2021 Art History and Landscape Lecture

The Pen and the Trowel: Authors, Their Gardens and Mine with Marta McDowell

Emily Dickinson once described herself as “a lunatic on bulbs.” For the past 30 years Marta McDowell, author and teacher of landscape history and horticulture at the New York Botanical Garden has been occupied (preoccupied?) — with writers who garden.

Researching their horticultural interests has changed her planting beds as well as her bookshelves. Starting with Mark Twain and connecting to authors ranging from Dickinson to Emerson, Harriet Beecher Stowe to Beatrix Potter, as well as literary and artistic personalities connected with the Cos Cob artists’ colony, McDowell will explore the writing-gardening connection in their gardens and her own. This lecture is made possible by the David R.A. Wierdsma Fund.

Members $10, Non-Members $15