2012 Spencer Lecture presents

“Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation”

Thursday, March 8 | 6:30 p.m.

The 14th annual Spencer Lecture will be held on Thursday, March 8 at 6:30 p.m. in the Linn-Henley Lecture Hall, with a reception to be held prior from 5:30 - 6:30 p.m. This free annual event brings award-winning and New York Times best selling author Andrea Wulf to Birmingham Botanical Gardens for an intriguing talk titled “Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation.” This beautifully illustrated talk looks at the lives of the founding fathers and how their attitude toward plants, gardens, nature and agriculture shaped the American nation. In a unique retelling of the creation of America, Wulf will show how plants, politics and personalities intertwined as never before. Guests will have a chance to meet Ms. Wulf at a reception in the Hodges Room at 5:30 p.m. prior to his lecture, where she will also be signing copies of her books, including Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature and the Shaping of the American Nation.

Andrea Wulf was born in India and moved to Germany as a child. She trained as a design historian at Royal College of Art and is the author of the New York Times best selling The Founding Gardeners as well as of The Brother Gardeners (long-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize 2008 and winner of the American Horticultural Society 2010 Book Award) and the co-author (with Emma Gieben-Gamal) of This Other Eden: Seven Great Gardens and 300 Years of English History. She has written for The Sunday Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The Garden, and regularly reviews for several newspapers, including the Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian and The New York Times. She lives in London.

Tickets to this event are extremely limited, and it will reach capacity quickly. We encourage you to register for this event soon.

The Spencer Lecture Series is made possible by the Virginia Beeland Spencer Lecture Fund at the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham. The fund was started by the late Williams M. Spencer, III in honor of his wife, the late Virginia Beeland Spencer.

For more information or to reserve your seat, please contact Special Events Coordinator Shelly McCarty at 205.414.3965 or smccarty@bbgardens.org.

Books will be available for purchase at: