging from current economic exigencies and environmental imperatives, this symposium engages these challenges by re-examining the precepts of infrastructure – the basic system of essential services that support a city, a region, a nation, a continent – as well as the patterns of urbanization from which they originated. Responding to the overexertion of civil engineering and the inertia of urban planning vis-à-vis the pace and complexity of urbanization at the turn of the 21st century, the symposium challenges the technocratic role of engineers, transportation planners and policy makers who have profoundly shaped the urban environment that we move through and live in today. Drawing from the growing agency of contemporary urbanists – ecologists, geographers, historians, designers, conservationists and social groups – who are rethinking the predominance of centralized infrastructures, guest speakers employ a telescopic vantage to bring forth alternative models, methods and measures across a range of scales, that seek to decouple the Fordist economies of scale from the paradigm of economic growth.

For more information visit the Harvard Graduate School of Design website, www.gsd.harvard.edu/#/events/landscape-infrastructure.html.  Free and open to the public.

The 30th National Pesticide Forum, Healthy Communities: Green Solutions for Safe Environments, will be held March 30-31, 2012 at Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. The conference will focus on organic land care, urban/ suburban pesticide use, organic food, and protective national, state, and local policies. The conference is convened by Beyond Pesticides, Environment and Human Health, Inc., the Watershed Partnership, Inc., and co-sponsored by local, state and regional public health and environmental organizations.

Sessions will be held in the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies’ Kroon Hall. This sustainable building is a showcase of the latest developments in green building technology, a healthy and supportive environment for work and study, and a beautiful building that actively connects those who use it with the natural world.

More details and registration information is available on the National Pesticide Forum webpage, www.beyondpesticides.org.  Students $15, members $35, nonmembers $75, businesses $175.

Lynn Adler, Associate Professor of Entomology at UMass Amherst, will be the featured speaker on Tuesday, March 13 at the Cambridge Entomological Club.  She will present a lecture entitled Pretty and Poisonous: The Role of Plant Defenses in Flowers.  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.

The March meeting of the Garden Club of the Back Bay will take place at the Wellesley College Botanic Garden on Monday, March 19 beginning with tea at 2 pm, followed by another of our “Japan Year” programs, Bonsai: History, Facts and Myths. Learn how bonsai are created and tips for keeping them alive as long as possible. Pauline F. Muth will present a program on the history, art and horticulture of bonsai. She will illustrate her talk with both a photographic and live collection of various types of bonsai. Pauline has been involved with bonsai for almost 40 years. She maintains a teaching studio in West Charlton, NY exclusively dedicated to the art of bonsai. Her gardens are open to the public by appointment. She sits on the executive boards of Mohawk Hudson Bonsai Society, The Mid-Atlantic Bonsai Societies, The American Bonsai Society and Bonsai Clubs International. Her studioʼs web site is www.pfmbonsai.com. The program is co-sponsored by The Wellesley College Friends of Horticulture and the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University.  Garden Club of the Back Bay members will receive written notice of this meeting, along with car pool information.  Others may register on line (Arnold Arboretum and Wellesley College Friends of Horticulture members $10, non-members $15) at www.wellesley.edu/WCFH.

The first of the free 3-part workshop series will focus on identifying critical ecosystem needs, assessing damaged natural resources, and the values associated with restoration. David Burdick, Marine Wetland Ecology and Restoration Professor at the University of New Hampshire will be the keynote speaker and the workshop will include a site visit to Acushnet River restoration sites. This March 1 event will take place from 10 – 5 beginning at the Buzzards Bay Coalition office, 114 Front Street in New Bedford. Free. For more information, call 508-999-6363, x 226, or email mcmanus@savebuzzardsbay.org.