10 beautiful gardens worth a day trip from Harrisburg | George Weigel
Posted May 06, 2021
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Public gardens are a visit-worthy venue this time of year, not only because so many plants are looking good as spring unfolds, but because they’re in the fresh outdoor air and amenable to social-distancing.
Harrisburg is well situated within day-trip range of lots of great public gardens, including several of America’s best in the Philadelphia, New York, and D.C. areas.
Below are my top 10 recommendations as well as a dozen more worth seeing.
Check the listed websites for hours and visiting guidelines since most have advanced timed-ticketing requirements.
In collaboration with the Connecticut League of History Organization, the Norwich Historical Society is sponsoring a free virtual winter lecture series based on topics from our Walk Norwich Trail system (walknorwich.org). The four-part lecture series is from January to April and is free and open to the public. The lectures will be recorded and available on our website and social media platforms for on-demand viewing.
The fourth and final lecture in our virtual winter lecture series will focus on topics from the Millionaires’ Triangle Trail. John Tschirch, former director of education and director of museum affairs and architectural historian of the Preservation Society of Newport County, will give a lecture titled: The Gilded Household: Social Life and Servants in America, 1865-1914.
Palm Beach Daily News
When the Garden Club of America canceled all its sanctioned shows for 2021 because of the coronavirus pandemic, Garden Club of Palm Beach President Mary Pressly decided to hit reset because I felt as though our members needed to come together and our community needed uplifting.
She came up with the idea, she told the Daily News, to create a flower show outside as as stand-in for the biennial GCA-sanctioned event that was on tap for this year. That idea will become a reality this weekend when the Garden in Bloom show takes place at the Society of the Four Arts Botanical Gardens and Philip Hulitar Sculpture Garden.
Luke Douglas
University of Maine graduate students Luke Douglas and Carl Pohlman have been awarded the 2021 Garden Club of America Frances M. Peacock Scholarship for Native Bird Habitat. The scholarship awards will help support field research activities this summer.
The students are the only recipients of the competitive, nationwide scholarship this year. Only one other University of Maine student, Meaghan Conway, who received her Ph.D. under the advisement of Brian Olsen, received the award in 2016.
Douglas is an M.S. in forest resources student from Barrington, Rhode Island advised by Amber Roth, assistant professor of forest wildlife management who holds a joint appointment in the School of Forest Resources and Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Conservation Biology. His research focuses on how rusty blackbirds (
Spring ephemerals get their moment in the sun
Spring ephemerals get their moment in the sun
By Michele S. Byers
Take a walk in the woods this month and check out the forest floor. There in the dappled sunlight, popping up through last year’s leaves, you may spot the short-lived flowers of native perennials known as “spring ephemerals.”
Spring ephemerals are native woodland wildflowers that bloom during the brief window of time between snowmelt and tree leaf-out. As the spring sun warms the ground, these cute little plants grow quickly, flower, are pollinated and set seed.
By June, when New Jersey’s forest floors are deeply shaded by a leafy tree canopy, the blossoms will be gone and the plants hard to find.