Romantic Gardens

Romantic Gardens

February 8th at 2:00 p.m. at the Library

Join us as the Sherman Library offers Romantic Gardens, a presentation by Caitlin Merritt on Saturday, February 8th at 2:00 p.m. at the Library.

For centuries, gardens have been created to show power, display beauty, and create spaces for meditation and leisure, but gardens seem especially apt at capturing our romantic imagination. Gardens, both real and imagined, have been sites of temptation, flirtation, pursuit, and commemoration. They offer us lush environs, opportunities to meet new people, sensory delight, and shaded corners to hide away. From one of the grandest gestures commemorating lost love at the Taj Mahal to the recreation of a lover’s dreamlike pursuit at Isola Bella, garden history offers us wondrous examples of love desired, found, and lost. Join Caitlin Merritt, Instructor of Landscape Design History at New York Botanical Gardens, as she guides us through these stories of romance in the garden. 

Caitlin Merritt's enthusiasm for research stems from the cultural narratives that shape our understanding. Her engagement with the concepts surrounding the relationship of the person and the natural world has led her to engage in the fields of landscape design and ethnobotany through historical, philosophical, and theological lenses. Caitlin teaches the History of Landscape Design at New York Botanical Garden and was also one of the three founding content developers for NYBG’s Plant Studio initiative “Landscape Design History for Beginners”. Caitlin also teaches undergraduate classes in philosophy, religion, and intellectual history at Sacred Heart University, Fairfield University, and Fordham University. She has earned her bachelor of arts in Philosophy at the College of the Holy Cross, a Master's of Arts in Philosophy at Boston College, and is currently earning her Master's of Theological Studies at Fordham University.

This is a free program at the Sherman Library. Registration is requested. Register online at shermanlibrary.org/registration-dropdown or contact slprograms@biblio.org.