Gardens Aglow tickets are on sale NOW! Weekends and holidays do sell out, so get your tickets early to ensure your ideal day and time.
Diane welcomes all wreath-making elves, both those returning and those new to the craft, to learn about creating custom winter wreaths. Follow along as she demonstrates the techniques behind festive wreaths, table, and mantel arrangements. Upon registration, we’ll email you a list of materials needed to participate.
True native design encompasses more than simply using native plants. Considering ecological process in the design, planting, and management of native landscapes may very well be the missing components. This presentation examines how alternative approaches on everything from selecting, arranging, and spacing plants to the simple act of weeding can yield a more easily maintained landscape, one that express the beauty and ecological richness of our native surroundings.
Managing hydrology in cities presents profound design challenges including: finding space for daylighting and unsealing of pavement; managing urban flooding from extreme precipitation events; and restoring surface and subsurface water quality. These challenges are increasingly complex, given climate change and global urbanization. Landscape professionals have the skills and knowledge needed to meet these challenges while, at the same time, bringing beauty and resilience to our cities.
This talk will cover the above-ground aspects of greenhouse production and how to make it more productive, efficient, and profitable. Jeff Marstaller, greenhouse grower and owner of solar-powered Cozy Acres in North Yarmouth, will share his experience and a variety operations factors to consider, such as location, resources, and business model. He will speak to a spectrum of subtopics including selection, timing and quantities of crops, potted plant production, processes, goals and expectations, and details of plant sales and distribution. Both the beginner and the experienced greenhouse grower will find a valuable chance to network and share knowledge among peers.
Monday, January 25, March 1, and Saturday, May 15 Join landscape designer Larry Weaner as he guides students through the step-by-step process of designing native, ecology-based landscapes for New England. Specifics will include site analysis, species selection and arrangement, and the creation of ecological, process-based management specifications. Techniques to artfully combine all of these considerations will be woven throughout the program.
Growing edibles, especially natives, is a practice gaining traction in New England’s landscape industry. Incorporating native and wild edible plants provides a number of benefits; it adds biodiversity to the landscape, and eating produce straight from the garden deepens a connection to nature. Andy Brand, the Gardens’ Curator of Living Collections, will discuss some of his favorite perennial native edibles, from the woody to the herbaceous, highlighting design applications for both function and beauty.
Global insect declines and three billion fewer birds in North America are a bleak reality check regarding the how poorly our current landscape designs sustain the plants and animals that sustain us. The good news is there are steps we can take. We are nature’s best hope, and Doug Tallamy will discuss simple actions each of us can—and must—take to reverse declining biodiversity.
Vines, especially edible vines, have been designed into gardens for centuries as canopy, food, and privacy, adding contrast and dimension to any landscape setting. This presentation will discuss new and classic varieties, plus how to manage the grapes, hardy kiwis, strawberries, and hops that work well in Maine landscapes. David Handley, berry fruit specialist at Highmoor Farm, will discuss what's available and appropriate for different applications and review growth habits, flowering times, colors, and what varieties will provide fruit through much of the season.
Renae Moran, a fruit tree specialist at Highmoor Farm for UMaine Cooperative Extension, will discuss a selection of fruit trees for the home landscape, how much space they need, and the basics of espalier training for small spaces. Dwarf cherries, apples, and new peach varieties are just a few of the options to consider, all appropriate for a variety of landscape applications. Join us to learn more about, or to refresh and update, your fruit tree repertoire.
A sustainable and ecologically sound turf system succeeds when it is built on a foundation of sound agronomic practices matched to site characteristics and turf performance objectives. We will consider how factors such as aspect, light, soil condition and health, proximity to environmentally sensitive areas, and degree of turf maturity can inform decisions regarding implementation and timing of key cultural practices. In particular, we will examine the selection and establishment of appropriate turfgrass species and cultivars as an essential component of turf sustainability.
What's the difference between a wild plant and a garden crop? MOFGA's organic crop specialist, Caleb Goossen, will speak about seed selection and seed saving, identify the differences between wild plants and modern hybrid cultivars, and the strengths and weaknesses that might influence your decision to grow these wild-to-domestic varieties. MOFGA's landscape coordinator, Jack Kertesz, will share some of his favorite underutilized edible annual and perennial plants to incorporate into a variety of gardens or naturalized into the landscape.
Urban trees are indispensable in making our cities livable. In the past 15 years, researchers in urban forestry have developed methods of quantifying the ecosystem benefits provided by urban trees. In our increasingly paved cities, tree services are essential, as it has become clear that poor practices in tree selection and soil preparation have reduced the potential benefits of planting such trees. As our metropolitan areas are so heterogeneous, not all trees will do well in all sites. However, the most ubiquitous constraint to healthy, urban tree growth is soil compaction and limited accessible soil volume, leading to stunted trees that cannot withstand increasingly hot and dry summers. Fortunately, there are many practices that can overcome these challenges.
Too often, gardeners rush to buy seeds and seedlings before considering placement, growth habit, and time of harvest. In this class, Ellen Ecker Ogden, author of The New Heirloom Garden, will take you through the process of selecting and growing plants from seed, the reasons to procure seedlings, and where in a garden plants perform best to yield successful, tasty produce, easy growth, and beauty. Discussion will include best varieties for flavor, fragrant and edible flowers, growing in succession, saving your own seed for the following year, and much more. Ellen Ecker Ogden's book will be available for purchase on-site at the Gardenshop at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens.
Most Maine gardeners and general property owners have had to deal with deer venturing out of the wild and into the cultivated landscape. Deer are part of the ecology in Maine, but an increase in their populations, coupled with displacement of their habitat, have caused them to become a nuisance animal in residential garden settings. In this online lecture, landscape designer Cheryl Salatino will discuss design strategies, plant selection, and other deer deterrent and management methods to prevent your plant investments from being grazed upon.
Learn the fundamentals of pruning in this online lecture and demonstration. Enjoy it as a refresher or, if new to it, gain the confidence to know what, how, and when to prune. Whether you’ve attempted to prune in the past with unsuccessful results, or you've been afraid to prune because you're not sure if you'll damage your plants, you’ll leave this lecture far more confident. We'll discuss appropriate tools, timing, goals, and techniques that will assist you in your pruning projects.
Anna Fialkoff, Program Manager at Wild Seed Project, will offer a virtual presentation explaining and featuring native plant selection and gardening practices to support and increase biodiversity whcih lead to beautiful gardens with minimal manual labor.
Perennial polycultures aim to grow useful plants together in a way that minimizes competition and maximizes cooperation. They include functional species to fix nitrogen, to serve as groundcover, and to attract pollinators and other beneficial insects. Perennial crops providing fruit, nuts, and vegetables anchor such designs. This workshop will review best practices for perennial polyculture design, introduce a palette of species suited to Maine, and allow participants to design sample polycultures.
In this online lecture, Shawn Jalbert, nurseryman and plant propagator at Native Haunts, will share the tricks to sowing, growing, and collecting the seeds of our native perennials, plants that thrive in woodlands or any shade-garden setting. He’ll discuss the ecologically responsible and effective ways to grow native plants from seed, resulting in a healthy, green living carpet that can operate as a long-term, cost-effective, and low-maintenance mulch.
Join us for a visually captivating virtual introduction to the life inhabiting CMBG’s wetlands. From inconspicuous invertebrates to loveable herptiles (i.e., amphibians), discover the diversity that flourishes in these wetland waters. CMBG's Bridget VerVaet will help students learn ways to find and identify these creatures during their own nature walks.
This program is alternately available as an outdoor field-study class.
Join Alicia Miller, our Lepidoptera specialist, to learn more about some of Maine’s native butterfly and moth species. This virtual slideshow presentation will explore key identifying features of different Lepidoptera including morphology, adaptations, difference in range and habitat, and evolutionary history. We’ll discuss the importance of host and nectar plants and how you can help support Maine’s native species right in your own backyard.
This course can be taken on its own or to accompany the “Pollinators: Butterflies and Moths” field-study course.
Soil, compost, and mulches are fundamental elements for the garden, but it’s easy to become confused, overwhelmed, or unsure about what’s what. Mark Hutchinson, Soil and Compost Educator at the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, will discuss these elements, addressing in-ground and above-ground applications. Mark will provide an overview of proper selection of manufactured soil blends, mulches, and amendments and cover the basics of the soil chemistry and biology that determine the need for specified amendments.
Mark Hutchinson is an Extension Professor with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension with over 20 years of compost experience, including teaching and researching. He currently oversees the University of Maine Compost Research and Education Center at Highmoor Farm in Monmouth, Maine. Mark's research is focused on the use of compost in agronomic systems and the compost process. Mark travels internationally to consult on large-scale composting systems.
In this webinar, Gary Fish, Maine’s State Horticulturist, will introduce and discuss common pests, including noxious to invasive insects, blights, rusts, diseases, and deficiencies. This class is geared toward those who aren’t necessarily scientists, but who thoroughly enjoy gardening and want to learn the symptoms and signs of infestation as well as prevention and management strategies. Students are welcome to e-mail pictures of specific plant concerns in advance of class to the class host, Irene Barber.
Gary Fish is the State Horticulturalist at the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry. He is a past coordinator of the Maine YardScaping Partnership and manager of the Pesticide Control Board. He has a B.S. in forest and wildlife management from the University of Maine, College of Forest Resources and has been a licensed professional forester since 1985. An aspiring landscape and nature photographer, he attributes his love of plants to his mother and her beautiful rose and rock gardens.
Get to know your backyard pollinators by exploring the diversity of northeastern bees. This virtual bees-and-beyond tour will teach you to recognize bees and distinguish one species from another. We will also explore their lifestyle, nesting habits, and the unique adaptations that make them nature’s best pollinators. Learn about bees’ relationships with plants, including the latest discoveries in plant-pollinator interactions.
This course may be taken on its own, but makes a great accompaniment to the field-study course, “Pollinators: Bees and Beyond.”
Climate change is already impacting gardens, but how we garden can also impact climate change for good or for ill. We will look at projected changes to Maine’s climate and those gardening strategies we can employ to adapt to the new “normal.” We will also look at how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from our gardens, from fertilizers to rototilling, and techniques to remove excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in our soils and in living perennial biomass.
Eric Toensmeier is the author of Paradise Lot, Perennial Vegetables, and The Carbon Farming Solution, and co-author of Edible Forest Gardens. He served as a Senior Fellow for Project Drawdown, for whom he authored the recent publication Farming Our Way Out of the Climate Crisis. Eric’s home garden in Massachusetts is a highly diverse edible landscape on a tenth of an acre.
Seeds are rarely depicted in art, but that’s exactly what you’ll do in this online workshop. Using a standard microscope or handheld digital microscope, participants will explore, then depict, the textures and patterns of magnified seeds. After a brief discussion of vellum’s properties and types, we'll lay out drawings before transferring them to the material itself.
Ornamental grasses can add so much to a garden setting, whether in meadow restoration or to blend colors or add textural and structural accents to perennial gardens. Join Syretha Brooks, gardener and garden designer, for this interactive slideshow and learn more about the diverse selection of safe, non-native and native grasses to consider for your landscape. Syretha will offer management suggestions and habits for the species presented. Students also have the option to register for a separate ornamental grasses field-study tour happening later in the summer at the Gardens.
Syretha Brooks is a horticulturist and project manager at Pretty Flowers, a landscape and design company based in Brunswick, Maine. A native of Harpswell, Maine, she has a degree in fine arts from Smith College, which has greatly aided in developing her eye for plant designing and curation. Syretha was formerly a horticulturist at New York City’s Wave Hill Gardens before returning to her home state of Maine and working as a horticulturist here at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens for four years.
Prepare for a mindful gardening season by beginning or refreshing your understanding of horticulture. This introductory course will cover a wide variety of horticultural topics important for home gardeners to consider when growing and managing plants on any scale. Subjects will range from the theoretical to the practical, beginning with scientific foundations such as plant nomenclature, biology and ecology, pollination, and propagation. Other topics will include applied and artistic practices exploring plant selection, cultivation, and installation of new plants.
This is the first of three interactive lectures by renowned photographer Ron Rosenstock. Students may take just one or all three; each program lasts approximately 50 minutes with a Q&A period to follow. In this lecture, Ron Rosenstock will cover the various infrared conversions, advantages and disadvantages of each, and showcase samples of his work to illustrate key differences.
This session is cancelled.
On the grounds of Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, there are a number of freshwater wetlands where, in April and May, some notable symphonies are heard. Join CMBG’s wetland guardian, Bridget VerVaet, to explore our wetlands and learn more about the perishable, too-often forgotten underwater life that thrives there.
To provide safe, in-person classes at the Gardens, classes are held entirely outdoors and have been reduced to 12 people. We are practicing social distance protocols.
Do you have a hard time identifying one variety of birch from another? Did you know we have five different species of birch growing in Maine? Join District Forester Allyssa Gregory in a field study tour of the Gardens’ trees, and learn more about forest culture and where to find common species growing in different regions of the state. Discussion will include identification of tree species during the growing and dormant seasons, distinguishing features of evergreen species, and the ecological and economical functions of our forests.
Allyssa Gregory is the Maine Forest Service’s MidCoast District Forester. She obtained a forestry degree from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Her professional background includes rural forestry, urban forestry, horticulture, and structure firefighting. Allyssa is involved with the Tree Farm program as a certified inspector and is a Project Learning Tree facilitator.
To provide safe in-person classes at the Gardens, classes are held entirely outdoors and have been reduced to 12 students. We are practicing Maine CDC social-distancing protocols. Rain date: Saturday, June 12, 2021
Witness the seasonal evolution of the Burpee Kitchen Garden. Filled with edibles and floral accents, the garden’s wares range from arugula to zinnia, itty-bitty seedlings to 12-foot stalks. Diane Walden, the Burpee Kitchen Garden’s designer and tender, will share her favorite garden occupants. In this unconventional kitchen/cutting garden, you'll discover new and unusual selections as well as the classics, whether planted in-ground or in containers, vertically trained with tuteurs.
This session is about the bones of the garden and covers early-season preparation; the planting of the first crops, seeds, and plugs; establishing larger plants; and laying out tuteurs and pots. Learn about soil preparation and how to implement a design that will evolve long into the summer and autumn.
To provide safe, in-person classes at the Gardens, classes are held entirely outdoors and have been reduced to 12 students. We are practicing Maine CDC social-distancing protocols.
Rain date: Saturday, May 29, 2021
The mission of Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens is to inspire meaningful connections between people and nature and promote plant conservation through horticulture, education, and plant science.
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