Event box

VIRTUAL Beatrix Potter's Gardening Life

VIRTUAL Beatrix Potter's Gardening Life

 

Helen Beatrix Potter was an English writer, illustrator, natural scientist and conservationist; she was best known for her children's books featuring animals, such as those in “The Tale of Peter Rabbit”.

When we think of Beatrix Potter, we imagine blue-jacketed bunnies and other fuzzy fauna. But Potter, an intriguing character in her own right, was also quite interested in plants and gardens. Her classic characters exist in a charmed world filled with flowers  and gardens, a world born of Potter’s own passion for nature.

This virtual  lecture by horticulturist, lecturer and author, Marta McDowell, explores Potter's botanical art, the flora and horticulture that appears in her "little books" and Potter's own garden in England's Lake District.

It is based on McDowell’s engaging and delightfully illustrated book, Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life:  The Plants and Places That Inspired  the Classic Children’s Tales (now in its seventh printing) in which she traces the development and eventual blossoming of Beatrix Potter’s  life as a gardener, from her childhood interest in plants,  through her realization as an artist and author, to her final years as an estate farmer and naturalist.

Marta McDowell teaches landscape history and horticulture at the New York Botanical Garden and consults for private clients and public gardens. A popular lecturer, she has been a featured speaker at locations ranging from the Chicago Botanic Garden to the Smithsonian Institution to the Beatrix Potter Society's Linder Lecture at the Sloane Club in London.  She worked as a horticulturist for five years at Reeves-Reed Arboretum in New Jersey. 

 Marta's writings typically follow the relationship between the pen and the trowel, that is authors and their gardens.  Her latest book is Emily Dickinson's Gardening Life. Timber Press also published The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and New York Times-bestselling All the Presidents' Gardens.  Marta's new book, Unearthing The Secret Garden, about the children's classic and its author, is due out from Timber Press in 2021.

The link to the zoom session will be emailed the day before the event.

This program is made possible with the support of The Friends of the Livingston Public Library.

Date:
Monday, May 3, 2021
Time:
7:00pm - 8:15pm
BCCLS Library:
Livingston Public Library
Audience:
  Adults  
Categories:
  Lecture     Live Stream  
Registration has closed.

Event Organizer

Profile photo of Livingston Library
Livingston Library
  • 10 Robert Harp Dr.
    Livingston, NJ
  • 973-992-4600

Facebook Twitter