Summer 2023

THROUGH JUNE 25

the Leonhardt Galleries

Anastasia Traina illuminates the botanical world and its hidden creatures.

JUNE 1 – LABOR DAY

Our Café is Open

Food and beverages available Thursdays through Sundays, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., in the Center House.

JUNE 30 – AUG 27

“FLORABOREALIS” in the Leonhardt Galleries

Cynthia Wick’s playful and alluring, postpandemic series of paint and painted-paper collages. Opening reception June 30.

“Alchemy and Innocents” in

This

JULY 3 – AUG 28

Music Mondays

Nine consecutive Mondays of live music in the Garden featuring great talents from our local music community.

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Matthew Larkin, Chairman

Madeline Hooper, Vice Chairman

Janet Laudenslager, Secretary

John Spellman, Treasurer

Nicholas Arienti

Joanne Leonhardt Cassullo

Mary Copeland

Adaline Frelinghuysen

Maura Griffin

Lauretta Harris

Nancy Hickey

Ian Hooper

Tom Ingersoll

Jane Iredale

Daniel Kasper

Scott Lambert

Roy Liemer

Joanna Miller

Linda O’Connell

Ramelle Pulitzer

Mark Walker

Rob Williams

Suzanne Yale

KK Zutter

Trustees Emeriti

Jeannene Booher

David Carls

Cathy Clark

Craig Okerstrom-Lang

Gloria McMahon

Jo Dare Mitchell

Judie Owens

Martha Piper

Jean Rousseau

Honey Sharp

Gail Shaw

Jack Sprano

Ingrid Taylor

CUTTINGS

Felix Carroll, Editor

Julie Hammill, Hammill Design, Designer

JULY 8

Fête des Fleurs Gala

A whimsical evening awaits attendees of our annual gala, proceeds of which support our education programs and horticulture.

STAFF

Thaddeus Thompson  Executive Director

Mariah Baca

Manager of Membership & Development Operations

Helen Bass Gardener

Amy Butterworth Operations Manager

Felix Carroll

Director of Marketing Communications

Shaun Colon

Manager of Buildings and Grounds

Rachel Durgin

Director of Special Events

Ruth Hanavan

Marketing and Communications Assistant

Kevin Johnson Gardener

Margaret Leahy Educator

Megan Magner Educator

Kessa McEwen Gardener

Sean McKenney Buildings and Grounds Assistant

Jennifer Patton

Director of Education

Kristine Romano

Visitor Center Manager

Eric Ruquist

Director of Horticulture

Julian Vallen

Camp Director

Megan Weiner Operations Assistant

JULY 28 – AUG 25

Family Fridays

Our popular series focusing on the wild world around us, including some very special guests.

On the cover: Cynthia Wick’s “Joge’s view,” 2022. Acrylic, painted paper collage on canvas. (Peter Baiamonte Photography)

page: Wildlife rehabilitator Tom Ricardi will bring his “Birds of Prey” presentation to the Garden's Family Fridays series on Aug. 24. See pages 24-25 for a full list of summer events.

Cuttings

For advertising opportunities, please call 413-298-3926.

WIN THE MOMENT?

I’ve been thinking a lot about kindness lately, and this quote resonated with me. It reminds us that kindness is an intentional and voluntary act that begets a positive chain reaction. From my perch at Berkshire Botanical Garden, this idea reinforces my belief that a botanic garden provides extraordinarily fertile soil for kindness to flourish and to spread.

In many respects, gardening is an act of kindness — first, to the earth itself. At a base level, it involves nurturing and caring for living things, providing them with the necessary resources to thrive and grow. Whether it’s planting a seed, watering a plant, or tending to a garden bed, gardening allows us to connect with the natural world and to appreciate the beauty and wonder of life. In doing so, we cultivate a sense of gratitude for the abundance and preciousness of the natural world.

Gardening can also be an act of kindness towards our neighbors and communities. It provides an opportunity to share the fruits of our labor with others — sometimes quite literally. In cultivating a garden, we create a space where people can come together and find joy and solace in nature. The way we interact with each other takes the same sort of attention, care and patience as does tending a garden.

As a public botanic garden, BBG certainly strives to provide a welcoming space for people of all walks of life to connect with one another and with the natural world, and to foster a sense of belonging that encourages empathy and understanding. These are the roots of the organic perpetuation of kindness to which Earhart alluded.

Importantly, gardening is a way to practice self-kindness (the occasional frustrations notwithstanding). It offers a way for us to slow down, disconnect from the stresses of daily life, and reconnect with ourselves. Gardening provides a sense of purpose, accomplishment and satisfaction, all of which contribute to our own emotional and physical well-being. It also offers a way to practice mindfulness, allowing us to be fully present in the moment and to appreciate the beauty that surrounds us.

I invite you to be kind to yourself and visit us in the Garden throughout the season. Perhaps you will be inspired or recommitted to join with us in being kind to the environment through the stewardship of our common earth. And, ultimately, I hope you will take what you gain here — whether through participating in a class or by simply walking the grounds alone or with your friends or family — and bring something of it back to your own home or community. These are the kindnesses that we seek to give to our visitors every day.

See you in the Garden!

“No kind action ever stops with itself. A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees.” — Amelia Earhart

DIRECTOR’S CORNER THADDEUS THOMPSON

Perennial

Cynthia Wick in Bloom

Once Again

By Hannah Van Sickle

Floraborealis, 2022

Acrylic, painted paper collage, glitter on canvas 48x60 inches

Peter Baiamonte Photography

Despite myriad differences among the two dozen canvases dotting the walls of Cynthia Wick’s studio, an invisible tie binds each to the next. Amidst layers of bright acrylic paint, buried beneath bits of embellished paper, there resides palpable joy which — considering the artist’s generous and open disposition — makes perfect sense. Viewed in the context of when the paintings were created? Now that begs a bit of a backstory.

colorless snow outdoors, a distillation of the artist’s feelings unfurls from a paintsplattered easel-turned-epicenter.

Wick neither aspired to paint flowers, nor does she have a green thumb. Some of her earliest memories are of being just a head taller than the boxwood hedges surrounding her parents’ rose garden in California, “and seeing [those] giant flowers.” Touching upon the practice fueling her most recent body of work, she makes “an effort to access my sense memory about beauty … and moments in my life that were incredibly inspiring.” She speaks of a conscious decision to think less and listen more “to the inklings inside.”

“How does one make beautiful art in the face of such darkness?” is the wholly rhetorical question Wick wrestled with in the days and weeks after the pandemic descended in March 2020. “I almost decided not to paint anymore,” Wick admits, citing the deep devastation she felt in the wake of countless COVIDrelated deaths coupled with the tumultuous politics at play in this country. Equally accustomed to political activism and painting, Wick at first thought she had to choose one or the other before endeavoring to simultaneously employ her pair of penchants — a realization at the root of her show, “FLORABOREALIS” in the Center House Leonhardt Art

Galleries at Berkshire Botanical Garden June 30 through Aug. 27.

"It was essential to mine my memory,” says the former en plein air painter who, after relocating from Los Angeles to the Berkshires 13 years ago, spent many years painting landscapes — largely inspired by her living on the edge of a forest and slowing down enough to notice the details. “I became much more observant about the light and color in the woods, and it really drew me in,” Wick explained during an early March visit to her studio. These days, she’s less interested in painting what she sees and more keen on accessing what’s inside. Standing in stark contrast to the bare branches and

Gone is an antiquated allegiance to recreating the immediate moment. Of late, Wick is focused on the process of creating art as opposed to producing paintings. Each canvas gains character loosely; when a particular color speaks to her, Wick runs with it — an approach she likens to “a constant effort to let the paintings tell [her] what they want.” The end result is a playfulness that’s alluring.

Take for instance, “In the Garden of the Space Angel,” a canvas Wick walks away from in order to gain perspective. “If you stand back, you can see it more clearly,” she says, pointing to a figure that showed up rather unexpectedly (from an inner-city garden) and made the artist laugh. A long time ago, Wick would have painted him out; today, she’s evolved in her approach. “I’ve learned that when

Cynthia Wick at home in her Lenox, Mass., studio. Peter Baiamonte Photography

those little — and often they are figurative — [details] emerge, they’re a part of the history of the painting,” she says, leaning heavily into the big picture and loosening her grip. “I’m letting those stay,” she admits of a shift that made painting “way more exciting” in recent years.

Over more than two decades painting full-time, one thing remains constant: Wick’s intuition is razor sharp. While a daily meditation practice keeps her grounded, her spirit is open to the myriad ways in which her current medium, paint and painted-paper collage, can take

shape on any given day. She likens it to a call-and-response exercise for musicians. “Something will occur to me in an earlier phase,” she says enthusiastically, pointing to several yellow painted-paper squares placed in the corner of a nearby canvas, “and then all the paint chatters with that, and it’s like a back and forth between the layers and layers and layers of paint and the hard edges of a little piece of flat paper.” And, when concerns about commerce do creep in, Wick returns to the wise words of the late Founder and Director of Art 101, Ellen Rand, in whose

Brooklyn gallery Wick’s work was first shown: “Darling, it’s not about selling it’s about showing.” As a tangible tribute to that advice, Wick has been known to embellish her paintings with the small red dot stickers once reserved for marking a painting “sold” in galleries.

Come June, as the seasons shift and summer nears, the seeds for Wick’s show — sown more than three years ago amidst dark uncertainty — are slated to bloom, effectively punctuating the post-pandemic landscape with hope and optimism gleaned from within the proverbial storm. As for serendipity, Wick has taken up gardening. “Just two beds,” she says, evidence of a continued commitment to cultivating joy in the world. As to her parting words?

“Accolades are really nice, but you’ve got to paint what’s inside of you.”

“Something will occur to me in an earlier phase and then all the paint chatters with that, and it’s like a back and forth between the layers and layers and layers of paint and the hard edges of a little piece of flat paper.”

Queechy, 2022 Acrylic, flashe, painted paper collage on board 40x30 inches

Peter Baiamonte Photography

Two Out of Eight!

Our art season began this year on a distinctive note that’s worthy of retelling. The Berkshire Eagle chose two of our exhibitions as among the “8 art shows of 2022 in the Berkshires that reminded us of the power of art.” Those exhibits were Hunt Slonem’s “Hunt Country” and Madeline Schwartzman’s “Face Nature.”

Anastasia Traina Returns

If you’re reading this before June 25, you still have time to see Anastasia Traina’s “Alchemy and Innocents,” which opened on May 5. Anastasia’s work illuminates the botanical world and its hidden creatures by building a Nouveau-Victorian landscape inhabited by magical insects and fauna placed into realistic botanic backdrops. Her inspiration is the nature found in her backyard, fairy tales from around the globe, natural history, and Victorian culture. This exhibition is Anastasia’s second at BBG, following 2018’s “Anastasia Traina’s Fairytale Botanical World.”

Coming Up: Something Curious

Ann Getsinger’s “The Garden of Curiosity” runs from Sept. 1 through Oct. 15. This exhibit will include oil paintings, mixed media drawings and sculptures as it presents carefully observed and freely rendered objects in a range of outdoor settings, times of day, seasons, and weather. “Subjects are chosen for their capacity to delight me for any number of intentionally unexamined reasons,” Ann says.

In Case You Missed It

So far in 2023 the exhibitions in our Leonhardt Galleries have underscored how it is that Berkshire Botanical Garden has become such a bold name on the regional map of eminent art institutions. We were pleased to welcome Karlene Jean Kantner and her show, “Volumes,” that featured pit-fired ceramic works combined with cuttings from the Garden. That show ran from Jan. 20 through Feb. 26. Karlene provided us with one of our favorite quotes so far this year: “My first lesson, really, in ceramics was how to accept loss and then relate it to your life,” she said. “Yeah, there’s a lot of loss in ceramics.”

Next up was Community Access to the Arts’ “The View from Here,” from March 3 through 26, that featured nature-inspired paintings and drawings by artists with disabilities. Some of the works were created on-site here at BBG. Elizabeth Cohen then beckoned us to her botanic world with “Nest/Emerge,” from March 31 through April 30. Her work incorporates hand-thrown porcelain, mulberry paper, wasp nests, and other materials found in nature. “I find inspiration everywhere: the natural world, microscopic images, landscapes, shells, bugs, bark, leaves, pods and seeds,” she said.

We were pleased to welcome Community Access to the Arts' exhibition, “The View from Here,” in March.

How Our Flora Know When to Blossom into Flowers

If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.

By Stewart Edelstein

Against the backdrop of eternity, the Earth displays an ever-changing countenance. The harshness of blizzards yields to gentle showers. Inexorably, the cold, dark days of winter succumb to the warmth and light of spring. We welcome the renewal that is spring, a time when sprouts emerge from the softened earth, thrusting toward the sun to grow, over time, to their full ripeness.

And now — summer! The vernal equinox comes and goes. Our springtime sprouts mature to buds, each blossoming when the time is right, precisely as the energizing sun, nourishing rain and

nutrient-rich soil enable our flora to work their magic by creating flowers.

How do our flora, including our flowering trees, know when a bud should be transformed into a flower? Plants, like humans, have an internal circadian clock by which they know when sunlight is increasing and our days are lengthening. This clock works because proteins, functioning as photoreceptors, are activated by sunlight.

These photoreceptor proteins ever so patiently wait … wait ... wait, until just the right moment, to signal that it is time to blossom. Triggered by that

signal, each plant starts a molecular process that produces in its leaves a protein, known as Flowering Locus T. That protein travels to the tips of shoots, causing molecular changes in cells to begin forming flowers.

The summer solstice (June 21) is the time when the circadian clocks of our flora are signaling that sunlight will soon reach its maximum energizing effect, and that our days are some of the longest of the year. And so, especially in the height of summer, we take joy in the efflorescence of BBG’s more than 3,000 plant species in our many display gardens covering 24 acres.

If that scientific explanation is too much in the weeds (so to speak), just rejoice in the enchanting splendor of our rich pallet of flowers by ambling along BBG’s gardens, stopping as frequently as you wish. Linger as you really focus on flowers that appeal to you, and not

Earth laughs in flowers.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

only by taking a quick photo. Take in the experience, this dazzling beauty — deeply As you do, maybe think of the observation often attributed to the Buddha: “If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.”

Come to our gardens frequently, because each plant’s circadian clock is set to blossom in its own good time. Each flower is ephemeral, emblematic of the transience of all things, so while some flowers are blossoming, others are fading, replenishing the soil, in an ongoing cycle. No two visits to our magnificent gardens are ever the same.

Full of Surprises

TONY SARG GENIUS AT PLAY

Stewart Edelstein is the author of An Alphabetical Romp Through the Flora of Berkshire Botanical Garden: From Agave to Zinnia, which is available at our Visitor Center Gift Shop or through BerkshireBotanical.org/giftshop.

TO THE LETTER (AND THE NUMBER)

Meet Joseph Doboszynski: Sign Maker

By Felix Carroll

Joseph Doboszynski climbs down a set of steps, clicks on basement lights, settles in at a makeshift workstation, adjusts his eyes, and reacquaints himself with a couple of old-fangled machines, one of which resembles a World War IIera cipher device. Yes, the label man has arrived, and he’s ready to name names — beginning with Cotinus coggygria. (That would be “Smokebush” for the Latin oblivious among us.)

Fun fact: Berkshire Botanical Garden features more than 3,000 species and varieties of herbaceous and woody plants. Another fun fact: Berkshire Botanical Garden has endeavored to label each species and variety.

That’s a lot of labels, a lot of Latin. And because the Garden is ever-changing, it’s a never-ending task.

Enter Joseph, a retired engineer with a proclivity for pocket protectors, an orderly workstation and volunteering at institutions that inspire him. At Berkshire Botanical Garden he’s been the overseer of appellations for the past six years.

Know thee by thy name — oh, yes. “You always feel you know something better when you have a name for it,” says Lauretta Harris, president of BBG’s Volunteer Association. “So Joe’s labeling program not only informs our visitors but also helps us forge a stronger bond with them.” For Lauretta, the name “Joseph Doboszynski” has become synonymous

with “loyal, dependable, hard-working, and just plain pleasant.”

His work each year begins in the dead of winter when BBG emails him the first of several flora lists.

Once he arrives on site, his first order of business is to calibrate and re-adjust the sometimes-finicky assemblage of equipment kept in the Center House basement.

Joseph creates BBG’s ubiquitous plastic black labels (with the etched white lettering) using what’s known as an M40 ABC Gravo-Graft, a rotary engraving machine typically found in trophy shops. Those labels are made from surf-board sized sheets that he cuts down to size at his home workshop.

He also creates the metal tags you see appended to woody plants (trees, shrubs and vines). We call them “accession tags.” For those, Joseph uses a vintage Addressograph, a graphotype machine typically used to make military dog tags. That machine, an iron beast patented in 1917, gives a thunderous ka-chunk-ka-chunk, as if Zeus himself is typing an angry letter to the editor.

When complete, both the plastic labels and the accession tags include the Latin and common flora names. The metal tags also include mysterious numbers that signify the date each was planted — for internal record-keeping purposes.

The need for labels and tags can require Joseph’s weekly attention. He recently made new labels for BBG’s famous Daylily Walk. That’s about 220 labels alone.

Joseph Doboszynski, Berkshire Botanical Garden’s sign maker, is among the many volunteers who help keep the Garden running. This sign-making duty suits him just fine. “It beats weeding,” he says with a laugh.

Come play in the Berkshires!

Years ago he thought, “Gee, I could volunteer at Berkshire Botanical Garden and learn a little about gardening. This is what I wound up doing, and it turns out I’m really happy with this.” With a laugh, he hastens to add, “It beats weeding.”

Certainly, Joseph is the perfect volunteer for the job. He had a 38-year engineering career, first with General Electric and ending with his retirement 19 years ago from General Dynamics. He won’t be outsmarted by a pernickety Gravo-Graft, nor an Addressograph. He’s MacGyvered a standard stake to which he attaches those plastic labels. The stakes are made from metal strips originally intended to tie rafters together. With tin snips, he bevels the stake ends so they can easily be shoved into the soil.

Among Joseph’s momentous claims to fame is his 54year marriage to Janice, a Harvest Festival volunteer. They have two daughters and three grandkids. He counts among his enjoyments of retirement the vegetable garden he tends at his Pittsfield home. “I like to garden for the sake of playing in the dirt and experimenting,” he says. “It’s not a thing of beauty, believe me.”

By the way, don’t ask him the Latin name for anything. While he took two years of Latin in high school in Rhode Island back in the late 1950s, he’s the first to admit those studies have proven useless when it comes to, say, Cotinus coggygria — his first label of the 2023 season.

“C-o-t-i-n-u-s c-o-g-g-y-g-r-i-a,” he says, checking his spelling, then re-checking his spelling.

That’s a good sign.

Live, Love, Laugh ... Volunteer!

Are you getting enough out of life? I know that’s a personal question! But if you think you could be just a bit happier, a bit more fulfilled, maybe more connected to your community, well then, I suggest you consider becoming a volunteer. More specifically, a Volunteer at BBG.

I don’t like to boast (well OK, maybe I do) ... but I happen to think BBG Volunteers are some of the happiest, most motivated and most connected volunteers I’ve had the pleasure to know. That’s because BBG is small enough to feel like a family, but big enough to offer a terrific variety of ways to get involved.

For just a few examples: you can be a tour guide, a greeter in the Visitor Center, a docent in our art galleries, a special events volunteer, an office assistant, and of course, a hands-on gardener. While we love a weekly commitment, you can be a BBG Volunteer with just an occasional few hours — such as a four-hour shift at our famous Harvest Festival.

We thank our amazing Volunteers with special perks and recognition events that bring us together with BBG staff to celebrate our successes. It’s so rewarding to be a Volunteer at Berkshire Botanical Garden, and I invite you to learn more.

Simply go to the Volunteer page on our website (berkshirebotanical.org/volunteer) and fill in the Registration Form. You’ll start to get our Volunteer e-blasts and learn about upcoming opportunities.

We look forward to welcoming you!

Lauretta Harris President, BBG Volunteer Association

BEAUTIFUL LANDSCAPES

Goodbyes and Hellos

A Propagator Extraordinaire

Maybe over the years you have enjoyed the hundreds of emerging bulbs for sale at Holiday Marketplace, or the hundreds of blooms in the Bulb Show? Those all were the work of senior gardener Chris Caccamo , who retired this spring after an amazing 12-year tenure.

“When she first arrived,” recalls our former Director of Horticulture Dorthe Hviid, “Chris had little professional experience with seed starting, but over the next few years she quickly mastered the magic art of coaxing thousands of plants from thousands of tiny seeds on a specified schedule, all the while keeping track of every seedling with the help of her great organizational skills and a computer. The Lexan Production Greenhouse was always bursting at the seams, especially at Plant Sale time. When the spring rush was over in the Greenhouse, Chris planted and maintained the Ornamental Vegetable Garden and the Fitzpatrick Border trying out unusual vegetables and annuals for the enjoyment and education of visitors.”

Thank you, Chris, for the many ways you have contributed to make the BBG a more beautiful place.

A Gardener Extraordinaire

We also would like to thank another senior gardener, the great Duke Douillet, who retired after 33 years (though he plans to occasionally volunteer … right, Duke?). If you didn’t know how BBG’s seed starts were organized (on cards in a shoe box), or where the pruning saws were stored, or when to start preparing for the first frost, or a myriad of other things, you went to Duke. Dorthe says she always will cherish Duke’s “dry and ever-ready sense of humor, his love and knowledge of plants, his great sense of design and color, his eloquence on many subjects, and his humility.”

Out in the Gardens

As you stroll through the Gardens this season, hopefully you’ll meet our newest gardener, Helen Bass. She is joined by Kessa McEwen (who moved from the Education Department) and our summer horticulture interns Ian Montgomery Gehrt, Victor Salinas and Addie Bagot

Welcome, a New Director of Education

We have a new director of education: Jennifer Patton. As a museum educator with a master’s degree in teaching, Jennifer ran several education departments in the New York metropolitan area. She earned a doctorate from Teachers College (Columbia University). She served as executive director of the Edward Hopper House, in Nyack, N.Y. While overseeing pandemic recovery at the arts and performance venue Basilica Hudson, in Hudson, N.Y., Jennifer moved to the Berkshires in 2021 with her three children.

"The director of education position is critical to BBG’s efforts to connect people of all ages and backgrounds to gardening and plants and inspiring them to live in greater harmony with nature," said Executive Director Thaddeus Thompson. "I know Jennifer will excel in this role, and I'm thrilled to welcome her to the BBG community."

And Welcome Back

Julian Vallen has recently joined our Education Department as camp director for the 2023 season. Originally from Baton Rouge, La., he had spent the past two summers as a BBG camp counselor. With a background in youth education and a passion for nature, Julian brings past experience and fresh eyes to this year’s Farm in the Garden Camp. Julian serves the role held by Rachel Durgin, who is now our director of Special Events.

Jennifer Patton, our new director of education.

Chris Caccamo

Duke Douillet

Lost Lamb, Found Here

We are pleased to announce that our cafe, in the Center House, will once again provide sweet and savory food this season prepared by Stockbridge’s famous FrenchBerkshire fusion patisserie, The Lost Lamb, run by pastry chef/ owner Claire Raposo, a graduate of Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. Stop in Thursdays through Sundays, from 10 to 3 p.m., and enjoy sandwiches, salads and baked goods. The cafe opens for the season on June 1 and will continue through Labor Day. Admission to the Garden is required. Yum!

Annual Meeting

Berkshire Botanical Garden will hold its annual membership meeting on May 26, 3 to 5 p.m. Everyone is invited. Professor Don Rakow will speak on “The Benefits of Time in Nature for Every Age and Every Person.”

Members attending the brief business portion of the meeting will have the opportunity to vote in the election of BBG's officers. Light refreshments will be served. Registration is recommended.

Rakow teaches in Cornell’s School of Integrative Plant Science and was formerly the director of Cornell Botanic Gardens. He runs Cornell's NatureRX program. Members can attend free; non-members, $35.

Garden Access for All!

Berkshire Botanical Garden is pleased to participate in the Card to Culture program, which allows individuals with an EBT, WIC or ConnectorCare card to receive free admission (ticketed events excluded).

Simply present an EBT, WIC or ConnectorCare card at the admissions desk to receive free admission for you, your family and guests.

Together with the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Executive Office of Health and Human Services’ Department of Transitional Assistance, Massachusetts Health Connector, and the Women, Infants, & Children (WIC) Nutrition Program, we are committed to increasing access to cultural experiences for all Massachusetts residents through Card to Culture. For more information, please contact our Manager of Membership and Development Mariah Baca at mbaca@berkshirebotanical.org or visit massculturalcouncil.org/organizations/card-to-culture.

A Meadow Debuts

We are pleased to announce that Garden visitors will soon experience a meadow, the way a New England meadow should be. That is to say, without the grim assemblage of bittersweet, garlic mustard, knotweed, and other invasives.

We’ll hold a ribbon cutting on Aug. 12, at 5 p.m. Located behind the Center House on 2.5 acres we acquired in 2019, the meadow required the meticulous removal of invasives and the seeding of native-dominated plant species. We’ll create a meandering path to give visitors an up-close look at an ever-changing, ecologically and aesthetically diverse and complex showpiece and destination.

In November 2021, we cleared this meadow of invasive species and seeded it with native-dominated plant species. By later this summer, the meadow will be an ecological showpiece.

Garden Transformations

If you’re familiar with our Primrose Path, Hosta Garden, Foster Rock Garden, and Lucy’s Garden you’ll notice some significant changes this summer.

With funds from the Stanley Smith Horticultural Trust, those gardens will be expanded and/or unified into a woodland garden consisting of native and non-native ornamental herbaceous perennials. The project will improve directional flow within the garden and frame the approach toward another adjacent garden: the Pond Garden.

We began planting the woody ornamentals in the Spring, but the bulk of the planting will be done in late summer or early fall. We will emphasize plants not featured elsewhere at BBG, such as Delphinium tricorne (dwarf larkspur), Anemonopsis macrophylla (false anemone) and Glaucidium palmatum (Japanese wood poppy).

With funding from Estanne Fawer, the project also includes expansion of the iconic copper beech hedge that encircles the topiary garden (known as Lucy’s Garden) and the addition of 700 European Hornbeam (Carpinus betulus). The additional hedges, planted in the fashion of a labyrinth, will elevate the topiary garden’s sense of whimsy and help link Lucy’s Garden with the expanded woodland garden.

We already imagine our day campers playing among the hedges; or young couples wending their way to a lunchtime picnic beneath the gazebo; or solitary visitors savoring a slow, meditative stroll along the meandering pathways at dusk.

The combined expansions increase our planted garden space by approximately 6,500 square feet.

Labryinthine copper beech hedge expansion

Planting expansion and garden cohesion

It’s the people, places and past that make the Berkshires beautiful.

Dandelion Power

Don't Mow Them. Use Them.

By Mariah Baca

Over the years, herbicide companies, perhaps with a bit of initial nudging from the 19th century horticulturalist Andrew Jackson Downing, have trained us to think that dandelions — those yellow, flowering, resilient, and adaptable plants — are to be dreaded, that a well-kept yard is one that’s devoid of dandelions.

Don’t believe it. Dandelions — their leaves, flowers and roots — have been cherished as power-packed food and herb by humanity for much of recorded history.

I have my own favorite use for dandelions (Taraxacum officinale). It involves activating their benefits by infusing the dried flowers into oil and vinegar to bake, cook or simply rub all over my skin.

Mariah Baca is Berkshire Botanical Garden’s manager of Membership and Development Operations. Follow her on Instagram for more herbal recipes @mariahsrepository

Try out this recipe to unlock the power of Tarataxum officinale:

What you will need:

Basket

Dandelions

Olive oil

Vinegar

Canning jars

Optional — dehydrator, cloth

Instructions

1 Grab your basket and perhaps a friend, and head outside to pick dandelions. The more, the better.

2 Pop the tops of the dandelion stem off and place them in a dehydrator or simply on a cotton cloth in a sunny place. Allow flowers to completely dry.

Note: Don’t discard the leaves! They make an excellent addition to a salad.

3 Fill a bell jar halfway with dried dandelion flowers, then fill the jar completely with vinegar or olive oil (or an oil of your choice!)

4 Practice patience — wait three to six weeks for your infusion to be ready. Every other day, give the jars a little shake.

5 After three to six weeks, strain your pedals out of the vinegar or oil with cheesecloth (not required — we like the added texture of the petals).

6 Enjoy! Use the infused olive oil as you normally would when cooking or baking — or for skin care! Or use the vinegar to make a dressing for your salad.

A Black Locust Blowdown?

Tom Ingersoll Answers the Call.

By Felix Carroll

In a patch of woodland, during a wicked windstorm, a whole bunch of trees blow down. They happen to be black locusts. And because Berkshire County happens to be home to Tom Ingersoll, joyful opportunity ensues.

“Do you have time for an adventure?” he asks in a text message.

“Yes.”

“You got some decent boots?” he queries. “Always.”

Tom is waiting at the property in question, the beautiful Inn at Kenmore Hall, in Richmond, Mass. Behind its historic main house, a vast field slopes “Sound of Music”-like down to a dewy haze of bottomlands. Along the way, the patch of woodland presents itself, distinctively scalped by a vengeful wind shear.

Probably a hundred or more black

locusts lay slain and eerily ordered, side by side, north to south, an entablature of trees and trenches.

“There it is,” says Tom, arborist, owner of Ingersoll Land Care and a Berkshire Botanical Garden trustee.

First, a confession: I’ve got a thing for black locusts (Robinia Pseudoacacia). My locust-loving intertwines with this guy: Tom. I first met him 20 years ago in the swampy flats of nearby Sheffield. I had been preparing my first real vegetable garden. I had envisioned natural, rotresistant, non-milled, non-conforming fence posts to frame out and safeguard a nutty, congested assortment of interplanted fine foods. A friend advised “locust posts” and “Tom Ingersoll.”

I bought a couple dozen posts from Tom, about 5 inches in diameter, 8-

to 10-feet long, that he had harvested himself. Another 10 years later, living in a new home and arranging a new garden, I repeated the process with Tom. Both gardens remain, all those posts still standing at attention, sun-scorched, faithful sentries — highly impressive.

In the years since, I’ve enjoyed Tom’s arborist-oriented educational Instagram posts (at ingersoll_land_care). Having heard about this recent black locust blowdown at Kenmore and of Tom’s involvement in the clean-up, I sought him out. Which brings us to this field and its mussed-up woodlot on a wintry day this past March. The hills alive with the sound of his tree crew chain sawing, I finally could ask, “Tom, what’s the deal with black locusts and why do they make you happy?”

The deal is this: Not all is necessarily

happy in this story, because black locusts really aren’t supposed to be here. Black locust trees were brought here from the South and planted beginning about 150 to 200 years ago.

Why?

“Because they make fantastic fenceposts,” Tom explains.

So then what happened?

“They escaped,” he says.

Maybe we could think of these escapees as the Pretty Boy Floyds of invasives. An outlaw, yes. But behind their distinctive, deeply furrowed, corrugated dark bark — their rot-resistance and sinuous strength — lay a mostly benevolent outlaw (unless their roots have torn through your septic system).

Get this: Because they are a legume, they can improve the soil by pulling nitrogen from the air. And not only do they make for excellent posts, but they also are prized for use in pergolas and handrails. Tom has even milled black locust for boardwalks, decks, potting sheds, tables, and tent platforms. High in BTUs, black locust also makes for first-rate firewood.

And anyway, these escapees have no intention of leaving. Go ahead, try: Chop them down. They’ll likely sprout back up. Pull them out by the roots, and they’ll reach for a clutch of earth from which to prosper once again. Because they taste yucky, most bugs and birds don’t care to dine upon them.

They grow fast. They’re clonal. They travel in packs — er, rather, they tend

to grow in groves. Peer-pressured, sunseeking, they force one another to rise accommodatingly pole-like.

And unlike our prized oaks, for example, black locusts thrive in crappy soil, like abandoned gravel pits. And like our native poplars, white pine and birches, they behave as pioneer species, quick to move in upon disturbed land.

Tom grew up marveling them, the reason for which warrants a little trip down memory lane.

“I grew up in a house that had been built in 1955,” he says. “By the time I was a little kid, the porch, which was made of pine, had rotted, but the posts that supported the porch were still in perfect order.”

Yep, the posts were locust, set into bare earth.

“To this day, the posts that were planted 68 years ago are still sound,” Tom says. “You could straighten a nail on them.”

Tom recalls that on his childhood home of 15 acres, three black locusts

had purposefully been planted amidst an apple orchard and vegetable gardens. When that land went fallow beginning about 40 years ago, those three black locusts eventually became thousands of black locusts.

He refers to his kinship to black locust as a “love/hate relationship.” Because of his business, he can put them to good use. “But my suggestion to anyone who has black locusts is to keep them in jail,” he says. “Mow around them. Don’t let them escape. Otherwise, they will send out root sprouts in a radial fashion.”

Here at Kenmore, the hope is to transform this beat-up locust grove into meadow with native oak and hickory.

As for those slain black locusts, here’s a happy ending: In Tom’s possession is a cut list. Turns out a good deal of the black locust has now been transformed into an outdoor classroom for Farm in the Garden Camp assembled by the craftsman and designer Aaron Dunn. In its final form, the structure is 15 feet by 30 feet in diameter and about 10-feet tall.

“Repurposing an invasive species into something beautiful — that makes me happy,” says Tom.

Where is it?

Berkshire Botanical Garden. You can see for yourself this summer.

BUILDING FOR THE NEXT GENERATION

By Felix Carroll

Upon a scrappy corner of land during an ill-tempered winter, Berkshire Botanical Garden broke ground and successfully underscored its commitment to educating the next generation of environmental stewards and gardeners.

From bare boughs and painstakingly milled and scribed posts and beams, a barn has been built, a thing of beauty, the new heart of BBG’s popular Farm in the Garden Camp.

“The youth camp is an important part of the Botanical Garden’s mission,” said Thaddeus Thompson, BBG’s executive director. “It’s truly an honor to be able to create this really beautiful, inspiring, open and welcoming place — and a fun space.”

Held for eight weeks in the summer and on the two weeks corresponding with

public school February and April breaks, the day camp serves children age 6 through 14, providing the opportunity to care for plants and animals, go on nature walks, create botanical crafts, and learn about the natural world.

With the new building, Berkshire Botanical Garden now can increase the number of campers from 30 children a week to 50.

The new building embodies BBG’s 89-year-long mission to fulfill the community’s need for information, education and inspiration in the art and science of gardening and the preservation of our environment. The building also embodies a cherished aesthetic that intertwines old ways with innovative new engineering and craftsmanship.

The tradition of a property owner hammering in the final peg for the roof trusses of a building is carried out by Matthew Larkin, the chair of the Berkshire Botanical Garden’s board of trustees, during a barn raising event on Jan 21, for the garden’s new single-story, 30-foot-by-50foot barn, the new home of the garden’s Farm in the Garden Camp. Stephanie Zollshan — The Berkshire Eagle

“The youth camp is an important part of the Botanical Garden’s mission. It’s truly an honor to be able to create this really beautiful, inspiring, open and welcoming place — and a fun space.”

—Thaddeus Thompson, executive director

‘A PIECE OF ART’

“My thought from the beginning was that this building and camp ‘campus,’ if you will, would give our day campers a really rustic experience but in an aesthetic way,” said Matthew Larkin, chair of BBG’s Board of Trustees. “We have a certain way we like things to look around the Garden. I’m super excited that with this building we’ve been able to create a piece of art beyond what I was originally anticipating.”

Larkin, who did the initial building designs, had originally envisioned a simple structure with sliding barn doors set on a concrete slab, all built to match the height and roof pitch of the adjacent Education Building. The new building certainly includes those elements. But in the meantime, Larkin had presented the project to A.J. Schnopp Jr., Construction Inc., of Dalton, Mass. That’s the same company that served as general contractor for BBG’s renovated and expanded Center House, which artfully incorporates one of the oldest structures in Stockbridge into a new state-of the-art facility.

Gregg Schnopp had a suggestion for this newest project. He introduced Larkin to two men with the expertise to create a structure that matches BBG’s overall creative and utilitarian philosophy.

Scott Brockway, a sawyer and owner of Berkshire Wood Products in Windsor, Mass., is one. Adam Miller, a carpenter

and consultant from Vermont who specializes in timber and log framing, is the other. Both men are members of the Timber Framers Guild and have worked together on similar projects before. With finalized plans in hand, Brockway and Miller set off into the

Berkshire woods. They assembled most of their materials from two properties whose trees had been tagged for harvesting, with Brockway noting these trees would have been considered firewood by most people. “What we do is walk through the woods and look up

The last truss is raised for the camp barn at a ceremony on Jan. 21.

into the trees. You have to see the trees — and the plans — through the forest, and then pick out what works.”

“What we do is walk through the woods and look up into the trees,” he said. “You have to see the trees — and the plans — through the forest, and then kind of pick out what works.”

Brockway harvested and milled eight species of trees for the project, including Eastern White Pine, red maple, sugar maple, white ash, black cherry, black walnut, and shad. The pegs used to fasten pieces together are made of red oak.

In modern times, he noted, builders have gone “from craft to construction. What we do is very tedious and repetitive, but there are craftsmen that carry on this tradition out of passion. We are not using any modern construction materials. There are no steel pegs or joinery being used here. Back when they created buildings 150 to 200 years ago, folks had to use what they had.”

By May, the project was complete. The new building has an outdoor accompaniment that includes wheelchair-accessible raised garden beds and a 15-by-30-foot outdoor classroom assembled from locust posts by the craftsman and designer Aaron Dunn.

OLD AND NEW, INTERTWINED

The main portion of the L-shaped camp building is 30-by-50-feet.

Utilizing Miller’s expertise in timber and log framing and complicated, innovative work in organic form scribing, that main portion functions as an unheated pavilion.

Sheathed in vertical boards, its creative design is best appreciated from the inside. In the rustic interior, traditionally planed and squaredoff Eastern White Pine timbers are

IN HONOR OF A BELOVED MOTHER

In the moments before the final truss was hoisted and set into place in January for the new Farm in the Garden Camp building, two women were invited to step up and affix a coniferous bough upon it.

The ceremony’s significance was two-fold.

The bough, traditionally referred to as a “wetting bush,” had been snipped from a nearby white pine and tacked onto the truss to symbolize the joining of land and building, thereby paying homage to the building’s “roots.” But this also marked the first public acknowledgement that this remarkable new structure was built in honor of the late Anne Leonhardt, who died peacefully at the age of 92 on April 26, 2017.

Those two women are her daughters, Barbara and Melissa Leonhardt, who, through New York Community Trust, donated the construction funds for this project.

“They had been looking for a way to honor and celebrate their mother, who was a big promoter of education and nature,” said Matthew Larkin, chair of BBG’s Board of Trustees. “This project couldn’t be more appropriate.”

Anne, who married the late Frederick Leonhardt in 1955, raised four children in Connecticut. The family spent summers at their lakeside home in Becket. With her husband’s encouragement, Anne directed the family’s many philanthropic endeavors.

“She had a lot of passions,” said Barbara, who lives in Stockbridge. “Children’s education, the environment, helping people who are underprivileged, and empowering women and girls” were chief among those passions.

“She loved having the opportunity to give where there was a need,” Barbara continued. “And now, to keep her legacy going: this building. It will be here hopefully forever and be instrumental in helping a lot of people of all ages and backgrounds.”

Melissa Leonhardt called the building “amazing.”

“She’d be so happy,” she said of her mother.

At the barn raising in January, in a quiet moment away from the crowd, Larkin had a surprise for the Leonhardts. He presented them with a wooden hummingbird that he had carved for the occasion. Hummingbirds serve as an intimate reminder of the Leonhardts’ mother, “who was a big proponent of trying to make everything beautiful in this world,” said Larkin.

One of the final details of the construction this spring included carefully placing that hummingbird up high within those gorgeous trusses, a purposefully discreet detail, but a detail that, like that wetting bush, represents deep roots.

Thaddeus Thompson (left) with Melissa Leonhardt, Matt Larkin and Barbara Leonhardt, at the new camp building, which opens this season.

supported by varying species and sizes of tree forks, those Y-shaped sections of trees that bifurcate in the trunk and give rise to two roughly equal diameter branches.

“It’s a very nice hierarchy of sizes of timbers as they go up, defining smaller and smaller segments of the space in the roof,” Miller said. “The square timbers are all joined together with what’s called the square-rule layout method, which is a traditional layout system indigenous to New England. That method developed around the turn of the 19th century. All of the organic elements, all the fork trees, are scribed. We use a variety of different techniques for that, which derived from both French and English timber framing traditions and from Scandinavian log building traditions.

“We were able to move beyond simply recreating the historical processes that were used here, and integrate new things,” he said. “I like to keep my carpentry practice an evolving craft rather than just sort of be trying to recreate things as if they were museum pieces.”

The small portion of the L-shaped building consists of a bathroom wing, about 14 feet by 12 feet in size. While that portion of the structure is built with standard lumber, it includes a fun surprise for BBG’s horticulture team: a root cellar beneath it.

“We’ll be able to winter-over dahlia tubers and chill bulbs for the annual Bulb Show,” said Director of Horticulture Eric Ruquist. “And then, of course, root cellars were made for storing vegetables, such as potatoes and cabbage and other root vegetables, and we’ll be able to do that as well.”

The trusses for the main building were assembled in Brockway’s Windsor shop and trucked in January down to Stockbridge, where, on a chilly, wet Saturday, Jan. 21, BBG hosted a “barn

raising” — live guitar and fiddle music and apple cider included.

On that day, the final truss was put into place by means of an hydraulic hoist. As a crowd of BBG staff, trustees and friends watched and cheered, Larkin did the honors of hammering in the final oak peg for the framed-out structure.

Miller and Brockway incorporated one final touch with a nod to tradition.

They embedded a penny under a post. As per tradition, that penny was dated with the year the frame was constructed, in this case 2022.

Brockway found the penny face up outside of his shop two days before the barn raising. It’s a happy coincidence, and a symbol of good luck for this exceptional new building.

WHY A NEW CAMP AND EDUCATION BUILDING?

By Thaddeus Thompson

Moreover, early experiences with plants, gardening and natural ecology have been shown to correlate strongly with sustained improvements in physical and mental health, as well as to positive attitudes in adulthood towards plants and the environment.

Those are among the central concerns behind Berkshire Botanical Garden’s significant investment in our Farm in the Garden Camp.

We are all well aware of the seductive lure of technology and increasing alienation of our youth from nature. These factors have contributed to an epidemic of “nature deficit disorder” and to declines in academic performance and health, including high rates of obesity, juvenile diabetes and depression.

BBG’s Farm in the Garden Camp — and the increasingly diverse range of experiential programs we offer for children and families — has provided a counterpoint to this trend of our youth’s alienation from nature and the outdoors. It provides time, space and guidance for children to engage in purposeful play in an energizing and kind garden community. Our campers plant seeds, collect eggs, harvest vegetables, go on nature walks, create botanical crafts, and so much more. They also learn about ecology and the importance of healthy

ecosystems, both of flora and fawna.

Equally important, our Farm in the Garden Camp focuses on relationshipbuilding and social-emotional learning to help each camper develop necessary life skills that they can take with them when camp is over.

While the results of these efforts have been encouraging, our vision is to fulfill this promise by expanding and enhancing our capacity to deliver programs for youth and families, and in

particular our Farm in the Garden Camp. We are pleased to say our new camp structure will provide much needed dedicated space for children and youth. Our goal for each camper is to keep the spirit of the Farm in the Garden Camp in their heart, even when they are not here.

Extensive scientific research has revealed that establishing connections to nature in early childhood is important to building self-confidence, independent spirit and critical thinking.

MUSIC MONDAYS, FAMILY FRIDAYS, ART EXHIBITIONS AND MORE

MAY

4

OPENING OF ANASTASIA TRAINA’S “ALCHEMY AND INNOCENTS” in the Leonhardt Galleries (continues through June 25).

30

OPENING RECEPTION FOR CYNTHIA WICK’S “FLORABOREALIS” from 5 to 7 p.m. Show runs through Aug. 27.

17

MUSIC MONDAYS — FEATURING A LIVE PERFORMANCE BY THE O-TONES, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

24

MUSIC MONDAYS — FEATURING A LIVE PERFORMANCE BY BROTHER SAL BLUES BAND, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

28

FAMILY FRIDAYS — WILD WORLD OF REPTILES

26

BBG’S ANNUAL MEETING, open to the public, 3 to 5 p.m. Professor Don Rakow will speak on “The Benefits of Time in Nature for Every Age and Every Person.”

JUNE 1

CAFÉ OPENS FOR THE SEASON. Food and beverages available Thursdays through Sundays, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., in the Center House through Labor Day.

26

FARM IN THE GARDEN CAMP BEGINS.

JULY 3

MUSIC MONDAYS — FEATURING A LIVE PERFORMANCE BY CIERRA FRAGALE, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

8

FÊTE DES FLEURS 2023, our annual gala, 5 to 8 p.m. A festive evening to benefit BBG's education and horticulture programs.

10

MUSIC MONDAYS — FEATURING A LIVE PERFORMANCE BY MISTY BLUES, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

Environmental educator Joy Marzolf introduces us to the Wild World of Reptiles from 11 a.m. to noon. What is the difference between a lizard and a snake? A crocodile and an alligator? Can turtles really leave their shells like they do in the cartoons? Are snakes really slimy? Learn more about our wonderful scaly friends and meet some reptile special guests in person!

31

MUSIC MONDAYS — FEATURING A LIVE PERFORMANCE BY JOHNNY IRION, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

The Garden is open daily, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. Admission: $18 for adults, $16 for students and seniors (over 60); free admission for Garden members and children 12 and under. EBT cardholders receive free admission through the MASS Cultural Council’s Card to Culture program. To arrange a private group tour, please call ahead.

Anastasia Traina, “Family Strange”

Cynthia Wick, "By The Sea"

4

FAMILY FRIDAYS — MUSICIAN, PUPPETEER, AND VIDEOGRAPHER, TOM KNIGHT

Combining elements of Mr. Rogers’ gentle spirit and the unbound creativity of Jim Henson, Knight has created an original show that entertains and enlightens young children and adults alike. Some of the themes explored include moving to music, folk tales, animal stories, and science, as well as a skit about a charming magician whose powers can get out of hand. 11 a.m. to noon.

7

MUSIC MONDAYS —

FEATURING LIVE MUSIC FROM ZIKINA, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

11

FAMILY FRIDAYS — "STORYTELLER: EARTH RHYTHMS, A SONG AND STORY CELEBRATION," featuring Davis Bates. This program, from 11 a.m. to noon, will include traditional and contemporary folk songs and stories about nature and animals from New England and around the world. Hear how coyotes got their howl, how foam came to be in the ocean, and more, and be prepared to sing, move and clap your hands. The celebration includes a short lesson on how to play music with spoons from a kitchen drawer and a guest appearance by a dancing wooden dog named Bingo.

12

RIBBON CUTTING FOR BERKSHIRE BOTANICAL GARDEN’S NEW NATIVE MEADOW, 5 p.m.

12-13

THE GROW SHOW

Floral designers and backyard gardeners are the celebrities at the Garden’s annual Grow Show, where beautiful floral arrangements and the peak summer harvest are spotlighted in this upbeat, judged event featuring design and horticulture classes on display in the Exhibition Hall.

14

MUSIC MONDAYS — FEATURING LIVE MUSIC FROM SOL Y CONTO, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

18

FAMILY FRIDAYS — "NATURE MATTERS"

Jen Leahey presents “Nature Matters,” home to a diverse collection of animal educators. Many of these animals found their way there because they were unable to survive in the wild due to an injury or they were born in captivity and never learned how to fend for themselves. These animals are on the borderland; they are not pets, but they are also no longer able to be wild. They need a place to be cared for in order to survive. This program will explore our relationships and responsibilities with animals, both wild and domestic pet species. 11 a.m. to noon.

20

DOG DAYS OF SUMMER

Dog lovers are invited to bring their favorite companions for a full day of activities, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

21

MUSIC MONDAYS — FEATURING A LIVE PERFORMANCE BY UNION JACK, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

25

FAMILY FRIDAYS — BIRDS OF PREY

Join wildlife rehabilitator Tom Ricardi from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. for his popular presentation on birds of prey. He will share the natural history of these magnificent birds, demonstrate some of their unique behaviors and inspire children of all ages to appreciate, respect and conserve these important members of our wild kingdom.

28

MUSIC MONDAYS — FEATURING

A LIVE PERFORMANCE BY THE  WANDA HOUSTON BAND, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

SEPTEMBER 1

OPENING RECEPTION FOR ANN GETSINGER’S “THE GARDEN OF CURIOSITY” art exhibition in the Leonhardt Galleries (the show runs through Oct. 15).

STAY CONNECTED!

FOLLOW BBG ON SOCIAL TO STAY UP-TO-DATE ON OUR UPCOMING EVENTS!

Education

It’s not just the bees that are buzzing during the summer months at BBG. Everywhere you turn you’ll find activity during all times of the day: children running around at camp, visitors on our daily tours, students engaged in classes, community members doing sunset yoga on the lawn, painting students set up with their easels, and many more. There’s something for everyone. Whether you’re visiting for a day or the whole summer, learning opportunities abound here at BBG.

For more information on classes and events happening at the Garden, visit berkshirebotanical.org.

Deep Dive: A Berkshire Vegetable Garden

Tour a West Stockbridge garden and learn more about soil and management, planting strategies, and the values of an unheated greenhoust for year-round production of vegetables. Learn more on page 29.

Classes, Lectures and Workshops

MAY

Flowers in Watercolor with Pat Hogan

IN-PERSON at BBG

Wednesdays, May 24 to June 14, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Members: $215/Non-members: $250

April showers and spring flowers — a perfect mix! Join us for four weeks of watercolor in the comfort of the Center House. We are sure to be inspired by the gorgeous sights and scents of the BBG spring blooms.

The Art of Colored Pencils

IN-PERSON at BBG

Thursday to Saturday, May 25 through 27, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Members: $275/Non-members: $300

Have you ever wanted to use colored pencils for botanicals but are not sure how? In this art class colored-pencil artist Carol Ann Morley will give you a great start and show you multiple ways to work with this fun and versatile medium. You will learn the art of color mixing and how to control your color choices to achieve harmony, depth and contrast. Gain an understanding of pencil techniques such as layering for blending smooth colors and ways to produce textures and patterns using sgraffito, impressed line, and burnishing to make different surfaces for petals, leaves, bark and more. Students of all levels are welcome to this colorful adventure.

ONLINE Our online classes are offered over Zoom. Students receive class log-in information and materials lists, when applicable, once they’ve registered.

IN-PERSON The location of onsite classes is subject to change in accordance with state and federal regulations. Students will be notified as soon as possible if classes require a change in location.

HYBRID These classes are held both online and in person. They feature the lecture portion of class online and a hands-on component in-person and outdoors.

OFFSITE These classes are held off-site.

HORTICULTURE CERTIFICATE PROGRAM

HThis symbol denotes Horticulture Certificate Program classes, workshops, and lectures open both to students seeking credit towards one of BBG’s five acclaimed horticulture certificates as well as the general public. Please visit berkshirebotanical.org or call 413-357-4657 for additional information.

Kitchen classes are sponsored by Guido’s Fresh Marketplace with stores located in Great Barrington and Pittsfield.

FeedingThe Berkshires

Make Your Own Macrame Plant Hangers

IN-PERSON at BBG

Saturday, May 27, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Members: $35/Non-members: $45

Come create an eco-friendly and natural macrame plant hanger that adds color and texture to your space, with local fiber artist Toula. In this workshop, we will use soft recycled cotton fiber in pleasing neutral tones to create a cozy hanging home for your 3- to 4-inch potted plants. We will be utilizing three basic knots commonly used in macrame. Plant hangers will be made of a metal ring for added security.

JUNE

Deep Dive: A Berkshire Vegetable Garden

IN-PERSON OFFSITE

Saturday, June 3, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Members: $20/Non-members: $25

Among the topics to be covered on a tour of this West Stockbridge garden is soil management, including use of cover crops, various methods of in-garden composting, and adapting to no-till gardening. Participants will view different planting strategies for various crops using raised beds, mounding and vertical space. Various pest management strategies will be discussed. Also included is a walk-through and discussion of the values of an unheated greenhouse for the year-round production of vegetables.

Hortus Arboretum

IN-PERSON OFF-SITE

Friday, June 9, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Members: $45/Non-members: $50

Transportation from BBG: $10

Hortus Arboretum and Botanical Gardens is a Level II arboretum with a total of 21 acres, eight of which are currently cultivated. The gardens are run as a non-profit whose mission is to sustain the native, unusual and historic plant life and serve as a vital educational resource for the public. The gardens are also focused on saving rare and endangered plants from around the world, with the goal of making sure that species diversity is preserved. The tour will focus on some of the arboretum’s more unusual plants, and will highlight plants that produce wonderful food for wildlife and people alike. A few highlights will include native plants such as Ptelea trifoliata “Aurea,” American Persimmon, and Zanthoxylum Americanum, an important host plant to the largest North American butterfly. Non-native trees and shrubs will include plants such as Maclura tricuspidata with its tasty mulberry-lychee-like fruit, Zanthoxylum simulans that produces the tingly fruits found in Szechuan cooking, and Pterostyrax hispida, with its unusual epaulette-like flowers among many, many more. Transportation from BBG for an additional $10 fee is available for a limited number of participants.

Cyanotype on Fabric: Make your Own Bag

IN-PERSON at BBG

Saturday, June 10, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Members: $55/Non-members: $60

Magical and simple, cyanotypes are a camera-less technique that results in graphic blue and white prints. Developed in 1852, this alternative photographic process uses a lightsensitive solution on fabric, sunlight and pressed plants to make a beautiful botanical image — in this case, on a tote bag. All supplies, including pressed plant material, will be provided. Participants are encouraged to bring objects or pressed plants with interesting silhouettes from home to use in their compositions.

Water is a Verb: Eco-Art Wellness Workshop

IN-PERSON at BBG

Saturday, June 10, 3 to 5 p.m.

Members: $35/Non-members: $45

In this workshop, participants contemplate the water element to discover which most closely relates to their own lives at this moment. We consider calmness, energy, depth, patience, focus, joy, strength, etc., as we look at water both on the earth and within. Participants create individual nature circles to dive deeper into understanding and celebrating how we live our best lives like water. This mandala workshop includes an introduction, short introspective writing, the creation of individual nature mandalas, and meaningful discussion. Mandalas are ephemeral and will not be taken home. Photographs are encouraged.

Botanical Dyeing Intensive

IN-PERSON at BBG

Saturday, June 10, 1 to 4 p.m.

Members: $150/Non-members: $165

This craft-and-carry class is designed to walk students through the process of natural dyeing. In this workshop, we will discuss preparing your fibers for natural dyeing, perform color extraction baths with food waste, local season plants or flowers, and a natural dye extract as well as pH shift lesson and color modifier discussion. We will use communal dye baths to create fabric swatches, cotton market tote and a silk scarf for students to take home with them. Watch as goldenrod flowers create a sunshine hue, blueberries create a brilliant purple and onion skins create a moody olive. Plus, everyone will receive Maggie’s Natural Dyeing E-Course ($50 value) so they can dye at home. Led by Maggie Pate.

Open through Oct. 9

©Beth Adoette

In the Weeds: Community Story Night

IN-PERSON at BBG

Friday, June 16, 6 to 8 p.m.

Members: $18/Non-members: $20

Join us for an evening of curated stories on the theme of “In the Weeds,” however our storytellers choose to interpret it! Your hostess is Sheela Clary, local storytelling teacher and Moth StorySLAM winner. She has been running and participating in storytelling events around Berkshire County for eight years and will be teaching a one-day storytelling crash course over the summer and a longer class in the fall. You can stay up to date on those and other goings-on through her website, sheelasc.com.

Sleepy Cat Farm Field Study

IN-PERSON OFFSITE

Friday, June 23, 10 a.m. to noon

Members: $50/Non-members: $55

Transportation from BBG: $10

Join us as we explore Sleepy Cat Farm in Greenwich, Conn. Sleepy Cat Farm is the vision of one man, Fred Landman, who acquired the handsome Georgian Revival house and grounds in 1994. Committed to the concept of harmony between house and garden, he has dedicated himself to the landscape to create “a garden of which the house could be proud.” Collaborating with Greenwich architect Charles Hilton and noted landscape architect Charles J. Stick and drawing inspiration from travels in Europe and Asia, Landman has done just that. The landscape unfolds in a series of garden rooms. Hillsides and vistas change daily, monthly, almost minute by minute, in this undulating landscape of surprises, intrigue and unexpected beauty. Evocative names add to the atmosphere, including the Golden Path, the Grotto, the Iris Garden, the Spirit Walk, the Perennial Long Border Garden, the Pebble Terrace, the Woodland Walk. Buildings and follies were added, also with storybook names — the Celestial Pavilion, the Barn, the Limonaia, the Chinese Pavilion, the Cat Maze and Arbor. Down the hill from the main house is an organic farm that supplies produce to the community, a project of Landman’s wife, Seen Lippert, a professional chef who worked with Alice Waters. Transportation from BBG for an additional $10 fee is available for a limited number of participants.

Summer Plein Air Painting at BBG

IN-PERSON at BBG

Wednesdays, July 5 though 26, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Members: $235/Non-members: $255

Join us this summer to explore BBG in watercolor. It’s all here: charming structures, beautiful landscapes, flowers, the pond, and so much more — at the tip of your brush! We’ll find inspiration in a different area of the Garden each week. Two sessions are available – join us for either session, or both. Accommodations will be in place in case of inclement weather. Class will generally begin with site selection, value sketch or study, and then on to the painting. The instructor will circulate to provide individual help. Constructive group critiques will encourage painters to learn from and with each other. A supply list with suggestions for comfortable plein air painting is available.

Sunset Yoga in the Garden

IN-PERSON at BBG

Thursdays, July 6 through Sept. 14, 5:15 to 6:15 p.m.

Members: Free/Non-members: Free

Yoga in the Garden is returning to the Great Lawn at Sunset, down the hill from Center House! This free outdoor program is appropriate for all skill levels and a perfect way to end the day. Classes are led by Kathi Cafiero, a Kripalu-certified yoga instructor who has been teaching the physical and mental benefits of yoga for over 20 years. Please bring your own mat and props. No bathroom facilities are available. Classes will be canceled for inclement weather. Please check the programs page on our website for updates.

Cultivating Cures: The Botany, Ecology and Lore of Northeast Medical Flora

IN-PERSON at BBG

Wednesday, July 12, 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.

Member: $30/Non-member: $35

Professor Judith Sumner is a Massachusetts-born botanist who specializes in ethnobotany, flowering plants, plant adaptations, and garden history. She has taught at the college level and at many botanical gardens, including the Arnold Arboretum and Garden in the Woods. Her studies have taken her to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the British Museum (Natural History). For several years, under the pseudonym of Laura Craig, she authored a column, “The Gardener’s Kitchen,” in Horticulture Magazine. Her most recent book is “Plants Go To War: A Botanic History of World War II.” This lecture is jointly presented by BBG and the Lenox Garden Club.

Natural Plant Communities

HYBRID

Thursday, July 13, 6 to 8 p.m. (online)

Saturday, July 15, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. (field)

Member: $65/Non-member: $70

Join ecologist Ted Elliman for an exploration of native New England plant communities. A Thursday evening Zoom lecture will cover many of the forest, meadow and wetland habitats found in Berkshire County, discussing their physical and ecological features — topography, geology, soils, and moisture— as well as their characteristic plant associations, including both common and rare plants. The Saturday field trip will take us to a variety of forested, open and wetland habitats, and we will take a close look at the flora and features of each of them. Ted will also discuss the impacts of invasive species and possible changes to natural communities in response to climate change. We will travel in BBG’s passenger van. Please dress for the weather, wear comfortable shoes (we will be walking nearly the entire day) and bring a bagged lunch if attending the Saturday field study. * Rain date for field day, Sunday, July 16.

Field Study: The Garden of Bunny Williams

IN-PERSON OFFSITE

Thursday, July 20, 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.

Members: $50/Non-members: $55

Transportation from BBG: $10

Interior designer and garden book author Bunny Williams’s intensively planted 15-acre estate has a sunken garden with twin perennial borders surrounding a fishpond, a seasonally changing parterre garden, a year-round conservatory filled with tropical plants, a large vegetable garden with flowers and herbs, a woodland garden with meandering paths, and a pond with a waterfall. There are also a working greenhouse and an aviary with unusual chickens, an apple orchard with mature trees, a rustic Greek Revival-style pool house folly, and a swimming pool with 18th-century French coping. Transportation from BBG for an additional $10 fee is available for a limited number of participants.

Summer Plein Air Painting

IN-PERSON at BBG

Wednesdays, Aug. 2 through 30, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Members: $265/Non-members: $275

Join us in August to explore BBG in watercolor. We’ll find inspiration in a different area of the Garden each week. This is the second of two sessions available this summer. Accommodations will be in place in case of inclement weather. Class will generally begin with site selection, value sketch or study, and then on to the painting. The instructor will circulate to provide individual help. Constructive group critiques will encourage painters to learn from and with each other. A supply list with suggestions for comfortable plein air painting is available.

Field Study: Pom’s Cabin Farm

Friday, Aug. 11, 3 to 5 p.m.

Members: $50/Non-members: $55

Transportation from BBG: $10

Pom’s Cabin Farm is a richly-varied, 27-acre piece of land along the Housatonic River that is nurtured and celebrated by its owner, Dale McDonald, and her dedicated team headed by horticulturist Robin Zitter. Robin’s initial priority in 2007 was to get a sense of place and to develop a relationship with it, “working with the forces of nature to enhance and steward the land.” By listening to the land and through observation, she leads her devoted team toward a richly interconnected and regenerative system that values all who live here. Diversity is expressed through differing habitats including meadows, woodlands, wetlands, and a dynamic floodplain along the Housatonic River. Thoughtful ecological practices encourage native plants through a variety of restorative approaches: Paths now wend through woods, whose dominant understory of Japanese barberry is considerately managed. Meadows have been seeded with native flowers and grasses, and an edible human imprint is threaded throughout the landscape with a variety of cultivated vegetables and fruits. A large blueberry field is home to cultivated and native bee housing projects and neighboring shiitake log cultivation. Hedges of raspberries, red, black and white currants, gooseberries and elderberries nestle above the floodplain. Energy conservation is addressed through solar panels, a geothermal system, cisterns, and vegetated swales, even as PCF explores solar thermal and compostable heat sourcing. This landscape is an expression of historical, cultural and ecological life in the northwest corner of Connecticut. Transportation from BBG for an additional $10 fee is available for a limited number of participants.

SEPTEMBER

Overwintering Your Plants

IN-PERSON at BBG

Saturday, Sept. 9, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Members: $25/Non-member: $40

At the end of the summer, what do you do with all those special patio plants that you have fussed over for the summer months? This class will give gardeners tricks of the trade to protect their tender perennials, house plants, woody potted specimens, and succulent collections and encourage them to thrive during the winter season. Taught by Jenna O’Brien, this class will include cultivation, fertilizing, watering, and healthcare. Learn by doing, and take home some plant companions.

A celebration of the season: Tomatoes

IN-PERSON at BBG

Saturday, Sept. 9, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Members: $40/Non-members: $55

Join tomato maven Miriam Rubin as she talks all things tomatoes in this demo class. First, we’ll taste a sampling of heirlooms from Miriam’s garden so we can appreciate the differences in taste, juiciness and texture. Then Miriam will prepare some dishes from her book, Tomatoes. Recipes will include a lively curried tomato soup, a tomato pie and an heirloom tomato salad, all of which we’ll get to devour. She’ll also share tips about putting up the harvest, both canning and freezing, and she’ll explain which types of tomatoes work best for different purposes. You’ll be able to buy a personally signed copy of Tomatoes at the end of the class.

Fall Foliage Eco-Printing

IN-PERSON at BBG

Saturday, Sept. 16, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Members: $90/Non-members: $110

Join textile artist Maggie Pate in an introduction to eco-printing. Capture a moment in time with this seasonal workshop. Offered during summer with flowers or fall with local foliage. Students will leave with a luscious 100 percent silk charmeuse scarf that they will design and eco-print during the class.

Asters and Goldenrods

HYBRID

Thursday, Sept. 21, 6 to 8 p.m. (Zoom presentation)

Saturday, Sept. 23, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. (field studies)

Members: $65/Non-members: $75

The many kinds of goldenrods and asters are a visually striking and ubiquitous feature of our late summer and fall landscapes. However, since many of them look much alike, they can be a challenge to identify. This class, led by Ted Elliman , will focus on the identification features and habitats of about 40 species of goldenrods and asters, looking closely at the characteristics that help to distinguish them in the field. A Thursday evening Zoom will provide an overview of these species and their identification features, and the Saturday field trip to a location rich in both asters and goldenrods will provide the opportunity to see many of them in natural conditions. *Rain date for field day, Sunday, Sept. 24, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Cyanotype on Paper

IN-PERSON at BBG

Saturday, Sept. 23, 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.

Members: $40/Non-members: $50

Magical and simple cyanotypes are a camera-less technique that results in graphic blue and white prints. Developed in 1852, this alternative photographic process uses a lightsensitive solution on paper, sunlight, and pressed plants to make beautiful botanical images. All supplies, including pressed plant material, will be provided. Participants are encouraged to bring objects or pressed plants with interesting silhouettes from home to use in their compositions.

The Inner Harvest: A Meditation Gathering for the Autumnal Equinox, with mindfulness-in-nature facilitator Sandrine Harris

IN-PERSON at BBG

Saturday, Sept. 23, 5 to 6 p.m.

Members: $20/Non-members: $25

Experience the turn of the season at the equinox, with a contemplative process to cultivate the “inner harvest” with mindfulness facilitator Sandrine Harris. Through a fluid mix of outdoor walking, quiet sitting and guided moments for reflection, you are offered an opportunity to be with the seasonality of your life and energy in relationship with the rest of the natural world. All adults (18 years and older) are welcome, and no experience with mindfulness or meditation is needed. Please bring a yoga mat or blanket for outdoor sitting in the grass, and wear clothing and shoes suitable for outdoor walking. In the event of rain, this event will take place inside the main building at BBG.

Botanical Bounty: Creating and Using

Herbal Infused Oils Inspired by the Harvest Moon

IN-PERSON at BBG

Saturday, Sept. 30, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Members: $65/Non-members: $75

Delight in celestial inspired tea while making lip balms, skin salves and roll-on perfume inspired by the autumnal full moon! Enjoy a fun and educational experience as you learn about the healing properties of Calendula and create your own natural skincare products to take home. Calendula has been used for years internally and externally as a healing herb, and no first aid kit should be without this super all-purpose ointment! With the help of instructor Nicole Irene , you will be guided through the process of making your own products, from selecting the right ingredients to packaging and labeling. You will also have the opportunity to customize your products with essential oils. You will come away from this class with an understanding of how to harvest, dry and use Calendula, while sipping farm-fresh herbal tea and enjoying the community of like-minded plant people. The energetics, properties, and myriad of uses for this plant will be discussed. Cost includes all of your supplies and products you will take home.

JOIN BERKSHIRE BOTANICAL GARDEN AND ClASSICAL EXCURSIONS AS WE

Discover the Gardens of the Netherlands

Since the Age of Discovery in the 15th century, the Dutch have explored the world. Their ships reached the Americas, South Africa and Australia. This incredible expansion of their empire led to the founding of the Dutch East India Company in 1602 and the Dutch West India Company in 1621.

These titans of trade introduced hundreds of plant species to the shores of the Netherlands after their journeys. Only a few years later, in 1638, Hortus Botanicas was constructed in the heart of Amsterdam, featuring botanical treasurers brought back by these explorers and traders. Hortus Botanicus is one of the oldest botanical gardens in Europe and one of the many sites we will enjoy on our journey.

Classical gardens on grand estates and intimate lush city gardens are a staple of the Dutch landscape. In the 1980s, a new style emerged that would change the face of gardening across the Netherlands and around the world. The Dutch New Wave Garden movement promoted a naturalistic approach to planting design embraced and emulated worldwide.

Piet Ouldolf, the movement’s most prominent designer, has described his process this way: “My biggest inspiration is nature. I do not want to copy it but to recreate the emotion.”

Traveling through the Netherlands, we will immerse ourselves in the gardens of Oudolf and his contemporaries. We will explore the intersection of these classical and modern approaches to garden design. Our travels will take us to historic gardens, castles, charming towns, and exciting contemporary spaces.

TO REGISTER

To register your interest for this unique excursion supporting the Berkshire Botanical Garden, please contact office@ classicalexcursions.com or call Lani Summerville at 413-446-8728 or visit berkshirebotanical.org.

GUEST LECTURES

One of our guest lecturers will be Nico Kloppenburg, garden designer based near Groningen, in the historic village of Mantgum. He will share his passion for historic gardens and give insights contemporary garden design.

OUR HOTELS:

Sofitel Legend the Grand Amsterdam

We will be staying four nights. With a canal at its front yard, one cannot help but enjoy the uniqueness of this amazing city. Parts of the building date to 1411 when it served as a convent. The complex has served many uses since then. The hotel is central to the city. It features multiple restaurants and bars, plus a lush courtyard for quiet enjoyment and meals.

PRINSENHOF Hotel in Groningen

We will be staying three nights. The building’s origin lies with the religious community Brethren of Communal Life. Its members lived here rather modestly around 1436 and rebuilt their dwelling into an impressive church in which the brasserie is situated. The conversion of the property took place in 2012, and it became a four-star boutique hotel with two high-end restaurants. The hotel features an elaborate formal garden, topiary garden rooms and planted beds.

Please join us for a week of wonderful explorations of historic and contemporary gardens and structures in the Netherlands!

The Hortus Botanicus, in Amsterdam, is one of the world’s oldest botanical gardens.

David Stanley Photo

Royal Palace of Het Loo was built as a summer home and hunting grounds of the Dutch royal family. Wikimedia Commons

Life Lessons on Community and Kindness

By Margaret Leahy

Each year, as the season begins to wind down here at the Garden, our offsite programming at local schools picks back up. If you were to be a fly on the wall in our Berkshire Botanical Garden offices, at the height of summer you would see the palpable excitement of the Education team as it plans for fall and winter.

The feeling is not dissimilar to that of a child looking forward to the first day of school. We bustle around, planning our gardening lessons, and we prepare to meet students who have enrolled in Farm and Garden Club.

Afterschool programming during the fall and winter months is unique because, while there is still much to do in a garden, the time of planting and harvesting has all but ended. This means we spend more time working on lessons focused on nature-based crafts and cooking with our students.

For instance, last fall, students at Reid and Herberg Middle Schools in Pittsfield used the finished crafts they worked on during the cooler months to build their connections with each other and their wider community through a session-long service project. All of the nature-based crafts made throughout the session were eventually sold at Berkshire Botanical Garden’s Holiday Marketplace, and the money was donated to two Pittsfieldbased organizations.

After learning a bit more about a few different local charitable organizations, students used a rank-choice voting system to decide which that they felt the most connection to. Students at Herberg chose to donate to Strong Little Souls, which provides care bags, gifts and monetary support to families facing childhood cancer. Students at Reid decided on the Christian Center, which provides hot meals and clothing to members of the community.

After students chose the organization to which they wished to donate, they began the work of making products to be sold at Holiday Marketplace. Every week, they learned about the specific craft, its connection to the garden or the natural world, and they worked with their hands to create the product.

They made mini birdfeeders, beeswax paper, needle felted art, wreaths, and tea bags. The week before Holiday Marketplace, the students made a poster to promote their crafts and priced all of their products, which allowed them to reflect on the time and energy spent on their service. Ultimately, the students in Farm and Garden were able to raise $120 for the charities they had chosen.

This project provided students with the space to cultivate their creativity while collaborating with their peers. It also gave them the autonomy to decide on a charity and pricing of crafts. On top of this, the students learned that community service requires “all hands on deck.” That lesson was underscored when Madison Quinn, founder of Strong Little Souls, spoke to

Students at Reid Middle School in Pittsfield benefit from Berkshire Botanical Garden’s youth education programs. The nature-based crafts they are creating here were eventually sold at Berkshire Botanical Garden’s Holiday Marketplace, and the money was donated to two Pittsfield-based organizations.

Herberg students about her foundation and the families she serves.

Visitors to Holiday Marketplace not only bought finished products, but also kindly remarked on the students’ hard work (and even donated without a purchase). The schools’ administrators were receptive and helpful every step of the way. Being at the age where collaboration and kindness can feel difficult at times, the middle schoolers learned to cultivate such skills and virtues — and they went above and beyond to give back.

HORTICULTURE CERTIFICATE PROGRAM 2023-2024

The Horticulture Certificate Program is a noncredit, adult enrichment program designed for the professional, aspiring professional or serious home gardener. Students can choose either to take classes towards receiving a certificate, or audit individual classes of interest. Staffed by seasoned and practicing horticulturists and landscape designers, these in-depth classes provide a strong foundation for all horticultural pursuits — whether one is exploring or advancing career goals or simply acquiring or expanding their knowledge, skills and enjoyment of gardening. Classes include lectures, hands-on workshops and field trips.

Through seven core courses, Level I students learn material essential for a foundation in good gardening practices. These courses are sequentially designed, beginning in September and progressing through April.

Core Curriculum:

Herbaceous Plants

Understanding Woody Plants

Soil Health and Structure

Plant Health Care

Plant Propagation

Sustainable Garden Care and Maintenance Landscape Design I

Upon completing the Level 1 Horticulture Certificate Program, students can work towards additional Advanced Certificates in the following areas:

n Advanced Horticulture

n Landscape Design

n Sustainable Land Stewardship

n Native Plant Landscapes

Registration for this program will begin July 1. Learn more at berkshirebotanical.org

BBG Members: $190/Non-Members: $205

Herbaceous Plants

This intensive four-session class explores the world of herbaceous plants, from their identification, selection and use in the garden, through their basic botany, life cycle and propagation. Participants are asked to create a final project highlighting a genus or plant family related to the curriculum. A part of the Level 1 horticulture core curriculum, this class is essential for the committed gardener and includes lectures, hands-on activities, field study and group discussion. The class aspires to give participants a deeper understanding of annuals, perennials and ornamental vegetables and their role in the garden. Students should dress for outdoor field study. All students participating in this class as part of the Horticulture Certificate Program are required to complete a final project.

Understanding Woody Plants

This four-session course will focus on the bones of the garden with a survey of ornamental woody plants for residential landscape design. It will cover ornamental shrubs, small flowering trees, shade trees, and broadleaf and needle evergreens. Students will become familiar with the many garden-worthy woody plants that thrive in Zone 5. The course covers plant ID, selection, siting, cultivation, and possible design uses. Students should dress for outdoor field study. All students participating in this class as part of the Horticulture Certificate Program are required to complete a final project.

Understanding Soil Health and Structure

This four-session course will explain how plant growth is affected by soils, from drainage to pH and nutrients. Learn how to evaluate soils, improve those that are less than ideal and amend soils for specific garden uses. Fertilizers, soil amendments, making and using compost, moisture management and the pros and cons of mulching will be covered. Students need to get a soil sample before class and bring the results to the first class.

Plant Healthcare

This program focuses on factors that affect plant health care, including insects, diseases, pathogens, and abiotic influences. Basic diagnostic techniques will be taught. Learn to minimize potential problems through proper site preparation, plant selection and placement. Managing problems using biological, chemical and cultural techniques will be discussed with a focus on integrated pest management.

Cuttings

Science of Plant Propagation

Learn about the art and science of plant propagation. Focus on the basic botany needed to understand and successfully propagate plants. Sexual and asexual propagation methods, including sowing seeds, cuttings, grafting, layering, and division, will be covered. Students will learn the fascinating science behind propagation along with the various techniques used to create new plants.

Sustainable Garden Care and Maintenance

Learn about the maintenance considerations that should be integrated into the design process. Students’ horticultural knowledge will expand to factor sustainable maintenance concerns with cost-effectiveness into plant selection. Learn procedures for perennials, woody plants and lawns, including transplanting, staking, fertilizing, winterizing, mulching, plant pathology, and pest control with an emphasis on deer control.

BBG Members: $250/Non-member: $275

Landscape Design I

This design course will introduce students to the design process — the systematic way designers approach a site and client. The course will include a series of simple projects that will end with a garden designed by the students. Learn design principles such as form, balance, repetition, line, texture, color, and spatial relationships. Additionally, students will be introduced to landscape history and how it helps the designer resolve and inspire garden design.

WINDY HILL FARM

S uperb p lant S , e xten S ive K nowledge o ut S tanding Quality , S election & v alue

We offer our own Berkshire field-grown specimens, including Chinese or Kousa dogwood; the native Berkshire strain of Cornus florida; American, European Green and Copper beech; native birch; hybrid lilacs; viburnums; hydrangea paniculata selections; American Fringe trees; witchhazels; blueberries; winterberries; espaliered fruit trees; mature apple and pear trees; herbaceous and tree peony selections. O

For advertising opportunities, please call 413-298-3926.

THE GARDEN CONSERVANCY

O pen Days 2023

Visit America’s most interesting,creative, and inspiring private gardens through the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days Program.

Our 2023 season includes many exciting garden-visiting opportunities, Digging Deeper programs, and other educational offerings throughout Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, and beyond.

See You in the Gardens!

Open Days is The Garden Conservancy’s signature program, supporting its mission to preserve, share, and celebrate America’s gardens and diverse gardening traditions for the education and inspiration of the public.

Spring-Summer Cuttings: 4.75”W x 3.5 “H www.websterlandscapes.com

gardenconservancy.org/open-days

Photo: Wit Mckay Garden (Williamstown, MA)

Become a Part of the Garden, from the Ground Up!

Membership is a wonderful way to honor the gardeners and garden-lovers in your life. Join or renew today!

Give the perfect gift: membership to Berkshire Botanical Garden! Our Membership levels provide a variety of benefits, including but not limited to:

n Unlimited free admission to the Garden

n Special members-only events

n 10% discount at the Garden’s Visitor Center Gift Shop

n Early buying privileges and 10% off all purchases at the annual Plant Sale

n Free subscription to Cuttings, the Garden’s magazine

n Advance notice and exclusive discounts on classes, lectures and workshops including Rooted in Place, Winter Lecture, and Farm in the Garden Camp

n Free or discounted reciprocal admission to over 100 participating gardens, arboreta and conservancies throughout the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean

n Discounts on purchases at local and online nurseries, garden centers and retailers

n Based on Membership level, benefits in NARM and ROAM reciprocal museum admission programs

n Free subscription to Better Homes and Gardens

Of course, the most important benefit is helping support a treasured community resource and our mission to educate and inspire the public about gardening and the preservation of our environment.

Memberships support the Garden while enriching lives! Place your gift order today!

Portrait photographer, professional level and corporate memberships are also available.

Contact Mariah Baca, membership manager, mbaca@berkshirebotanical.org or call 413-298-4532 for more information.

Are you a BBG member with a story to tell?

We love featuring members on our website and in Cuttings magazine. Call 413-320-4795 or email cuttings@berkshirebotanical.org.

Apparently Someone Had to Say It: Don't Garden in Leotards

We discovered these words of wisdom in the pages of Cuttings magazine from 52 years ago: