Free. In Person.

Powerful storytelling about the role of parks in shaping the American experience and the destructive effect of racial injustice on these public spaces.

Tuesday, November 4, 2025 | 6:30 PM

Coolidge Corner Theatre, Brookline, MA

Join LALH for an evening of film and conversation with three of America’s leading park historians—Ethan Carr, Rolf Diamant, and William O’Brien—cosponsored by Friends of Fairsted and Library of American Landscape History.

This event is free and open to the public, but reservations are required.

Click here to reserve.

Photo: Rolf Diamant, Olmsted and Yosemite. All photos courtesy LALH.

Online.

This is an informal, monthly drop-in Zoom meeting of landscape architecture firm owners and leaders. 

Our goal is to create a space where New England landscape architecture firm owners and leaders can connect, commiserate, compare notes, and hopefully laugh a little with your peers in this community.

There is no fixed agenda, but we will start with a few discussion prompts and then you can take the conversation wherever you want to go. 

Questions or topics to discuss? contact BSLA President & Crowley Cottrell firm owner, Michelle Crowley.

Do you want to receive the monthly calendar invite? email Gretchen.

Fall 2025 Zoom link

Online.

The relatively new Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee of BSLA aims to foster a network of welcoming support focused on people of color and other minorities within and beyond the organization.

Given current events, this is necessary now more than ever.

What’s on your mind? What’s your lived experience? What do you/your colleagues need? How can we act together?

Members + non-members, students and recent graduates to seasoned leaders are welcome. Join us.

Click here to join the Zoom

Photo: BSLA Inside/Out tour of The Embrace + Boston Common, summer 2023

Online. All welcome.

Zoom link here

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Welcome to the Plant Sourcing Task Force. This group focuses on anti-neonicotinoids as well as other issues such as seed grown plants, local ecotypes, etc.

All are welcome.

Our friends at LIGHT Boston invite you to join a special in-the-dark edition of "Inside/Out" -- landscape architecture site tours across our region. Prioritizing issues of climate and health, equity and resilience, each tour discusses ideas and implementation as we explore these landscapes together.

RSVP here

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Our 2025 series continues in Charlestown...

This tour / workshop will explore illumination in urban landscapes.

Led by board members from LIGHT Boston, we'll visit a range of real-world examples to see first-hand what works, what doesn’t, and why. Learn about light levels, light color temperature and environmental impacts, then have a chance to experiment with sample fixtures to see how the right lighting can enhance the outdoor environment. We'll look at historic and contemporary settings, along the Harborwalk and in the neighborhood. Wear comfy shoes and warm layers for a fun and engaging evening.

Meet at "The Arms of Friendship" -- the giant octopus sculpture between Dry Dock 2 and 1st Avenue in the Charlestown Navy Yard.

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This tour will be led by board members from LIGHT Boston, including:

Karen Lee, LC, LEED AP

Lana Nathe, IALD (Assoc), LC

Ruth Raphael, PLA

Keith Yancy, IALD, AIA, LC, PE

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LIGHT Boston, a non-profit 501 (c) (3) organization, works to create an environment where civic illumination is realized as a vital component of urban design through implementation, education and advocacy.

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All are welcome.

Members and non-members, coworkers + friends + families too. Tickets are FREE, tour size limited, registration appreciated. Please come dressed for the weather, prepared to walk outside.

We aim to go in most weather. We will email all ticket holders and post any changes here.

We look forward to exploring with you!

Free. In person in the John Olver Design Building Lecture Hall (Room 170), University of Massachusetts Amherst.

The annual lecture series of the UMass Amherst Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning continues with "Adaptation, Resilience & Hyperlocal Decision-Making in New England," A Zube Lecture Presented by Chris Campany.

See details on this lecture and the entire series.

Soil: A Reading and Conversation about A Black Mother’s Garden

An Evening with Camille Dungy

Date: Thursday, October 16, 2025

Time: 7-8:30pm ET via Zoom

Every Thursday, the Conway School invites visiting speakers to present and engage in discussion with Conway’s graduate students. The audience of these conversations is usually limited to the current students to provide them with the opportunity to ask questions and connect with the speakers in a more intimate way. However, we are excited to open up one of these Thursday talks to the public! Join us for a Zoom presentation and Q&A with Camille T. Dungy, author of Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden, which was the assigned summer reading for this year’s cohort.

Dungy is currently a University Distinguished Professor in the English Department at Colorado State University, and serves as the poetry editor for Orion magazine. You can view her complete bio here.

The book – which received the 2024 Award of Excellence in Garden and Nature Writing from The Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries and was a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Award – functions at the nexus of nature writing, environmental justice, and prose to encourage you to recognize the relationship between the peoples of the African diaspora and the land on which they live, and to understand that wherever soil rests beneath their feet is home.

Register Here

Online.

This is the monthly meeting of BSLA’s elected Executive Committee (“ExComm”), Section chairs, Student chapter leaders, and Committee leaders. All members from Maine and Massachuetts are welcome to attend.

This typically takes place on the third Thursday of the month.

The regular agenda includes brief updates, questions, and calls-to-action from each of the leaders and the work that they represent, along with longer discussions on special topics. If you have a topic to bring to an ExComm meeting, please email BSLA President, Michelle Crowley.

It’s our regular, essential moment to connect and coordinate our activities across Mass & Maine, AND our means to collaboratively discuss questions, issues, and other important things.

The 2025 Zoom link is here. Email Gretchen to be added to the calendar invite. Join us!

Landscape architects + designers + students + friends:

Please join us at Pine Grove this Saturday (10/11) in Northampton off Wilson Road. We will be helping the city do some clearing and moving some docks. We will be meeting at 10am and plan on being there for about two hours.

If you own gloves or loppers, please bring them!

Please email Jeff and Chris with any questions or to let them know that you'll be there. It is also OK to just show up!

All are welcome + appreciated.

Thank you!

Online.

Calling all Emerging Professionals...

If you're in the early stages of your design career, this is for you! Landscape designers & architects, students and recent grads. Architecture, planning, engineering, and other design industry colleagues too. All are welcome.

This open meeting takes place every 2 months from 6:30pm to 7:30pm on the second Thursday.

Do you want to receive the monthly calendar invite? email ep@bslanow.org

Join the meeting here

The Emerging Professionals invite you to this special edition of Inside/Out…

RSVP here

Our 2025 series continues in Boston...

This tour focuses on a few new "food forests" of the Boston Food Forest Coalition.

According to BostonFoodForest.org:

BFFC is "working at the intersection of green space equity and climate resilience.

We are a coalition of neighbors working to transform vacant lots into locally-run, edible, public parks protected by our land trust.

Together, we’re building a network of environmental and social resilience across Boston through community collaboration and the protection of local green space, prioritizing neighborhoods with histories of inequitable access to parkland and its critical benefits."

There are now 14 urban food forests in Boston! And new ones are growing at a rapid pace toward a goal of 30 by 2030.

Read more…

This tour will be led by

Liz Luc Clowes, ASLA, Engagement & Construction Dirctor, Boston Food Forest Coalition

and Emerging Professional and recent BSLA Member-at-Large

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April Maly, ASLA, Senior Landscape Construction Manager, Boston Food Forest Coalition

and co-Chair of the BSLA Plant Sourcing Task Force

The Emerging Professionals have organized this tour and they invite all to join.

Tickets are free, space is limited, sign up today!

Join a day-long symposium exploring the future of Hideo Sasaki's legacy of collaborative design.

For Hideo Sasaki, radical collaboration was grounded in interdisciplinary design. Through keynote discussions, panels, and workshops, we will learn about the past, present, and future of collaborative design.

Through September 12, use code "EARLYBIRD" for 20% off full-day designer admission (CEUs provided).

And don't forget to register for the symposium pre-convening on Tuesday, September 30.

5.25 AIA and ASLA HSW credits anticipated.

See details and register here.

Free. In person in the John Olver Design Building Lecture Hall (Room 170), University of Massachusetts Amherst.

The annual lecture series of the UMass Amherst Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning continues with "Do Machines Care? Another Solarpunk Manifesto," a Zube Lecture Presented by Zihao Zhang.

See details on this lecture and the entire series.

Explore the future of Hideo Sasaki's legacy of collaborative design.

Explore Hideo Sasaki’s influence on post-war American landscape architecture and his pivotal role in shaping an integrated, multidisciplinary design education at the Harvard GSD—alongside his founding of a firm that embodied this approach. We’ll examine how landscape architecture, architecture, and planning came together in practice, advancing a model of collaborative design. Looking at the intersection of past, present, and future, we’ll reflect on the radical nature of Hideo’s ideas in his time and consider how our understanding of collaborative practice has evolved. What does radical collaboration mean today—for us and for the next generation of designers?

Don't forget to get your tickets to the full-day symposium on Friday, October 3!

1.5 HSW CEUs anticipated

This event will also be available as a livestream (no CEUs). Register to receive the link the day before the event.

See details and register here.

By invitation.

This is a new BSLA tradition: a special reception to honor our new ASLA Fellows. We will enjoy drinks and appetizers as we celebrate the five landscape architects being elevated to national Fellowship from our chapter this year, and we will toast to our recent Fellows.

Sponsored by Maglin Site Furniture; hosted by Sasaki

Space is limited, with Fellows and their guests having priority. We will open this up to the broader membership if/as space permits.

Free. In person in the John Olver Design Building Lecture Hall (Room 170), University of Massachusetts Amherst.

The annual lecture series of the UMass Amherst Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning continues with "Organizing for Community Justice and Empowerment," a Zube Lecture Presented by Seth Borgos and Jennifer Wells.

See details on this lecture and the entire series.

Online.

The relatively new Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee of BSLA aims to foster a network of welcoming support focused on people of color and other minorities within and beyond the organization.

Given current events, this is necessary now more than ever.

What’s on your mind? What’s your lived experience? What do you/your colleagues need? How can we act together?

Members + non-members, students and recent graduates to seasoned leaders are welcome. Join us.

Click here to join the Zoom

Photo: BSLA Inside/Out tour of The Embrace + Boston Common, summer 2023

Free. In person and online.

What informs how YOU think about design?

Lauren and Stephen Stimson will speak together for the first (and likely only) time on 9/23/2025 6:30-8pm in Piper Auditorium at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, on restraint + wildness.

This event is open to the public and free. Register online to attend or watch a live stream.

Register here.

Online.

Zoom link here

Welcome to the new Plant Sourcing Task Force. This group will focus on anti-neonicotinoids as well as other issues such as seed grown plants, local ecotypes, etc.

All are welcome.

Happening worldwide, in-person on Friday, September 19!

Park(ing) Day is a global event in which parking spaces are temporarily transformed into mini parks — ASLA chapters across the country will participate! We create installations in collaboration with and next to schools. Park(ing) Day is a day to connect kids with landscape architecture.

This year, we will be at Boston Green Academy

Location: 20 Warren St, Boston, MA 02135

Times: 8am - 9am: Set up

9am - 1pm: Event

1pm - 2pm: Break down

Please join us in making Park(ing) Day 2025 happen!

Sign up here to participate

There will be a coordination Zoom meeting on Tuesday, 9/16 at 7 pm.

Scroll for pictures from past Park(ing) Day events….

Online.

This is the monthly meeting of BSLA’s elected Executive Committee (“ExComm”), Section chairs, Student chapter leaders, and Committee leaders. All members from Maine and Massachuetts are welcome to attend.

This typically takes place on the third Thursday of the month.

The regular agenda includes brief updates, questions, and calls-to-action from each of the leaders and the work that they represent, along with longer discussions on special topics. If you have a topic to bring to an ExComm meeting, please email BSLA President, Michelle Crowley.

It’s our regular, essential moment to connect and coordinate our activities across Mass & Maine, AND our means to collaboratively discuss questions, issues, and other important things.

The 2025 Zoom link is here. Email Gretchen to be added to the calendar invite. Join us!

Online.

This is an informal, monthly drop-in Zoom meeting of landscape architecture firm owners and leaders. 

Our goal is to create a space where New England landscape architecture firm owners and leaders can connect, commiserate, compare notes, and hopefully laugh a little with your peers in this community.

There is no fixed agenda, but we will start with a few discussion prompts and then you can take the conversation wherever you want to go. 

SEPTEMBER DISCUSSION PROMPTS:

Do you use AI now? How?

How would you like to use it?

AI fears / problems / challenges?

AI questions / suggestions for a future BSLA panel on AI

Other questions or topics to discuss? contact BSLA President & Crowley Cottrell firm owner, Michelle Crowley.

Do you want to receive the monthly calendar invite? email Gretchen.

Here’s the Zoom link for the rest of 2025

JapanGSD at the Harvard Graduate School of Design invites you to a special lecture on the Portland Japanese Garden on Tuesday, September 16. This lecture will offer unique insights into nonprofit leadership and stewardship of cultural heritage in a globalized world.

Light refreshments will be provided, and the event will also be livestreamed on Zoom.

Portland Japanese Garden: Cultivating a Legacy of Peace at the Intersection of Culture, Art, and Nature

Date & Time: Tuesday, September 16, 18:30–20:00

Location: Piper Auditorium, Gund Hall (58 Quincy St, Cambridge, MA 02138)

Hosted by: JapanGSD

Co-hosted and Sponsored by: Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies

Livestream:

https://harvard.zoom.us/j/94125841728?pwd=9pIBSZOD7kanrA8h8FIb2QR8juUmbo.1

About the Lecture:

Over the course of its more than 60 years, there are few figures who have made a greater and more lasting impact on Portland Japanese Garden than Steve Bloom. Over an extraordinary two decades as CEO, Bloom transformed a humble, local garden that hosted infrequent programming into an internationally renowned garden and preeminent cultural institution. Through his leadership, a global community witnessed how a garden can be fertile soil for the arts, education, dialogue, and peacemaking just as much as flora.

Portland Japanese Garden is a nonprofit founded in 1963 as a place for cross-cultural understanding following World War II. A beloved gem in Oregon, the Garden was founded on the ideals of peace and mutual understanding between peoples. Portland Japanese Garden is considered the most authentic Japanese garden outside of Japan and the foremost Japanese cultural organization in North America.

Speaker:

Steve Bloom has served in three chief executive roles over the past 30 years, most recently retiring as CEO of Portland Japanese Garden and Japan Institute after 20 years of transformational leadership. Bloom has recently been engaged by the Nobel Peace Center to help amplify its mission of fostering global conversations around peace, dialogue, and shared humanity internationally, and has also been appointed by the United States–Japan Foundation as its first ever Senior Fellow.

For any inquiries on the event, please email miukondo@gsd.harvard.edu or japangsd.lecture@gmail.com

Online. Free. All welcome.

Join us for the Global Design Initiative for Refugee Children (GDIRC) bi-monthly meeting! This meeting is hosted via Zoom.

RSVP here to receive join information for this meeting. This information will be included in your confirmation email.

The Global Design Initiative for Refugee Children is led jointly by BSLA and BSA. To find out more, visit the GDIRC website here or visit the Global Design Initiative for Refugee Children Knowledge Community page on the BSA website here.

Healthy Pots, Healthy Planet's Upcoming Webinar:

Redesigning the Future of Plastic Plant Containers (1 CEU)

Tuesday, September 9, 2025 at 2 p.m. Eastern

Presented by Marie Chieppo, Ecological Landscape Designer, Accredited Organic Land Care Professional, Principal of EcoPlantPlans LLC

Since APLD’s publication of Plastic Pots and the Green Industry, a great deal of attention is being made to find alternative materials that don’t harm the environment. Policies and consumers have become the predominant drivers of change. At the moment, we are at a crossroads of the bottom line versus what is best for the environment. During this webinar, researcher and author Marie Chieppo will share new products and procedures that are making a significant impact on the amount of virgin plastic being used. If there is a time to learn how you can help in this effort, it is now!

This webinar will be free to attend for HPHP signers and members of APLD.

Free. In person in the John Olver Design Building Lecture Hall (Room 170), University of Massachusetts Amherst.

The annual lecture series of the UMass Amherst Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning continues with "A Natural Hazards Atlas: planning for climate risk & adaptation," a Zube Lecture Presented by Gabi Mocatta

See details on this lecture and the entire series.

Online. Free.

This is a quarterly Zoom meet up for landscape architects (or those trained as landscape architects), currently working in the public or nonprofit sector. This includes landscape architects/designers/planners working in city or town, state, or federal parks agencies as well as in other government departments or nonprofits — not in “regular” practice. We know that many of you face similar issues in your work. Many of you are The Only one of you who does what you do, too.

Our intent is to create space for this professional community to come together.

The topic of these meetings will shift depending on what you want to discuss. You do not need to be a BSLA or ASLA member to participate.

To attend the Zoom, click here.

If you’d like to be added to the calendar invite, email Gretchen.

Pictured: Jessie Waisnor and Alexandra Vecchio, landscape architects with the Town of Brookline, lead a BSLA Inside/Out tour of new & historic Brookline public spaces, October 2023

Online.

The relatively new Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee of BSLA aims to foster a network of welcoming support focused on people of color and other minorities within and beyond the organization.

Given current events, this is necessary now more than ever.

What’s on your mind? What’s your lived experience? What do you/your colleagues need? How can we act together?

Members + non-members, students and recent graduates to seasoned leaders are welcome. Join us.

Click here to join the Zoom

Photo: BSLA Inside/Out tour of The Embrace + Boston Common, summer 2023

Online.

Zoom link here

Welcome to the new Plant Sourcing Task Force. This group will focus on anti-neonicotinoids as well as other issues such as seed grown plants, local ecotypes, etc.

All are welcome.

In person. Free.

RSVP here

Our 2025 series continues in Worcester...

This tour focuses on Miyawaki Forests and the Ecological Function of the Urban Wild.

We invite you to learn more about Worcester's efforts to build climate resilience and mitigate the effects of extreme heat in this environmental justice community. Join us for a brief presentation at the Worcester Public Library, followed by a guided tour of the nearby Worcester McGrath Parking Lot Miyawaki Forest (located at 3 Salem St, Worcester, MA).

In 2024, two Miyawaki Forests were designed and planted in Worcester, Massachusetts. The McGrath Lot site -- a municipal parking lot -- replaced 6,500 SF of asphalt with forest. At maturity, this forest will hold up to 60 canopy trees.

If you were inspired by the related panel at Fieldday, you'll love exploring this project firsthand!

This tour will be led by

Caseylee Bastien, RLA, CPSI, Senior Landscape Architect and Ecologist at BSC Group

Aqsa Butt, SITES AP, Senior Planner, BSC Group

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Luba Zhaurova, Director of Projects at City of Worcester, Department of Sustainability & Resilience

About the Site:

Planted in 2024, this compact urban forest replaced inefficient parking infrastructure, advancing Worcester’s climate resilience goals for the downtown core. It incorporates regionally specific innovations that build upon the Miyawaki method, integrating the latest principles of ecological restoration. Serving as a prototype, it lays the foundation for a broader network of nature-based solutions across the city and the state.

Photos, above: during 2024 installation and below, after one year’s growth. Courtesy BSC Group.

The tour will explore:

• Forest growth since implementation

• Management techniques, including the “chop and drop” method for weed control

• Wildlife habitat enhancements, such as a cavity nesting snag and a ground-nesting bee box

• Creative reuse of logs and brush to build habitat thickets for local fauna

Bring your kids!

Family-friendly activities Include:

• ID Tags for Plants Learn about the species thriving in this urban forest and help us tag them using iNaturalist.

• Scavenger Hunt for Kids Participate in a nature scavenger hunt. Kids’ Prize: Special Plant Pencils!

• Macroinvertebrates Petting Zoo Observe small creatures that indicate ecosystem health.

About the Miyawaki Method:

The Miyawaki Method is a unique reforestation approach developed by Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki that creates dense, biodiverse, native pocket forests. These fast-growing tiny forests provide a wide range of ecological and human health benefits, including improved air quality and enhanced biodiversity.

In 2024, two Miyawaki Forests were designed and planted in Worcester, Massachusetts. The McGrath Lot Site (municipal parking lot) replaced 6,500 SF of asphalt with forest. At maturity, this forest will hold up to 60 canopy trees. The Plumley Village Site (private Section 8 housing development) replaced 8,000 SF of sod. At maturity, this forest will hold 50-60 canopy trees.

All are welcome.

Members and non-members, coworkers + friends + families too. Tickets are FREE, tour size limited, registration appreciated. Please come dressed for the weather, prepared to walk outside.

Get your ticket here.

We aim to go in most weather. We will email all ticket holders and post any changes here.

This tour extends the educational program of Fieldday outdoors...

We look forward to exploring with you!