Events

What is there to see at the Arboretum after all of the leaves have fallen and before spring flowers start to bloom? Bark! Shaggy bark, mottled bark, striped bark: the Arboretum has it all. Join Horticulturist Rachel Lawlor to see some beautiful bark highlights, learn how to identify some trees by their bark, and learn why that bark looks the way it does.

Join us for an Energy Policy Seminar series featuring Dr. Ashlie L. Burkart, MD, Chief Scientific Officer at Germin8 Ventures and Associate in the Belfer Center's Environment and Natural Resources Program. Burkart will give a talk on “Cultivating a Greener Future: Regenerative Agriculture Policies.” Q&A to follow. Buffet-style lunch will be served.

Two hundred years ago, the residents of metropolitan Boston faced a climate crisis. White settlers had destroyed the region’s pine forests, triggering dangerous disruptions to both water and carbon cycles. Activists responded by creating forest parks on previously disrupted landscapes. But many of these activists were themselves descended from the settlers who had caused the harm they sought to heal. In imperfect yet instructive ways, they blended ecological care with new forms of ancestral devotion. Gradually they learned what indigenous communities had long known: that care for the more-than-human-world is inseparable from care for our ancestors. In this session, Dan McKanan, will discuss these stories and how they can help contemporary Bostonians, and others, recognize that what makes a place wild is not the absence of humans but the presence of ancestors.