Somerville Garden Club

Look up! Green Roofs and Gardens in the Sky

(NOTE: This talk was originally scheduled for our June meeting.)

Join Recover Green Roofs Emily Ahlstedt and Stephanie Almasi for an in-depth look into the specific considerations for installing and maintaining urban green roof spaces in New England.

Emily Ahlstedt has worked in the horticulture industry for over 10 years, with hands-on experience working at multiple landscape design companies. Her passion for gardening and creating thriving urban green spaces led her to Recover’s horticulture department where she enjoys coordinating projects from concept to completion. Her favorite days at work always involve a job site at elevation, remediating an old space or installing a new green roof. Stephanie Almasi has been a lifelong gardener and lover of plants and nature. She has over 20 years of experience in varied areas of horticulture; residential, historic and public from midcoast Maine to Charleston, SC and most recently, Rose Kennedy Greenway and Mount Auburn Cemetery. A passion for plants both native and unique, she loves creating and maintaining spaces that are ecologically beneficial, biodiverse and meaningful for all beings. Steph is a naturalist to the core and loves birding, botanizing and messing around in her overly ambitious vegetable garden.

All Somerville Garden Club meetings are free and open to the public. 7-9pm.

In-person meetings are held the at the Tufts Administration Building, (TAB), 167 Holland Street, second floor, wheelchair accessible. Parking is available for a small fee, and the building is a ten-minute walk from the Davis Square MBTA stop.

If you are interested in attending virtually, but have not received the meeting link via email, or are not a SGC member, you can email info@somervillegardenclub.org for the link.

Caterpillars sometimes feel like gardeners’ foe when they eat away our plants, but they are an absolutely essential part of our ecosystem. We’ll closely look at caterpillars’ fascinating life cycle by learning basic facts about Lepidoptera; then, we’ll zoom in on Monarch and Eastern Black Swallowtail caterpillars with some photos and videos of their growth, behaviors and metamorphosis. You will see that wonders of our natural world are happening right under our noses. By emphasizing the importance of creating habitats for caterpillars and butterflies, we’ll learn how we can experience rearing caterpillars thoughtfully based on Tufts University entomologist’s advice and Xerces Society’s recommendation.

Tomoko Deeney has guided Boston Public School students on Field Experience Programs at the Arnold Arboretum since 2017. Her interests in trees opened a flood gate to the natural world. Her love for caterpillars, in particular, began when she observed a monarch’s transformation as an educator at Newton Community Farm in the summer of 2022. Since then, she’s been peering into the fascinating world of insects. She is also an avid gardener and fiber artist who has intimately worked with wool from handling raw fleece, spinning yarn to dyeing with plants she grow in her garden.

All Somerville Garden Club meetings are free and open to the public. 7-9pm.

In-person meetings are held the at the Tufts Administration Building, (TAB), 167 Holland Street, second floor, wheelchair accessible. Parking is available for a small fee, and the building is a ten-minute walk from the Davis Square MBTA stop.

If you are interested in attending virtually, but have not received the meeting link via email, or are not a SGC member, you can email info@somervillegardenclub.org for the link.