Events

2022 Jul 09

MassQ Ball 2022: Origin

2:00pm to 7:00pm

Location:

Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Boston

The MassQ Ball 2022: Origin will feature the diverse artistic expressions of Boston’s communities of color. Interact with the landscape in new and creative ways, transform into a walking work of art through the practice of MassQing (a ritual application of paint to the face derived from ancient traditions of body decoration), and enjoy performances and art work by Boston cultural artists including:

2:00pm–4:00pm:

Bonsai and Penjing Information at the Arnold Arboretum

Repeats every week on Sunday, Thursday until Sun Jul 24 2022 .

11:00am to 1:00pm

Location:

Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Boston

Visit the Bonsai and Penjing Pavilion from 11am–1pm to learn about this collection of historic trees from our knowledgeable docents.

Learn more.

2022 Jun 26

MassQ Ball 2022: Origin | Making of Ceremonial Vessels

1:00pm to 3:00pm

Location:

Hemlock Hill and Conifer Collection, Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Boston

Led by Bengali culture worker Pampi, this audience participatory workshop allows attendees to weave love letters into hand-crafted ceremonial vessels for their loved ones. Vessels will be fashioned out of natural materials sourced from the Arboretum grounds and displayed in the MassQ Ball on July 9.

Learn more and RSVP for this event.

2022 May 21

MassQ Ball 2022: Origin | Mythmaking Workshop

3:00pm to 4:30pm

Location:

Bradley Rosaceous Collection, Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Boston

Led by Castle of our Skins’ Director of Education Taylor Lena McTootle, “Making a Mythos” focuses on the creative power of storytelling. Young participants will experience firsthand how fictional tales can reflect our cultural values and create them.

Appropriate for youth ages 8-12 years old.

Learn more and register.

2022 May 14

MassQ Ball 2022: Origin | African Folklore Lecture

1:00pm to 2:30pm

Location:

Arnold Arboretum (Hunnewell Building), 125 Arborway, Boston

Dr. Liseli A. Fitzpatrick, a Trinidadian-scholar in the field of African Diasporic cosmologies and sacred ontologies, will lead an engaging lecture and discussion exploring African mythologies and folkloric cultures.

Learn more and register.

2022 May 08

Lilac Sunday

10:00am to 3:00pm

Location:

Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Boston

Join us for the first Lilac Sunday since 2019! We’ll be celebrating 150 years of Arboretum history and 112 Lilac Sundays.

Experience the springtime bloom of our renowned collection of nearly 400 lilacs. Visit for tours with Arboretum experts, hands-on children’s programming, and more.

Learn more.

Ukrainian Plants of the Arboretum Tour

11:00am to 12:00pm

Location:

Arnold Arboretum (Hunnewell Building), 125 Arborway, Boston

Ukrainian culture is rich with references to the natural world. Join a one-hour walking tour with Arboretum Horticulturist Brendan Keegan. Learn about plants within the Arboretum's collections that are notable in Ukrainian history, cuisine, agriculture, and more. The tour is in support of our colleagues at botanical institutions throughout Ukraine.

Learn more and register.

2022 May 01

Art Exhibit | Stoneroot Epistle: Collage and Words in Conversation

Repeats every week on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday until Sat Jun 25 2022 .

12:00pm to 4:00pm

Location:

Arnold Arboretum (Hunnewell Visitor Center), 125 Arborway, Boston

Visit the Arnold Arboretum's newly reopened Hunnewell Visitor Center and immerse yourself in this truly unique exhibition. The book, Stoneroot Epistle, was born out of Joyce Swagerty (Harvard class of '78) and Daina Swagerty's desire to understand the connection between themselves, the natural world, and the universal journey inspired by the African diaspora. The project by this mother and daughter was a spiritual adventure.

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2022 Mar 29

Celebrating a Sesquicentennial: The Founding of the Arnold Arboretum

2:00pm to 3:00pm

Location:

Livestreamed or at Weld Hill Research Building, 1300 Centre St., Boston

The Arnold Arboretum was founded on Friday, March 29, 1872. Exactly 150 years later, we invite you to join Lisa Pearson, Head of the Arboretum Library and Archives, for a special sesquicentennial lecture! Pearson will discuss the earliest benefactors of the Arboretum, the events surrounding the founding of the institution, and the busy first two decades during which the infrastructure and living collections were installed on the grounds.

This event will also be livestreamed to YouTube. To sign up for the virtual livestream instead,...

2022 Mar 12

Olmsted and Yosemite: Civil War, Abolition, and the National Park Idea

2:30pm to 4:00pm

Location:

Online or at Weld Hill Research Building, 1300 Centre St., Boston

Just in time for the Arboretum's sesquicentennial and the bicentennial of the birth of pioneering landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, authors Rolf Diamant and Ethan Carr will speak on their recent book, "Olmsted and Yosemite: Civil War, Abolition, and the National Park Idea." They'll offer a new interpretation of how the American park—urban and national—came to figure so prominently in our cultural identity, and why this more complex and inclusive story deserves to be told.

...

2021 Jun 19

In the Groves

5:30pm to 7:30pm

Location:

Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Boston

Immerse yourself in the deep beauty of trees in this story and music journey through the Arboretum. Led by Oracle award-winning storyteller Diane Edgecomb and Celtic harper Margot Chamberlain, this unfolding performance of ancient tales and songs from cultures around the world takes place in a variety of groves—birch, cherry, and evergreen—at some of the Arboretum’s loveliest spots.

This event is free, but registration is required and limited. Not designed for children under 12, and dogs are not allowed. COVID guidelines will be followed.

...

"Every Pecan Tree": Trees, Meaning, and Memory in Enslaved People’s Lives

7:00pm

Location:

Arnold Arboretum—Online

This is the third lecture in the Arnold Arboretum's 2021 Director's Lecture Series. Tiya Miles takes up the pecan tree as inspiration for exploring the meaning of trees in the lives of enslaved African Americans. Using a family heirloom, slave narratives, oral histories, and missionary records, her talk underscores the importance of trees in the Black experience of captivity and resistance, ultimately revealing the centrality of the natural world to Black, and indeed human, survival.

...

2021 Mar 06

A History of Path-Making at the Arnold Arboretum

2:00pm

Location:

Arnold Arboretum—Online

At the time of its founding in 1872, the land on which the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University is sighted was a patchwork of farmland and forest. As the Arboretum was planted, pathways were developed to lead people through the picturesque landscape. As the landscape developed, economies shifted, wars took place, and directors changed. Each of these factors subtly influenced shifts in the park’s path system. Join the Arnold Arboretum on Zoom with Jared Rubinstein as he reveals the layers of change in this beloved landscape.

...

2020 Oct 29

Voting, Participation, and Why it Matters

5:00pm to 6:00pm

Location:

Online via Zoom

Join Danielle Allen, James Bryant Conant University Professor and Director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, Cambridge Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui, Tova Wang, a Democracy Visiting Fellow at the Ash Center, Michelle Tassinari, Director and Legal Counsel of the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s Elections Division, and Eneida Tavares the Interim Commissioner for the City of Boston’s Elections Department for a conversation on the importance of local voter participation, education and civic engagement, and to learn more about what’s at stake for our...

2019 Oct 10

Plants Go to War: A Botanical History of World War II

6:30pm to 8:00pm

Location:

Hunnewell Building, Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Boston

As the first botanical history of World War II, Plants Go to War examines military history from the perspective of plant science. From victory gardens to drugs, timber, rubber, and fibers, plants supplied materials with key roles in victory. Author and botanist Judith Sumner will speak of the many plants that were incorporated into wartime safety materials, diet and rations, and even bombers.

...

2019 Jun 20

Peters Hill: Discover the Other End of the Arboretum

5:00pm to 6:30pm

Location:

Peters Hill Gate, Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Boston

Join our docent for a tour of the other end of the Arnold Arboretum, the southern end. Peters Hill became part of the Arboretum in 1894 and continues to charm with its special character, collections, and history. In summer, the amazing view from the summit takes in the Boston skyline and a rich and textured landscape spreading out below you. Learn the history of the land, along with information on the woody plants located here.

...

2019 Jun 13

Walking Postscript: Revisiting Plants from the Bulletin of Popular Information

4:00pm to 5:30pm

Location:

Hunnewell Building, Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Boston

In 1911, Charles Sprague Sargent, the founding director of the Arnold Arboretum, began writing a serialized pamphlet titled the Bulletin of Popular Information, in which he described flowering and fruiting displays at the Arboretum. Because Sargent often focused on plants newly arrived from expeditions to Asia and elsewhere, many of his descriptions provided the first horticultural comparisons between species that had never been grown in the same garden.

On this tour, Jonathan Damery will revisit plants mentioned throughout Charles Sprague Sargent's sixteen years with...

2018 Nov 13

The Media, The White House, and Health Care

12:00pm to 1:00pm

Location:

Livestream Access

Join us for the next “Voices in Leadership” event of the fall semester, featuring Joanne Kenen, Executive Editor, Health Care at Politico and Margaret Talev, Senior White House Correspondent for Bloomberg. Ms. Kenen has is a veteran Washington reporter who has covered all aspects of health policy and politics. At POLITICO since 2011, she’s expanded the health policy reporting team, led public policy forums and recently helped design a year-long multimedia magazine series on public health and the changing demographics of 21st century America. Ms. Talev is a Fall 2018...

2018 Oct 28

The First 25 Years: How the Arboretum Became the Arboretum

11:00am to 12:30pm

Location:

Centre Street Gate, Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Jamaica Plain, MA 02130

The Arnold Arboretum did not come into existence full-formed, but had a long adolescence before it (literally) blossomed at 50. Our first director, Charles Sargent, prepared a 50-year report in 1922, before the end of his own 54-year tenure. But, what about the first 25 years? We don't have a 25-year report, however, we do have photos and the engaging stories from that time.

Join our docent to hear those stories, as she takes you on a timeline...

2018 Oct 25

Peters Hill: The Other End of the Arboretum

4:00pm to 5:30pm

Location:

Peters Hill Gate, Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Jamaica Plain, MA 02130

Join our docent for a tour of the other end of the Arnold Arboretum, the southern end. Peters Hill became part of the Arboretum in 1894 and continues to charm with its special character, collections, and history. In autumn, the amazing view from the summit takes on a new tapestry of color, spreading out in the landscape below you. Learn the history of the land, along with information on the woody plants located here, like the collection of crabapples fruiting in many colors on the northern slope.

Free but registration requested.

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114 Mount Auburn Street
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Cambridge, MA 02138
T (617) 495-1585 | F (617) 495-0754