The Blue Hill Public Library and Native Gardens of Blue Hill are cosponsoring a talk with local landscape historian Val Libby on Tuesday, April 2 at 7PM, on the book American Plants for American Gardens by Edith Roberts and Elsa Rehmann.

In 1929, the botanist and landscape architect teamed up to write a series of articles, later reworked into the book, about using our natural ecosystems as a guide for garden planting and design. Their ideas were brand new to the gardening world and have only recently been widely embraced. Out of print for decades, this book emphasizes the strong links between ecology, aesthetics, nature and design and focuses on the vegetation concentrated in the northeastern United States.

Val Libby is a retired professor of landscape history & public horticulture. She has focused on the contribution of American women to the field in her scholarship. She is a prize-winning author who currently teaches for Maine’s senior college programs. 

This program is free and open to all, and will be held in the library's Howard Room. For more information, please email Kayleigh at kayleigh.thomas@bhpl.net, or call the library at 374-5515.