Emily Dickinson's Garden: the Poetry of Flowers May 27, 2010

While Emily Dickinson is considered one of America's most acclaimed and beloved poets, her love of plants and flowers - and the incredible impact they had on her poetry - is little known. In fact, during her lifetime, she was known as a practiced and passionate gardener, not a poet, by family and friends. The three-part outdoor and indoor exhibit will include a spectacular large-scale re-creation of Dickinson's garden, a gallery exhibition of 60 artifacts from Emily's life, and a Poetry Walk, which will feature over 30 oversized poetry boards throughout the garden surrounded by the plants and flowers that served as her muse. In addition, during the opening celebration, April 30-May 2, school children, literary scholars, and visitors to The Garden will join in a public marathon reading of all of 1,789 Emily Dickinson's poems, from beginning to end. This marathon will resume the final week of the show (June 12-13) - and is a National Endowment for the Arts "Big Read" initiative, designed to restore reading to American culture.