Beatrix Farrand Society is thrilled to offer another outstanding lecture series in 2026 that celebrates the many ways we connect to landscape.
Click here to view programs from previous years.
Unless otherwise noted, programs cost $10 for members, $20 for non-members, and are free for students. Pre-registration is required.
*If you register to attend on Zoom, a link will be sent you separately. Registrations within one hour of the program’s start may not be received in time for you to participate live, but you will be sent a recording of the program once the video has been processed and uploaded.
The Garden As Mediator
Thomas Rainer
Thursday, July 9 at 4:00 PM
Garland Farm
In this talk, Thomas Rainer, principal of Phyto Studio and co-author of Planting in a Post-Wild World, explores the garden as a mediating force—an idea that quietly connects contemporary plant systems thinking with the work of Beatrix Farrand. Though not a naturalistic designer, Farrand’s gardens consistently negotiated between worlds: European tradition and American place, architecture and landscape, public formality and private intimacy. Her work understood the garden not as a static composition, but as an active intermediary shaped by craft, restraint, and care.
Rainer brings this idea forward, framing gardens as mediators between order and wildness, control and dynamism, ecology and art. Drawing on Phyto’s work in public landscapes across North America, he presents plant systems thinking as a distinctly American, pragmatic approach—one that values performance, adaptation, and beauty in equal measure. Central to the talk is time as a design material, with growth and change embraced not as problems to solve, but as partners in design.
Thomas Rainer is a leading voice in ecological landscape design, pioneering a plant systems approach that anticipates a changing future. As a registered landscape architect based in Arlington, Virginia, Thomas reimagines ecological planting for gardens and public spaces, focusing on merging ecology with horticulture to shape resilient, adaptive landscapes that address today’s environmental challenges. His career features signature designs at landmark locations such as the Battery Park, Toronto Botanical Garden, and The New York Botanical Garden. He has designed over 125 residential gardens spanning from Maine to Florida. Thomas has taught planting design for the George Washington University Landscape Design program, as well as design workshops globally. He is the co-author of the bestselling Planting in a Post-Wild Worldwith Claudia West.
Photo Credit: Jason Varney
What’s The Buzz on Bees?
Jennifer Lund
Thursday, July 16 at 4:00 PM
Garland Farm
Have you ever wondered ‘What types of bees are found in Maine?’, ‘Why are some bee species in decline?’, ‘What can we do to protect bee populations?’, or ‘Which plants encourage bees into our landscapes?’ Lund’s talk will focus on understanding basic bee biology, nesting requirements, and foraging behavior to answer these and many other common questions about bees.
Jennifer Lund is the State Apiarist with the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation, and Forestry. She received her Master’s degree in Entomology from the University of Maine and has over 25 years of entomological experience. Aside from managing the honeybee inspection program and helping Maine beekeepers, Lund has several of her own hives she maintains on her farm in Argyle Township, Maine.
The Art of Garden Photography
Rob Cardillo
Thursday, July 23 at 4:00PM
Garland Farm
Join professional garden photographer Rob Cardillo for an inspiring look at how he captures sweeping landscapes and striking plant close-ups. Through engaging stories drawn from his many books and magazine projects — including his latest, Private Gardens of Philadelphia— Rob shares the real process behind his best shots: the missteps, the do-overs, and the patience that ultimately pays off.
Whether you shoot with a professional camera or just your iPhone, you’ll walk away with fresh ideas and practical techniques to help you find and photograph your own vision of paradise.
Rob Cardillo has spent nearly thirty years photographing gardens, plants, and the people who tend them. He is the primary photographer behind more than twenty-five books, including The Art of Gardening at Chanticleer, The Layered Garden, and his most recent, Private Gardens of Philadelphia. His work also appears in the New York Times, The American Gardener, and Gardens Illustrated. A winner of numerous photography awards, Rob was inducted into the GardenComm Hall of Fame in 2015.
Photo by Bachrach.
Glorious Country: How Frederic Church Brought the World to America and America to the World
The Beatrix Farrand Society Annual Lecture
Victoria Johnson
Saturday, August 1 at 4:00PM
Holy Family Chapel, Seal Harbor
To attend in person, click the “Register” button below. To attend via Zoom, sign up at this link instead.
Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist Victoria Johnson shares the dramatic and consequential life of the artist Frederic Church, whose footsteps she followed around the globe for her “absorbing” (Ron Chernow) and “thrilling” (Andrea Wulf) new biography of Church, Glorious Country. Church’s curiosity, bravery, and passion for nature drove him to explore the world, but it was his astonishing talent that allowed him to bring the world to America at a time when landscape photography was in its infancy and most of his countrymen and countrywomen would never see a different country or continent. Exhibited to acclaim abroad, Church’s blockbuster paintings persuaded skeptical critics that the so-called “New World” could, in fact, give birth to towering artists and furnish the subject matter for great art. A master artist and citizen, Church brought the world to America, and America to the world.
Victoria Johnson is the author of three books, including the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic. She holds a doctorate in sociology from Columbia University and an undergraduate degree in philosophy from Yale. She is Professor of Urban Policy and Planning at Hunter College of the City University of New York.
Photo credit: Shelley Thomas.
Women in Horticulture
Jenny Rose Carey
Thursday, August 6 at 4:00 PM
Garland Farm
Women have tended and loved their gardens for millennia but their contributions are largely forgotten. In this lecture, Jenny Rose Carey takes a small slice of time, 1900 to 1940, and explores the key women who founded gardening organizations including The Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women, The Woman’s National Farm and Garden Association, and The Garden Club of America. Other women discussed include authors, garden designers, conservationists, and dig-in-dirt gardeners.
Carey is an avid hands-on gardener and professional horticulturist. She has served as Director of two public gardens; The Ambler Arboretum of Temple University and the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s Garden at Meadowbrook Farm. She is now devoting her time to writing, speaking, and tending her own four-and-a-half-acre garden called Northview where she has lived for over a quarter of a century.
How North Creek’s Past Informs Its Path Forward
Steve Castorani
Thursday, August 13 at 4:00PM
Garland Farm
North Creek’s 38‐year journey has been shaped by early mentors, forgotten cultivars, and lessons learned from old catalogs. This talk reflects on how those experiences and an early shift toward native plants that provide ecosystem services continues to guide North Creek’s commitment to resilience, diversity, ecological function, and to “plants that stand the test of time.”
Castorani is the CEO, President and co-Founder of North Creek Nurseries, a progressive nursery business specializing in perennial, fern, vine, and ornamental grass plug production with an emphasis on Eastern regional native plants. In 2004, he co-created the American Beauties Native Plant® brand, which distributes plants to independent garden centers throughout the U.S. eastern, mid-western and select western states. He also co-ownsan independent garden center—Gateway Garden Center in Hockessin, Delaware— with his wife Peg.
The Cloister and the Green: The Glorious American Campus
Witold Rybczynski
Thursday, August 20 at 4:00 PM
Lecture will be held at Maren Auditorium, MDI Biological Laboratory with a reception immediately following at Garland Farm
Architectural historian Witold Rybczynski will review the European origin of universities in the Middle Ages and unique forms that they took, especially in Britain. The Oxbridge college was influential in the United States, but there were a number of issues that made the American campus unique: their number, their location, their physical settings, and, not least, their architecture. Rybczynki will discuss the influence Beatrix Farrand had on the design of the American campus landscape.
Rybczynski has been described as “one of our most original, accessible, and stimulating writers on architecture” by Library Journal. He has written over twenty books on subjects as varied as the evolution of comfort, a history of the weekend, American urbanism, and a search for the origins of the screwdriver. His forthcoming book (September 2026), What Architecture Is, explores what it is about architecture that distinguishes it from an
ordinary building, taking on the age-old question of what elevates a mere building into an art form.
Directions to Garland Farm
GPS Address:
475 Bay View Drive
Bar Harbor, ME 04609
+44° 25′ 43.81″, -68° 19′ 25.22″
Garland Farm is located on Route 3 on Mount Desert Island. From the island bridge, go east toward Bar Harbor for approximately 2 miles and turn left on Bay View Drive. Turn left into the parking area in the field and follow footpath to barn.
From downtown Bar Harbor, go north on Route 3 passing Hadley Point Road (about 7 miles). Continue .7 miles, turn right on Bay View Drive, then left into the parking area. Do not park on Bay View Drive.
Accessible parking is available with advance notice. Please call 207-288-0237.