Groundbreaking Women: Garden Design and the Colonial Revival

As part of the celebration of the 100th anniversary of
the Litchfield Garden Club, the Litchfield Historical Society is sponsoring a
one-day symposium, Groundbreaking Women: Garden Design and the Colonial
Revival, on Monday, October 28 from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm. The day's speakers will
focus on the Colonial Revival gardens and garden design, looking at the role of
women and the ways in which they used gardening as a means of extending their
concerns and activities from the private, domestic sphere to the public work of
civic beautification and conservation.

The guest speakers at this year's symposium are
well-known in the fields of American and horticultural history, botany, and
journalism.

Judith B. Tankard-landscape historian, author, and
preservation consultan-will discuss influential, early 20th-century garden
designers Beatrix Farrand and Ellen Shipman and their contribution to the
history of landscape architecture.

Mac Keith Griswold, journalist, garden historian, and
director of archival research at the Sylvester Manor Project, Shelter Island,
New York, will deliver a talk based on her new book, The Manor: Three Centuries
at a Slave Plantation on Long Island, and Cornelia Horsford, the first woman in
her family's history to own this property.

In "Learn to Grow:- 'the trained hand with the
trained mind,'" Jenny Rose Carey, director of the Ambler Arboretum of
Temple University, will explore the Victorian study of nature and botany
morphed into the struggle by women to study horticulture and landscape design
in the early twentieth century.

Susan Williams, professor of U.S. history at Fitchburg
State University, will uncover the deep messages within Alice Morse Earle's
popular early twentieth-century books on gardening. While Earle discussed
garden design, she also reflected her deeply held faith in the educational and
therapeutic power of gardens and gardening.

To learn more about this event, the speakers, or how to
register for the symposium, please see our website at http://www.litchfieldhistoricalsociety.org/2013symposium.php.
Tickets are $35 for members of the Historical Society and the Litchfield Garden
Club; $50 for non-members; and $35 for students, with an optional $15 lunch.
Registration is required-please email registration@litchfieldhistoricalsociety.org<mailto:registration@litchfieldhistoricalsociety.org>
or call (860) 567-4501 by October 21.

The Litchfield History Museum is located at 7 South
Street, Litchfield, CT. For more information about this or other programs,
please call (860) 567-4501 or see www.litchfieldhistoricalsociety.org<http://www.litchfieldhistoricalsociety.org>.