Landscaping with Deer

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.

Location: Online
Instructor: Cheryl Salatino
Price: $16 / $20

Fundamentals of Pruning (Webinar)

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.

Location: Online
Instructor: Irene Barber
Price: $16 / $20

Gardening With Nature (SOLD OUT)

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.

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Location: Online
Instructor: Anna Fialkoff
Price: $16 / $20

Perennial Polycultures (Webinar)

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.

Location: Online
Instructor: Eric Toensmeier
Price: $30 / $38

Sow For the Future: Native Woodland Perennials (Webinar)

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.

Location: Online
Instructor: Shawn Jalbert
Price: $16 / $20

Exploring Wetland Fauna (Webinar)

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.

Location: Online
Instructor: Bridget VerVaet
Price: $10 / $15

Pollinators: Butterflies and Moths (Webinar)

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.

Location: Online
Instructor: Alicia Miller
Price: $10 / $15

Soils, Composts & Mulches for Beginners (Webinar)

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.

Location: Online
Instructor: Mark Hutchinson
Price: $16 / $20

Pesky Garden Problems

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.

Location: Online
Instructor: Gary Fish
Price: $16 / $20

Pollinators: Bees & Beyond (Webinar)

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.”

Location: Online
Instructor: Sarah Callan
Price: $16 / $20

Growing in a Changing Climate

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.

Location: Online
Instructor: Eric Toensmeier
Price: $30 / $38

Drawing Seeds Under the Microscope

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.

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Location: Online
Instructor: Carol Woodin
Price: $145 / $160

Gardening with Ornamental Grasses (Webinar)

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.

Location: Online
Instructor: Syretha Brooks
Price: $16 / $20

Horticulture For Gardeners (Webinar)

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.

Location: Online
Instructor: Dan Robarts
Price: $16 / $20

Making Black and White Infrared Photographs

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.

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Location: Online
Instructor: Ron Rosenstock
Price: $20 / $35

Exploring Wetland Fauna CANCELLED

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.

Location: Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens 105 Botanical Gardens Drive, Boothbay
Instructor: Bridget VerVaet
Price: $25 / $32

Plant ID in the Field: Maine’s Forest Canopy

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

Location: Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens 105 Botanical Gardens Drive, Boothbay
Instructor: Allyssa Gregory
Price: $25 / $32

What’s Cookin’ and Good Lookin’ In the Kitchen Garden, Spring

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

Location: Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens 105 Botanical Gardens Drive, Boothbay
Instructor: Diane Walden
Price: $25 / $32

Gardening with Herbs

There’s something powerful about herbs; whether it’s their scent, taste, or long therapeutic history, growing them successfully at home is especially fulfilling. Herbs also lend something special to any garden design, particularly curly parsley, sage, basil, and rosemary. In this class, we’ll cover common herbs as well as the often-overlooked like chervil and chamomile. Join Irene Barber, HTR, horticulturist and Horticultural Therapist, in the Lerner Garden of the Five Senses to learn more about using herbs in garden design as well as tips for management, harvest, and recipe ideas.

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 5, 2021 @ 2–4 p.m

Location: Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens 105 Botanical Gardens Drive, Boothbay
Instructor: Irene Barber
Price: $25 / $32

Plant ID in the Garden: Shade Garden Perennials

For shade gardens, a wide variety of planting options exist featuring amazing texture, foliar color, and bright floral accents. In fact, some of the most fragrant flowers prefer the cooler temperatures shade offers. CMBG’s Dan Robarts, horticulturist and grower, and Andy Brand, Curator of Living Collections, will take you through our extensive shade gardens, pointing out the classics as well as the unusual perennials, their characteristics, habits, and cultural preferences. Come with your curiosity and leave inspired!

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

Location: Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens 105 Botanical Gardens Drive, Boothbay
Instructor: Dan Robarts
Price: $25 / $32

Planting a Vertical Garden | SOLD OUT

Let’s grow up! In this fun, innovative container-garden class, we’ll plant mini vertical gardens that can be mounted on a fence, a stone wall, an exterior wall, or against a post. Let us supply the plants and planting materials while you select which plants you’d like in your vertical garden. Registrants will be asked to choose between sun-loving succulents or shade-loving ferns and foliage plants. After registering, contact Irene Barber by e-mail, with your choice of sun or shade plants.

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

Location: Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens 105 Botanical Gardens Drive, Boothbay
Instructor: Irene Barber
Price: $60 / $70

Maintaining Creative Energy in Photography

This is the second 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 will cover how photographers can maintain and continue creative efforts when circumstances (and plans) change. He will share a variety of photographic subjects and projects that are always available for photographers to explore.

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Location: Online
Instructor: Ron Rosenstock
Price: $20 / $35

Container Garden Inspirations: Elements and Sizes

Garden designer Jen Dunlap creates dynamic and texturally driven designs that build upon traditional container gardens. Join her on a tour of the Bibby and Harold Alfond Children’s Garden where she’ll provide the details of various container garden plant combinations. She’ll offer insight into her compositions and demonstrate the tricks to planting in various types and sized containers. From the small to the very large, Jen will leave you comfortable no matter what the scale of your container garden project.

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: Satuday, June 19, 2021

Location: Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens 105 Botanical Gardens Drive, Boothbay
Instructor: Jen Dunlap
Price: $25 / $32

Monitoring Maine’s Forest Health

Our heritage trees of Maine are under a great amount of stress, dealing with inclement weather and infestations of pests. Is there anything we can do to help preserve and support these species? Come take a walk through CMBG with forest pathologists and entomologists from the State of Maine, Aaron Bergdahl, Colleen Teerling, and Tom Schmeelk, to learn more about the health of Maine’s forests and what a landowner or concerned steward can do to help.

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Location: Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens 105 Botanical Gardens Drive, Boothbay
Instructor: Aaron Bergdahl
Price: $25 / $32

Drawing and Painting Monarch Butterflies and Milkweed

Tuesday and Thursday, June 22 and 24 | This two-day workshop focuses on the monarch butterfly's life cycle in symbiotic relationship to its host plant, milkweed. Depict flight by learning basic butterfly anatomy and wing positioning. Understand basic metamorphosis and how the butterfly interacts in the pollination process. Color application can be in watercolor and/or colored pencil. All levels welcome!

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Location: Online
Instructor: Mindy Lighthipe
Price: $95 / $125

Plant ID in the Garden: Sun Garden Perennials

While sun gardens tend to feature lots of color, there’s more to know about sun-loving perennials: their seasonal performance, structural habits, and bountiful pollinators. In this class, horticulturist Brent McHale will highlight sunny perennials that perform at different times of the growing season, how to distinguish among similar species, and explain different subcategories to help you make proper selections for your garden.

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: Tuesday, June 29, 2021

Location: Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens 105 Botanical Gardens Drive, Boothbay
Instructor: Brent McHale
Price: $25 / $32

Artful and Functional Landscape Structures, Field Study

From arbors to pergolas, toolsheds to tea-houses, outdoor landscape structures can add function and aesthetic interest to any property. Karl Alamo, horticulturist and landscape architect, will take students through the Gardens, pointing out the design and structural elements that serve as storage, entry points, and sanctuary. Discussion will include green roofs, sustainable materials, and architectural choices. This class will outline what choices you can make to help you create artful and functional garden features.

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.

Rain Date: Saturday, July 31, 2021

Location: Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens 105 Botanical Gardens Drive, Boothbay
Instructor: Karl Alamo
Price: $25 / $32