The Frightful Botanical: A suitably spooky journey into the macabre folklore and bizarre and dangerous plants of The Goth Garden
Join author Felicia Feaster as she takes us back to the Victorian age, the dawn of Gothic novels by Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker and Robert Louis Stevenson and sinister short stories by H.G. Wells of orchids sourced from distant lands that try to murder their new owners. Nature in the Victorian age was both feared and revered, and in keeping with the Halloween spirit, we’ll honor that tradition, delving into plants both commonplace and rare like tomatoes, angel’s trumpet, ghost pipe and wormwood and their often dark and deadly histories. From rosemary’s use in ancient Egyptian funeral rites to political poisonings via castor bean, the plants growing in your garden harbor murderous intent and the darkest of secrets.
Felicia Feaster is a longtime Atlanta art critic and lifestyle journalist and the author of The Goth Garden: The Mystery, Beauty, and Lore of Dark Gardening, as well as a collection of goth garden postcards and a goth garden coloring book. An HGTV editor for 11 years, she launched the first HGTV site dedicated to gardening, HGTVGardens. She has won numerous Garden Writers Association and Society of Professional Journalists awards and has been interviewed on garden and design trends by The New York Times, Forbes, Fox News, Sunset and the Associated Press. Felicia holds degrees from the University of Florida and Emory University and currently writes about design, art and gardening for HGTV, USA Today, Martha Stewart and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She was recently interviewed by Alicia Malone about the goth garden in film on Turner Classic Movies.
Free, open to the public, and no registration required. Day Hall doors will open at 6 p.m. This program will be live-streamed on the Garden’s Facebook, and a book signing will follow at the Garden’s Gift Shop. If you have any questions or concerns about this program, please contact classes@atlantabg.org.
The Philip and Elkin Alston Lecture Series is made possible by generous support from the estate of Elkin Goddard Alston.