Mostly Cloudy, 63°F
Mostly Cloudy, 63°F
Pennsylvania Horticultural Society
Check out the new website of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society–your resource for information on gardening, greening, and learning! Along with optimal navigability, it’s now easier to connect on social media with the PHS Social Stream, you can also ask questions about gardening and horticulture with Ask PHS, visit the PHS McLean Library, and get to know the PHS Blog.
Now more than 185 years old, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society continues in its mission to “motivate people to improve the quality of life and create a sense of community through horticulture.”
Pennsylvania Horticultural Society is also on Facebook.
Colarboretum: This project uses data collected from color sensors to visually display conditions across the Arnold Arboretum. The Arboretum is split into four zones. Each zone displays the colors of the sky, ground and surrounding trees.
Arbonauts: of trees, data, and teens
For over a year, metaLAB has been working with the scientific and curatorial staff of Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum to explore new digital lives for the institution—not only a much loved public park, but a collection of rare plants, a research site, and an evolving landscape—that will connect it to new audiences locally and globally.
One of the most exciting projects they’ve shared so far recently wrapped up at NuVu Studio, a “magnet innovation center for young minds” headquartered in Central Square. Founded by Saeed Arida, a 2010 PhD in the Design and Computation Program at MIT, NuVu offers a bracing vision of the power of STEAM: enlivening the left-brain work of making and investigating science, technology, engineering, and math with the expressive energy of the arts.
Read the full article, and be sure to view the project here.
Eastern Screech-owl. Photograph by Bob Mayer.
Come and see the new blog Arbotopia, observations of fauna and other things natural in the Emerald Necklace, created by Arnold Arboretum docent and birding expert Bob Mayer.
Seasonal highlights and wondrous sights abound throughout the Emerald Necklace, but not everyone can witness them simultaneously. But the experience can be shared! Head over to Arbotopia for a narrative and pictorial account of the best and beautiful sights in Boston’s open park spaces, with a particular emphasis on The Arnold Arboretum.
And don’t forget to read about the Owls at the Arnold Arboretum!
Arbotopia is also on Facebook.
“What Makes the Reindeer Fly?”
Looking for something truly unique to do this holiday season?
The Lloyd Library and Museum in Cincinatti, Ohio presents “What Makes the Reindeer Fly?,” a special exhibit on hallucinogenic mushrooms, with a special focus on Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria Lam.), a mushroom that figures prominently in the development of the legend of Santa’s flying reindeer. This is the same mushroom that is often depicted in children’s literature, shows up as a theme in children’s toys, and in many other places.
Fly Agaric isn’t the only mushroom that has a role in cultural development. Many other psychedelic mushrooms play their part in many other cultures, as do non-psychedelic fungi. This exhibit features some of the earliest art texts about mushrooms, beginning in 1601 and working up through the twentieth century. Find out the scientific facts and the cultural significance associated with mushrooms and learn all the things you never knew you didn’t know…
Early Maps of the Arnold Arboretum
Come celebrate Geography Awareness Week with us and view these late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century maps and plans of the Arnold Arboretum held by the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at Boston Public Library.
Geography Awareness Week, sponsored by National Geographic Education, is observed each year in the third week of November and highlights the importance of geo-literacy and geo-education. A free workshop on Wednesday, November 14 and Saturday, November 17 will focus on the Geographic Information System (GIS) at the Arnold Arboretum, including an introduction to our Mobile Interactive Map application.
The Arnold Arboretum Horticultural Library holds over 650 full-size archival maps documenting historical views of our grounds, collections, hardiness zones, and more. We encourage you to contact us for more information, and to visit the library in person and online.
Illustration by Jeannetta vanRaalte.
American Society of Botanical Artists, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting public awareness of contemporary botanical art, honoring its traditions, and furthering its development.
The ASBA also publishes The Botanical Artist, a quarterly journal also held by the Arnold Arboretum Horticultural Library, along with other ASBA exhibition catalogs.
A historical guided tour of Kew Gardens
A tour around the historic gardens at Kew using images dating from the 1860s to 1930s
This virtual tour is one of many opportunities to view past and present together on Google partner Historypin.
Historypin helps people come together from across generations, cultures, and places to share small glimpses of the past and to build the story of human history.
Go Botany is a rich educational resource offered by the New England Wild Flower Society and funded by the National Science Foundation to encourage informal, self-directed education in botany for science students and beginning and amateur botanists. Professors, teachers, and environmental educators can share curricula and teaching ideas.
This web-based project builds on the Flora Novae Angliae, published by New England Wild Flower Society and Yale University Press and also available in the Arnold Arboretum Horticultural Library.
Self-Guided Walking Tours of Boston
The New England Landscape Design and History Association (NELDHA) offers online materials for self-guided walking tours of Boston’s parks, gardens, and green spaces. Maps, narratives, and additional resources unique to each neighborhood provide immersion and guidance for visitors of all ages.
NELDHA’s mission is to further the education of landscape professionals, to promote their professions, and communicate NELDHA’s commitment to landscape design, history, conservation, preservation, and stewardship of the land.
Metasequoia — Student Artwork
After a few weeks of researching various seed cones though drawings and painted studies, students in Paul Olson’s Junior Illustration class at MassArt were asked to make an illustration for a poster or a book based on an open Metasequoia seed cone and the plant’s reputation as a “living fossil.” Students also completed a final project of their own design, a piece inspired by their visit to the Arboretum’s Horticultural Library, the Herbarium, and the Living Collections of the Arnold Arboretum.
Illustration by Darren Soh.
The Forest Of The Future
Singapore—known worldwide as the “Garden City” because it has more than 300 parks—is poised to become the “City in a Garden.”
An ambitious project is converting 250 acres of waterfront property into a horticultural recreation area. The project includes a forest of “supertrees,” some fitted with solar panels to store energy for lighting them at night.
Read the article in Smithsonian magazine.
Photograph by Cea.
Mulai Kathoni
Jadav Payeng has been instrumental in converting a sand bar in the middle of the river Brahmaputra in Assam, India, into a huge forest. His work over the past 30 years is receiving recognition around the world by tourists and film makers.
Read the full article.
View: Ways of Seeing
May 5 – August 3, 2012
The Lloyd Library and Museum is celebrating the 100th anniversary of Japan’s gift of cherry trees to our nation’s capital with a look at Cincinnati’s own connections to Japan, cherry trees, and the Lloyds.
Contemporary artists Alysia Fischer, Setsuko H. LeCroix, and Charles Woodman investigate nature through sculpture, painting and video, all in celebration of the famed cherry tree.
Frederick Law Olmsted Papers Project
April, 2012 marks the 190th anniversary of the birth of Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903), the celebrated landscape architect who designed the Arnold Arboretum as the second-largest link in Boston’s Emerald Necklace.
National Association for Olmsted Parks (NAOP) has created a website to coincide with the ongoing Frederick Law Olmsted Papers Project. Since its inception in 1972, this project presents the most significant of Olmsted’s extensive writings from 1840–1882 in a twelve-volume series of books. The next volume, Plans and Photographs of Public Parks, Recreation Grounds, Parkways, Park Systems and Scenic Reservations (Supplementary Series Volume 2), will be published this year, and additional volumes are also in development.
Arnold Arboretum Horticultural Library holds each volume of the series published thus far.
Wonder Tree: Create a Green Oasis
What makes a Wonder Tree?
Willows are a blend of beauty, diversity, adaptability, and utility which marks them aside from many other temperate trees.
Wonder Tree can help you grow your own willows for use and ornament. You can watch these trees mature to full size within your own life time, or you can use their shoots as raw material for other products and activities.
The collection of the Arnold Arboretum Horticultural Library includes a folio with beautiful color illustrations of willows (Salix spp.): Salictum woburnense or, A catalogue of willows, indigenous and foreign, in the collection of the Duke of Bedford at Woburn abbey; systematically arranged by James Forbes (the Duke’s gardener).
Read more about Salictum woburnense and John Russell, the 6th Duke of Bedford of Woburn Abbey.
Detail: Rosebay Oleander (Nerium oleander). All image rights remain with Anna Laurent.
Botany Blueprint is a collection of botanical photography and a study of plant design, specifically regarding the form and function of seed pods.
Individually, each photograph is a portrait of a unique specimen; as a series, the photographs become an inquiry into the evolution and diversity of plant design.
Laurent’s photographs are published in her column at Print magazine, where she writes about the form and function of seed pods.
Intended to advance botanical literacy and make plants relevant to a broad audience, the project will be compiled in a forthcoming book.
Photogenic drawing by William Henry Fox, 1839.
Lacock Abbey was originally built as a nunnery in southwest England in 1232. When William Henry Fox Talbot came to live there in 1827, he grew his own botanical garden and photographed the plants using the negative-positive process of his own invention, providing the basic method for almost all 19th and 20th century photography.
Restored by the National Trust in 1999, the abbey is now the Henry Fox Talbot Museum. Plant Network explains how Fox Talbot’s Botanic Garden was restored and its photographic legacy preserved.
Photographer Mary Kocol also traces the development of modern photography and its botanical beginnings with Talbot in The Garden in Early Art Photography. Her website also contains beautiful color photographs taken with a toy camera at the Arnold Arboretum.
‘Knit one, Pearl one 1’ by Ellie Davies. All image rights remain with Ellie Davies.
From the exhibition catalog of her work:
“Davies has intervened in areas of the forest landscape
to create images that express her relationship to the
forest. And though each body of work stands
alone as a distinct series, together they
trace the trajectory of Davies’
ongoing exploration of the forest
as a cultural landscape.”
View of the gardens at Soledad, Cuba. Image courtesy of Massachusetts Historical Society.
The Atkins Family in Cuba: A Photograph Exhibit
In the late 19th century, Boston merchant Edwin F. Atkins was a dominant force in the U.S.-Cuban sugar market. His firm, E. Atkins & Co., established sugarcane plantations along the southern coast of Cuba near the cities of Cienfuegos and Trinidad. From the 1840s through the 1920s, the Atkins family successfully operated their sugar business on the island, safely seeing it through the abolition of slavery, Cuba’s fight for independence from Spain, and the changing agricultural and industrial practices of sugar production.
The photographs in this online exhibition are a sample of 419 photographs at the Massachusetts Historical Society that were taken and collected by members of the Atkins family in Cuba between 1884 and 1958. This collection, the Atkins Family Photographs, is a unique visual record of life and work on sugar plantations in Cuba during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In addition, these photographs also capture the changing face of Cuba before and after the Spanish-American War. The finding aid for Atkins Family Photographs is available here.
The Massachusetts Historical Society also holds the Atkins Family Papers, an extensive collection of records and papers that detail the activities of the Atkins family and the E. Atkins & Co. sugar interest in Cuba from 1854-1950. The finding aid for Atkins Family Papers is available here.
The Atkins family also had an affiliation with the Arnold Arboretum, which administered the Atkins Institution in Cuba from 1932 to 1946. The Harvard Garden in Cuba-A Brief History by Marion D. Cahan published in Arnoldia describes how the Atkins Garden became a model for the development of many later tropical botanical gardens. You can read even more about the history of this garden, now the Cienfuegos Botanical Garden, Cuba online.
Dried botanicals are imported for varied uses including potpourri, decorative plant arrangements, and handicraft items. They consist of whole or sectioned fungi, fruits, seeds, leaves, and almost anything that is botanical, has abundant air spaces (“physical fixatives” for the synthetic oils), has structural interest, and/or is inexpensive (e.g. lawn sweepings and waste products of other industries). These botanicals may include potentially toxic species, invasives, or even plant diseases.
Dr. Arthur O. Tucker of Claude E. Phillips Herbarium at Delaware State University contributed to the development this tool to help identify ingredients of imported potpourri. Interactive galleries, descriptions, fact sheets, and glossaries are provided.
The Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, America’s oldest natural history museum is kicking off their bicentennial celebration in 2012 with a countdown made up of “200 Years. 200 Stories” where you can meet some of their “quirkier personalities” and discover the secret stories behind many of their most well-known exhibits and scientific breakthroughs.
You can also read about the Academy’s history, their Center for Systematic Biology and Evolution and the offerings of an entire year of bicentennial events, programs, and exhibits.
Ever wonder what the name of that tree is growing on your street, or how old or how tall it is? If you live in San Francisco providing these answers is now a challenge for the whole community.
Both “experts and non-experts” alike have been invited to participate in an urban forest research project, the San Francisco Urban Forest Map. You can jump right into the map itself and see how the Map creators’ goal “to work toward building a complete, dynamic picture of the urban forest” works.
Not only will you find the tree’s number, scientific and common names, diameter, height, and nearby address, but also the tree’s amounts of stormwater intercepted, energy conserved, air pollution removed, carbon dioxide reduced and total Co2 it has stored to date.
BOTANIST
What do you get when you cross misanthropic black metal, hammered dulcimer, and obsession with plants? Just listen:
“Invoke the Throne of Veltheimia”
According to Botanist:
The songs of Botanist are told from the perspective of The Botanist, a crazed man of science who lives in self-imposed exile, as far away from Humanity and its crimes against Nature as possible. In his sanctuary of fantasy and wonder, which he calls the Verdant Realm, he surrounds himself with plants and flowers, finding solace in the company of the Natural world, and envisioning the destruction of man. There, seated upon his throne of Veltheimia, The Botanist awaits the day when humans will either die or kill each other off, which will allow plants to make the Earth green once again.
Enter the Verdant Realm here, and read the interview on NPR’s program “All Songs Considered.”
Botanist’s double-CD “The Suicide Tree / A Rose From the Dead” can be purchased here.
80 Years of History and Archives at the Montréal Botanical Garden
To mark its 80th birthday, the Montréal Botanical Garden, a Space for Life, invites everyone to visit the all-new virtual exhibition on its website, 80 Years of History and Archives at the Montréal Botanical Garden.
For Gilles Vincent, Director of the Botanical Garden, the exhibition “takes us back in time to discover the soul of the Botanical Garden and meet the people who created it, in particular Brother Marie-Victorin and landscape architect Henry Teuscher.”
The virtual exhibition is organized into three sections. The History of the Botanical Garden section takes visitors on a 24-stop historical path, through more than 300 archival images and documents.
The Magic and Myth of Alchemy
However one regards it as a science and philosophy, Alchemy provided the beginnings of chemistry, and certainly helped to develop the apparati of chemistry. It is part of the history of science, which is the history of human interaction with nature, and humanity’s attempts to harness the power of nature for very human needs and wants.
This exhibit at Cincinatti’s Lloyd Library and Museum traces the history, development, and personalities behind the “magic.” This seemingly esoteric study in fact formed the basis for modern medicine, and chemistry itself. Take a peek into a history that pre-dates even the Middle Ages.
Or rather, Have You Heard, “On Willows and Birches,” written by John Williams, Boston Pops Laureate Conductor for former BSO Principal Harpist Ann Hobson Pilot. “The atmospheric “On Willows” movement is prefaced by the Biblical quote “We hanged our harps upon the willows…” from Psalm 137. The lively, rhythmically vibrant “On Birches” notes a line from Robert Frost’s poem “Birches” — “One could do no worse than be a swinger of birches.”
The Archangel Ancient Tree Archive is an organization which is collecting genetic material from very large and old trees for preservation and to clone new trees for reforestation. Since 2008 they have collected 55 separate genotypes of old growth Coast Redwoods alone, as well as a variety of other samples from significant trees, from which they are propagating new trees.
Their website has videos explaining the work they are doing and their blog has up to the minute progress reports.
Darwin & gender: a new initiative
The works of Charles Darwin (1809-1882) may have helped form the basis of modern science, but he remains a controversial figure. His views on gender are no less provocative than his theory of evolution. University of Cambridge scholar Philippa Hardman helped launch the Darwin Correspondence Project to reveal his less-known writings about gender which paradoxically reflect the Victorian Era during which he worked.
The Darwin Correspondence Project provides access to at least 15,000 letters, written between 1821 and 1882, and “Darwin & Gender” is the newest feature to reveal his accomplishments and complexities.
Harvard Professor Sarah Richardson’s course Gender, Sex and Evolution also provides content to the site.
Images of Nature
Home to the largest natural history collection in the world, The Natural History Museum, London, has just opened a new exhibit of over 110 images of natural phenomena. Images of Nature spans 350 years, including modern images created by scientists, imagining specialists, photographers, and micro-CT scanners depicted alongside historic watercolors and paintings from artists such as bird illustrator John Gerrard Keulemans and botanical artist Georg Ehret.
The Museum’s website also has an audio slideshow, Images of Nature, which highlights selections from the Museum’s outstanding and extensive collection of more than a half-million artworks.
To learn how techniques for visually recording the natural world have developed since the seventeenth century, check out the Museum’s Art, Nature, and Imaging exhibit.
Central Park Entire,
The Definitive Illustrated Map
Edward S. Barnard, author of New York City Trees, teamed up with artist and art director Ken Chaya to create Central Park Entire, The Definitive Illustrated Map, a wonderful tree and trail map of Central Park.
The project website includes six videos that document the two-year process of making the map. Each video focuses on specific aspects of the Park and the challenges faced in mapping them. The map shows precise locations for each of the Park’s 19,600 trees, with a special icon denoting all 172 species represented.
The Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management has created a great resource for tips, tricks, and information on coastal landscaping. The site is prepared to assist with any obstacles that arise in landscaping on the coast including, wind, salt spray, storm waves, and shifting, parched, and sandy soils. The site also includes a list of plants best suited for the coastal conditions in Massachusetts, as well as suggestions as to where to buy them.
What are the plants, animals, fungi, and microbes that make up a forest? How do they interact? How do forests respond to climate, introduced species, land development, and other environmental change? Harvard Museum of Natural History’s exhibit, New England Forests answers all of these questions and more. Visitors will be able to explore three distinct New England forest landscapes, complete with flora and fauna. The goals of the exhibition are to enhance public understanding of the dynamic and varied nature of our forests and initiate public conversation about their use, conservation, and management.
Additionally, in fall 2011, the museum will host a series of public lectures, workshops, and symposia featuring Harvard faculty and other experts.
Charles Darwin’s Twitter
Now you can follow Charles Darwin’s every move on the Beagle via Twitter! The account, which is now nearly 2000 tweets strong, posts one liners from Darwin’s diary kept on his journey aboard the HMS Beagle. The tweets are posted on the corresponding day that Darwin wrote the words in his diary, 176 years ago. Geotagging has been enabled for tweets that include a location, so you can see exactly where Darwin was at that particular moment.
The account is maintained by an avid Darwin fan with the intent of exposing a new audience to “the humour, insight and imagination of the young Darwin as he begins to think about the marvellous, curious, and unexplained world he is circumnavigating.”
Greenscapes are beautiful landscapes that protect our water. Greenscapes Massachusetts is a multi-partner outreach effort that promotes water conservation and protection. Approximately half of the program is funded by the 40 municipalities that are served by the program. Every other spring, members of the Greenscapes Coalition produce a 20-page Resource Guide with information ranging from how to build Rain Gardens, to a beautiful way to clean and recycle stormwater, to Pesticide Alternatives that help prevent your lawn from becoming dependent on chemicals. The Guide’s full content is available on Greenscapes Massachusetts, or you can download a copy of the Guide itself from their website.
Friends of the Urban Forest
This year Friends of the Urban Forest, (FUF) celebrates 30 years of helping individuals and neighborhood groups plant and care for street trees and sidewalk gardens in San Francisco. Each year FUF provides financial, technical, and practical assistance and works with community members to plant more than 1,000 trees. In San Francisco, in most cases, property owners are responsible, by law, for care of adjoining street trees. FUF’s Tree Care program helps these trees survive and thrive.
Want hands-on experience? FUF welcomes volunteers and invites people of all skill levels to participate in Tree Planting, Sidewalk Gardening , Tree Tours and Citizen Forestry.
FUF’s online photo gallery documents people working together to create a larger, healthier urban forest.
Leonard Co
Commemorating Naturalists
Richard Conniff, author of The Species Seekers: Heroes, Fools, and the Mad Pursuit of Life on Earth is assembling a commemorative list of naturalists who have died while engaged in their scientific endeavors. This Wall of the Dead includes such recent tragedies as the murder of Leonardo Co (1953-2010) the Filipino botanist who, along with two assistants, was shot down while collecting seedlings of endangered trees in what the military claimed was a gun battle with rebel forces and California Academy of Sciences herpetologist Joseph Slowinski (1962–2001) who died by snakebite during the Academy’s biological expedition to northern Myanmar. Harvard’s David Boufford was one of the team members on this multidisciplinary expedition. The cause of some deaths, like John Lawson’s (1674-1711) Surveyor General of North Carolina and author of A New Voyage to Carolina who was executed on September 20, 1711 by the Tuskarora Indians are well documented, while other far more recent ones such as Frank Meyer’s (1875–1918) plant explorer for the USDA and Arnold Arboretum remain a mystery.
Corrections, additions, and comments to the list are welcome by the author on his blog and you can also link to the list on Twitter or elsewhere.
The People’s Garden Initiative, established in 2009 by the USDA challenges its employees to create gardens that are sustainable, benefit their communities, and are made through collaborative efforts. A partnership between USDA and Keep America Beautiful has resulted in over 1,230 People’s Gardens throughout the country teaching others how to nurture, maintain, and protect a healthy landscape.
Find a People’s Garden near you!
Working in collaboration with The University of Tennessee Libraries, the Arnold Arboretum Horticultural Library contributed to the Great Smoky Mountains Regional Project by providing access to album of historic images held in the Archives. The images in Views in The Great Smoky Mountains National Park are by the Thompson Brothers. The album’s provenance maybe surmised by its dedication.
Thompson Photo Products, a fourth-generation family-owned business, founded in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1902 offers reproductions of the archival photographs of James E. Thompson (1880-1976) son of the founder, and one of the brothers, who used his photographs of the Smoky Mountains to advocate for the creation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
You can see the original album in the Arnold Arboretum’s Archives: Views in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park
America’s Great Outdoors
In April 2010, President Obama established the America’s Great Outdoor Initiative to develop a conservation and recreation agenda worthy of the 21st century. The President directed the Secretaries of Interior and Agriculture, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality to lead this effort. During 2010, “Listening Sessions” were held coast to coast to listen and learn from people all over the country. You can also Watch the America’s Great Outdoors video. To date, over 100,000 comments and ideas have been submitted and you too can Submit Your Ideas & Join the Conversation, Share Your Story, or discover a list of resources to inspire you to Get Outdoors.
The Chocolate Connection
For a very special treat we invite you to immerse yourself in an online delight where Anna Heran, curator of the exhibit at the Lloyd Library and Museum, has created a banquet for chocolate lovers by bringing together Sloane’s medicinal interest in Theobroma cacao after being introduced to it as a drink in Jamaica, and the cultural and economic history chocolate has played both in the Americas and Europe.
New York City Parks
New York City has more than 1,700 parks, playgrounds and recreational facilities and The Daily Plant, a newsletter produced each business day details parks events, programs, and accomplishments. You can Explore Your Park, or see its monuments before you go. Learn about and see park history . or you if you want to know about the city’s landscape architect visit to European parks you can read Samuel Parson’s ( 1844-1923) nine page 1906 Report to the New York City Park Board online or to just learn about New York City Trees check out this book.
The American Chestnut Foundation
Since its inception in 1983, the goal of The American Chestnut Foundation has been restore the American chestnut tree to its native range within the eastern United States. Ongoing research to breed blight resistance is based in Virginia. The Foundation has also partnered with the Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative to plant American chestnuts on reclaimed surface mines. Volunteers are needed to help locate, pollinate, and harvest nuts from native American chestnut trees. Learn more in their Field Guide, in the Journal of the American Chestnut Foundation, or in Mighty Giants: An American Chestnut Anthology, a history of The American Chestnut Foundation.
Norman B. Leventhal Map Collection (NBLMC)
Boston Public Library
The Norman B. Leventhal Map Collection (NBLMC) at Boston Public Library was founded in 2004 as a public/private partnership to bring the BPL’s extensive map collection to the public through education, preservation of materials and digitization. The digitized maps available on their website include many maps of the Boston area and even some of the Arnold Arboretum, as well as maps old and new from around the world.
Mapping Boston, edited by Alex Krieger and David Cobb, is another great resource on Boston’s history, illustrated by many of its earliest maps.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault
Svalbard, Norway
1,300 kilometers from North Pole
Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which opened in 2007 and is located in the northernmost part of Norway, stores duplicates of seeds from gene banks around the world. If seeds are ever lost, they may be reestablished from the collection at Svalbard. The vault is an almost entirely underground facility, blasted out of the permafrost, and designed to store up to 2.25 billion seeds. The facility is designed to have an almost “endless” lifetime.
A Horticultural History Tour
Massachusetts Horticultural Society
Saturday, November 13 2010, 9:00am–4:00pm
MassHort is proud to announce a day-long series of lectures focused on the history of horticulture and landscape design in New England and beyond. The symposium will be hosted by John Furlong, FALA; emeritus director, Landscape Institute, Arnold Arboretum; faculty member, Boston Architectural College; distinguished instructor, Radcliffe Institute; and Gold Medal recipient and emeritus trustee, Massachusetts Horticultural Society.
Speakers include
Gerry Wright (as Frederick Law Olmsted), Allyson Hayward, David Barnett, PhD., Elizabeth S. Eustis, and Meg Muckenhoupt.
For Registration and further information visit the Massachusetts Horticultural Society.
i-Tree is a state-of-the-art, peer-reviewed software suite from the USDA Forest Service that provides urban forestry analysis and benefits assessment tools. The i-Tree Tools help communities of all sizes to strengthen their urban forest management and advocacy efforts by quantifying the structure of community trees and the environmental services that trees provide. Numerous communities, non-profit organizations, consultants, volunteers and students have used i-Tree to report on individual trees, parcels, neighborhoods, cities, and even entire states. By understanding the local, tangible ecosystem services that trees provide, i-Tree users can link urban forest management activities with environmental quality and community livability.
i-Tree Tools are in the public domain and are freely accessible. We invite you to explore this site to learn more about how i-Tree can make a difference in your community.