Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum celebrates women of New England horticulture
As New England waits for spring — and observes Women’s History Month — the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University is celebrating the roots of the region’s traditions of landscape design and social outreach. “Cultivating Legacies: New England Women in Horticulture and Landscape Design” salutes six notable women from the turn of the last century with a seminar on Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Arboretum’s Hunnewell Building. The women being honored — Mary “Polly” Wakefield, Marjorie Russell Sedgwick, Martha Brookes Hutcheson, Eleanor Cabot Bradley, Marian Roby Case, and Rose Standish Nichols — may not be household names, but each played what could be called a groundbreaking role in New England horticulture. In addition to their ties to the Arboretum, all of these women shared a common goal, said Lisa Pearson, head of library and archives at the Arnold Arboretum Horticultural Library: “The improvement of plants but also the improvement...