You are what you eat, you dress for success, why not harness your
garden as an expression of the inner you? In this interactive
lecture, we explore how a garden can reflect your personality.
We discuss infusing your personal space with personality, panache,
and punch while searching for your deeper individualist. No matter
if you’re accessorizing a grand estate or tucking a few
treasured objects into a windowsill terrarium, there’s always
opportunity to follow your own drummer. Using examples from some
of the finest gardens in the country and quoting from many of
the most astute gardeners in the world, we demonstrate how to
have fun and optimize your landscape in this digital slide lecture.
The lecture finale is a terrarium planting demonstration.
Terrariums & You
When
you need nature close by, houseplants are the answer. And if you’ve
always yearned to host houseplants, but failed – this lecture
will come to the rescue. The answer is crystal clear: Glass can
serve as a solution to bond botany and you. With the aid of a
terrarium, you can host nature almost anywhere – in your
parched apartment or your dim office cubicle. In addition, terrariums
can be the ideal venue to bring nature into children’s lives.
These “small worlds” introduce beauty, botany, whimsy,
sophistication, and sparkle into any decor, but these projects
are also surprisingly inexpensive. Not only will we share all
sorts of recycling ideas for enlisting everything from vases to
cake stands, fishbowls, lemonade pitchers, cookie jars, etc for
growing plants and showcasing nature, but recommendations for
plant selection, care, and maintenance will be shared. This lecture
demonstrates precisely how to work with glass enclosures of all
types to incorporate green into your life, no matter how busy
your schedule might be.
Terrarium Workshops
The
gardening world’s most rewarding make-and-take, everyone
succeeds at a terrarium workshop. Appropriate for groups ranging
from 2nd graders to seniors, this workshop leads you through the
making of a terrarium step-by-step. In this 1 ½ to 2 hour
class, every attendee is able to create a small world encased
in glass by the end of the session. All kinds of budgets can fit
into this configuration and, if desired, materials can be supplied
to make it happen within the New England region and its close
neighbors. Farther afield, detailed lists of materials can be
furnished to help you prepare the ingredients for the workshop.
The venue begins with an explanation of terrariums and how they
work to minimize maintenance and make indoor gardening sparkle.
From there, we move into a step-by-step demonstration. And then
everyone crafts their own little glass-encased masterpiece. Every
attendee has a fantastic, creative, enabling, rewarding time!
With decades of experience in growing terrariums of all descriptions,
I’m the expert in this craft and share exactly how to correctly
construct terrariums that live happily ever after.
Trowels & Tomorrow: Garden Stewardship
The
beauty of gardens is that they mature. This is a lecture about
horticultural preservation, stewardship, and how gardeners grapple
with change. We address the challenges of bringing landscapes
into the next generation. Whether you have inherited a landscape
or created a garden over decades and now face mature trees and
shrubs that require preemptive pruning or relocation, we explore
issues and answers. We look at woodland gardens and grand estates,
we explore gardens great and small. We tackle such sticky wickets
as rehabilitating overgrown boxwood hedges and coping with plants
that were once considered exotics but have now been unmasked as
invasives. This is a lecture about bringing yesterday’s
gardens into tomorrow. But we also talk about plant preservation
and heirloom varieties, honoring the people who have worked to
preserve vintage ornamentals so those plants with a past can become
the superstars of future gardens.
Putting Perennials through their Paces
Many
perennials are the bread-and-butter of the garden – and
we see them repeated over and over again. We love these goodfellows,
it’s true. But why not do some fancy footwork in the garden?
Doing stunts with perennials is what this lecture is all about.
In it, we’ll talk about perennials that thumb their noses
at perilous environments – such as seaside gardens and far
north landscapes. We’ll also talk about daring deeds with
color – pulling the stops with perennials. But the real
crux of this lecture will come when we discuss perennials through
the seasons and how they can be combined with bulbs – both
hardy and summer bulbs. Tracing the rise of the newest manifestation
of the mixed border, we’ll see the union between perennials
and bulbs translated into Wynn Sayman’s Berkshire spring
fling. Then we’ll show how Piet Oudolf, the famed Dutch
designer, and Jacqueline van der Kloet pulled it off at the NYBG
Seasonal Walk. Finally, we’ll show the High Line project
where perennials straddle the catwalk of an exposed/windswept/raised
garden and thrive. These perennials are the epitome of plants
that never say die. If they can survive in shallow soil, in beating
sun, on a blustery bridge abutting the water – then your
garden should be a piece of cake.
You are what you eat, you dress for success, why not harness your
garden as an expression of the inner you? In this interactive
lecture, we explore how a garden can reflect your personality.
We discuss infusing your personal space with personality, panache,
and punch while searching for your deeper individualist. No matter
if you’re accessorizing a grand estate or tucking a few
treasured objects into a windowsill terrarium, there’s always
opportunity to follow your own drummer. Using examples from some
of the finest gardens in the country and quoting from many of
the most astute gardeners in the world, we demonstrate how to
have fun and optimize your landscape in this digital slide lecture.
The lecture finale is a terrarium planting demonstration. 
When
you need nature close by, houseplants are the answer. And if you’ve
always yearned to host houseplants, but failed – this lecture
will come to the rescue. The answer is crystal clear: Glass can
serve as a solution to bond botany and you. With the aid of a
terrarium, you can host nature almost anywhere – in your
parched apartment or your dim office cubicle. In addition, terrariums
can be the ideal venue to bring nature into children’s lives.
These “small worlds” introduce beauty, botany, whimsy,
sophistication, and sparkle into any decor, but these projects
are also surprisingly inexpensive. Not only will we share all
sorts of recycling ideas for enlisting everything from vases to
cake stands, fishbowls, lemonade pitchers, cookie jars, etc for
growing plants and showcasing nature, but recommendations for
plant selection, care, and maintenance will be shared. This lecture
demonstrates precisely how to work with glass enclosures of all
types to incorporate green into your life, no matter how busy
your schedule might be. 
The
gardening world’s most rewarding make-and-take, everyone
succeeds at a terrarium workshop. Appropriate for groups ranging
from 2nd graders to seniors, this workshop leads you through the
making of a terrarium step-by-step. In this 1 ½ to 2 hour
class, every attendee is able to create a small world encased
in glass by the end of the session. All kinds of budgets can fit
into this configuration and, if desired, materials can be supplied
to make it happen within the New England region and its close
neighbors. Farther afield, detailed lists of materials can be
furnished to help you prepare the ingredients for the workshop.
The venue begins with an explanation of terrariums and how they
work to minimize maintenance and make indoor gardening sparkle.
From there, we move into a step-by-step demonstration. And then
everyone crafts their own little glass-encased masterpiece. Every
attendee has a fantastic, creative, enabling, rewarding time!
With decades of experience in growing terrariums of all descriptions,
I’m the expert in this craft and share exactly how to correctly
construct terrariums that live happily ever after. 
The
beauty of gardens is that they mature. This is a lecture about
horticultural preservation, stewardship, and how gardeners grapple
with change. We address the challenges of bringing landscapes
into the next generation. Whether you have inherited a landscape
or created a garden over decades and now face mature trees and
shrubs that require preemptive pruning or relocation, we explore
issues and answers. We look at woodland gardens and grand estates,
we explore gardens great and small. We tackle such sticky wickets
as rehabilitating overgrown boxwood hedges and coping with plants
that were once considered exotics but have now been unmasked as
invasives. This is a lecture about bringing yesterday’s
gardens into tomorrow. But we also talk about plant preservation
and heirloom varieties, honoring the people who have worked to
preserve vintage ornamentals so those plants with a past can become
the superstars of future gardens. 
Many
perennials are the bread-and-butter of the garden – and
we see them repeated over and over again. We love these goodfellows,
it’s true. But why not do some fancy footwork in the garden?
Doing stunts with perennials is what this lecture is all about.
In it, we’ll talk about perennials that thumb their noses
at perilous environments – such as seaside gardens and far
north landscapes. We’ll also talk about daring deeds with
color – pulling the stops with perennials. But the real
crux of this lecture will come when we discuss perennials through
the seasons and how they can be combined with bulbs – both
hardy and summer bulbs. Tracing the rise of the newest manifestation
of the mixed border, we’ll see the union between perennials
and bulbs translated into Wynn Sayman’s Berkshire spring
fling. Then we’ll show how Piet Oudolf, the famed Dutch
designer, and Jacqueline van der Kloet pulled it off at the NYBG
Seasonal Walk. Finally, we’ll show the High Line project
where perennials straddle the catwalk of an exposed/windswept/raised
garden and thrive. These perennials are the epitome of plants
that never say die. If they can survive in shallow soil, in beating
sun, on a blustery bridge abutting the water – then your
garden should be a piece of cake.