Plant ID & Ecology: Sedges and Rushes

Sedges and rushes are ubiquitous and ecologically significant elements of our natural landscapes, but lacking showy flowers, they are often overlooked. This class will introduce a number of the common sedges and rushes frequently encountered in woods, wetlands, and meadows, highlighting their subtle variety and visual appeal. Join Ted Elliman, New England botanist and field-study researcher, to learn how to identify sedges and rushes, their functions in our natural landscapes, and how they provide ornamental and ecological benefits to gardens spaces.

Learn More
Location: Bosarge Family Education Center / Oak Point Farm
Instructor: Ted Elliman
Price: $40 / $50

Native Plant Guilds Workshop

Choosing native plants for your landscape should be fun and creative, not daunting or complicated! When you consider plants in simple groupings, or guilds, it becomes a lot easier to design a landscape with appealing texture, color, and wildlife value throughout the seasons. Native plant guilds draw on inspiration from natural plant communities in habitats like coastal plains, forests, wetlands, or mountain tops. This field-study and design workshop at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens will guide students through the process of selecting plants according to companionship, seasonal performance, and environmental considerations.

Learn More
Location: Bosarge Family Education Center Botanical Gardens Drive, Boothbay
Instructor: Anna Fialkoff
Price: $36 / $44

Make a Water-Wise Container Garden

Water-wise gardening is another way of referring to designing with water in mind, especially relevant to drought conditions. Water-wise container gardens lend themselves to an exotic and creative assortment of annuals or perennials like succulents, alpines, and plants with fuzzy leaves, leathery-glossy leaves, or those with varied color- and textural characteristics. Join Gardens Horticulturist Jen Dunlap for this creative workshop and make your own drought-tolerant container garden. Students are encouraged to bring their own clippers, apron, and garden gloves. While this class is a part of our adult education offerings, it is open to advanced younger students, ages 14 and older.

Location: Bosarge Family Education Center Botanical Gardens Drive, Boothbay
Instructor: Jen Dunlap
Price: $68 / $85

Photography: The Art of Flower Portraiture (Sold Out)

Have you ever thought of flower photographs as portraits? Award-winning photographer Kathleen Clemons certainly does, and she will share the equipment and techniques she uses to create her art. Topics will include lens choice, lighting, subject selection, focus issues, aperture choices, selecting a background, and how to simplify a subject to truly capture its natural beauty.

Learn More
Location: Bosarge Family Education Center Botanical Gardens Drive, Boothbay
Instructor: Kathleen Clemons
Price: $95 / $115

Medicinal Plants: Teas & Tinctures (Sold Out)

Join trained herbalist and horticulturist Lesley Paxson for a workshop and field-study examining some of the interesting layers of herbalism, from traditional beliefs to contemporary applications. Come enjoy a tea tasting with plants freshly harvested from the Gardens, harvest medicinal plant cuttings to take home for tea, and, since July offers an abundance of blooms, she'll also demonstrate how a flower essence is made. We’ll stroll the gardens and identify five important medicinal plants historically valuable to human well-being and understand them more intimately with a tincture tasting.

Location: Bosarge Family Education Center Botanical Gardens Drive, Boothbay
Instructor: Lesley Paxson
Price: $40 / $48

Is it a Weed? ID & Management

Weeds, by casual definition, are undesired plants found in a certain location. In this class, we will discuss the perception of weeds as well as their identification, cultural management, and ecology. Learning the identity of a “weed” may change the desire to remove it from the landscape as you realize its potential benefits. While sometimes weeds are just misunderstood plants, there are times they can be invasive or toxic, so it is important to properly identify and learn how to manage for these species. Join Delany Pitman, CMBG Horticulturist, in this mixed field-study and lecture class and broaden your awareness of why, what, when, how, and where these plants live and if they can be embraced or must be eradicated from a garden or landscape.

Location: Bosarge Family Education Center Botanical Gardens Drive, Boothbay
Instructor: Delaney Pitman
Price: $30 / $36

Make a Container Water Garden

Water gardens are growing in popularity for a number of reasons: to attract wildlife like birds and butterflies, to add a melodic sound feature, to contribute light reflection, to offer a place for personal respite, and to cool down a garden space. Water gardens that incorporate unique and lush plants add bold shapes, forms, colors, defined lines, and textures to a garden space. In class, students will make and take home a small water garden container filled with personally selected plants supplied by the Gardens. We'll talk about the wide variety of plant options, materials, and different kinds of water garden designs. While this class is a part of our adult education offerings, it is open to advanced younger students, ages 14 and older.

Location: Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens 105 Botanical Gardens Drive, Boothbay
Instructor: Courtney Locke
Price: $68 / $85

Deconstructing the Boundaries: A Future of Land & Food Resilience

Presented by Indigo Arts Alliance in partnership with Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens.
 
This program is the first symposium in a multi-year collaboration between the two organizations. Indigo Arts Alliance assembled a curated panel of thought leaders and workshop presenters to discuss how Black and Brown communities have always held spiritual, traditional, and cultural relationships to the land. Conversations, demonstrations, and interactive workshops will present experiences from multidisciplinary artists, cultural workers, and members of the local, national, and global community.
 

Through this symposium, we hope to explore and address these three key questions:

  1. How do we evolve our personal, communal, and institutional relationships with land ownership and stewardship?
  2. How do we address and heal the deep distrust that has taken root in Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities?
  3. How do we acknowledge and appreciate the ways in which African, Brown, and Indigenous cultural and social systems, as well as spirituality exist outside of settler colonial paradigms?

Founded in 2018, Indigo Arts Alliance (IAA) is a Portland, ME-based, Black-led organization dedicated to professional development and amplification of Black and Brown thought-leadership, vision, and creative practice. As an organization of social practice artists, scholars, and activists, it seeks to strengthen multiracial democracy by cultivating and celebrating art as a key resource for healthy communities, connecting global and local Black and Brown artists, providing an affirming environment for the creation of artwork across disciplines, and promoting engagement through participatory events that bring artists' and activists' work into public conversation on social justice, culture, and community. IAA is the only Black-led, established arts incubator in northern New England. That being the case, they fill a critically important gap in representation lacking in other regional arts and cultural institutions.

Location: Bosarge Family Education Center Botanical Gardens Drive, Boothbay
Instructor: Indigo Arts Alliance
Price: Free

Forest Therapy Walk & Tea: Summer

Deepening your connection to nature through moving meditation offers enormous benefits for personal well-being. In this gentle class, experience how the simple practice of walking mindfully through a forest can provide deep serenity. By engaging with all five senses, we enhance awareness and presence. Follow Susan Bickford, certified guide in the ancient Japanese practice of Shinrin-yoku, or forest therapy/forest bathing, as she gives you the tools to begin your own meditation practice. The walk ends with a tea ceremony.

Location: Bosarge Family Education Center Botanical Gardens Drive, Boothbay
Instructor: Susan Bickford
Price: $30 / $36

Wildlife in the Backyard: Lazy Days of Summer

Ever wondered what wildlife is living in your backyard? In our seasonal series of field-study classes (register separately for each), participants will learn more about the creatures that live in or around their garden, looking for shelter, food, and water. Join us and see summer animalactivity first-hand, an experience that will provide deeper insight into and appreciation for their roles in the ecosystem, better informing us how humans and wildlife can live together more harmoniously. This month, we’ll primarily focus on the diverse world insects, especially pollinators and beneficials, then learn about the mammals that are feeding and starting their families during these lazy days of summer.

Location: Bosarge Family Education Center Botanical Gardens Drive, Boothbay
Instructor: Multiple Instructors
Price: $25 / $30

Kitchen Garden Design: Refined to Rewild

Commonly referred to as vegetable gardens, yet frequently inclusive of herbs, fruits, and edible flowers, kitchen gardens are lifestyle-reflective. In this class, we’ll explore edible gardens at CMBG, including the gardens where edibles are planted along perennial borders. While we examine the different styles, from the traditionally-designed potager to more naturalistic designs known as “rewilding,” students will learn about style considerations like plant companions, pollinators, management, and aesthetic choices. The field-study class will include (brief) design time so students can practice integrating ideas into their own spaces.

Learn More
Location: Bosarge Family Education Center Botanical Gardens Drive, Boothbay
Instructor: Ellen Ecker Ogden
Price: $55 / $68

The Art of Pressed Flowers

Drying and pressing plants is not only a mindful, restful activity, it’s also one that produces beautiful compositions. From artfully matted notecards to printmaking, botanical research to herbarium use, pressing plants has so many applications. Join us for two sessions at the Gardens where we’ll begin by learning how to collect and press plants. Then, in session two, we’ll create a customized mounted project using the pressed plants, such as a set of notecards or a matted print.

Learn More
Location: Bosarge Family Education Center Botanical Gardens Drive, Boothbay
Instructor: Multiple Instructors
Price: $55 / $70

Mosaic Garden Art for Adults

Monday-Wednesday, August 14-16,10 a.m.-3 p.m.

In this fun mosaic class, students will make a garden stepping stone and a garden stake. We will use various tiles, broken china dishes, and found objects. All material will be provided, except for a mosaic wheel tile cutter, which can be purchased from the instructor for $15. If you already have one, feel free to bring your own. There are so many delightful things that can be incorporated into mosaics. If you wish, feel free to bring sentimental pieces of broken ceramic china, smooth stones, and shells from home to add to your stepping stone. You can also bring 3D figurines, salt and pepper shakers, etc., to add to your garden stake. While this class is a part of our adult education offerings, it is open to advanced younger students, ages 14 and older.

Caroline Clare Davis is a painter, crafter, floral designer, and the Arts and Exhibits Coordinator at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens.

Location: Bosarge Family Education Center Botanical Gardens Drive, Boothbay
Instructor: Caroline Davis
Price: $185 / $205

Introduction to Native Flora of Maine

Wednesday-Friday, August 16-18, 9:30 a.m.-4 p.m. | The first step to gardening with Maine’s native plants is meeting them in their wild habitats. Over this three-day in-person class, Melissa Cullina, the Gardens’ Director of Plant Science & Collections, will help students recognize 50 or more frequent coastal species. She will cover basic plant identification skills, terminology, and botanical etymology. Guided walks, both at the Gardens and a Boothbay Region Land Trust property, will help students practice skills and collect samples for identification and botanizing native species.

Learn More
Location: Bosarge Family Education Center Botanical Gardens Drive, Boothbay
Instructor: Melissa Cullina
Price: $155 / $180

Plant ID & Ecology: Estuary Plants

Offered in partnership with the Native Plant Trust, join us for a special field study at the Trust’s exquisite Coffin Wildflower Preserve. This 177-acre shoreline sanctuary is located along Merrymeeting Bay, the meeting place of six rivers that, together, drain much of Maine's landscape. This freshwater tidal estuary hosts a specialized and rare habitat with a unique array of colorful plants growing in shallows and mudflats: wild rice, bulrushes, arrow-heads, bur-marigold, pipewort, agalinis, and many more. Our walk is timed to low tide, so the plants will be especially accessible as we explore and study the flora and fauna. We’ll get to see Merrymeeting Bay’s abundance of water birds and raptors, such as ospreys and eagles.

Learn More
Location: Coffin Preserve Woolwich
Instructor: Ted Elliman
Price: $36 / $45

Gardening with Hydrangeas in Maine

Have you been gardening with hydrangeas and experienced challenges with blossom performance? Are you wondering what kind of hydrangea you have? Join Horticulturist Courtney Locke to learn more about gardening with hydrangeas in Maine, including best selection, cultivation, and care. Tour the Gardens and see the diverse display of our different hydrangea species and cultivars, and learn firsthand what environmental conditions are needed to successfully grow certain species and varieties.

Location: Bosarge Family Education Center Botanical Gardens Drive, Boothbay
Instructor: Courtney Locke
Price: $32 / $40