February 6th 9:30 am
Garden Design with a New England Lens
Speaker: Irene Barber, Coastal Maine Botanical Gardeners
Irene Barber, registered Horticultural Therapist (HTR) and coordinator of the Horticultural Therapy Program at CMBG, will speak about ecologically conscious landscapes, design, and gardening. She is the designer of the Farnsworth Museum Gardens. Barber knows about the intimate relationship between people and plants—sun to soil, seed to root, plant to harvest, harvest to human, human to human. It’s that connection that drew her to the practice of horticultural therapy (HT), defined by Barber as, “the transformation that happens when we work with the earth to improve well-being. She adds, “plants, like people, are resilient; they can heal, they can recover, rehabilitate, rejuvenate, and prefer to live in communities. They bounce back. When we think about designing a garden, we so often think about nurturing the plant, it’s also about how that plant is nurturing us.”