Carrie Rose intertwines solo flute with recorded owls, grasshoppers and water. As dusk falls on Sat., June 17, these sounds will mingle with breezes, bird and frog calls and stirring turtles and fish when Rose performs Breathing in Nature on the wetland boardwalk at Adkins Arboretum. All are invited to attend.

Featuring compositions by Rose and other contemporary and classical composers, along with friendly introductions to each piece to engage curiosity and intellect, the program will also explore the writings of environmentalist Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring and The Sense of Wonder.

Rose is a flutist, composer and teacher in the Washington, D.C., area. As a performer, she unfurls a luscious array of classical chamber music, grooves for folk dances, freelances with regional orchestras, wails out avant-garde music and presents in-person and recorded Breathing in Nature concerts. Her compositions have been featured at numerous venues in the Baltimore-D.C. region, and she has performed in the D.C. area with ensembles that include the Amadeus Chamber Orchestra, Arlington Philharmonic, Cathedral Choral Society and Washington Concert Opera.

Seating begins at 7 p.m. on the wetland bridge and boardwalk. Music from 7:15 to 8:15 p.m. will include Syrinx by Claude Debussy, Owls for Flute and Owl Sounds by Carrie Rose, Sonata Appassionata by Sigfrid Karg-Elert, Canto del Alba by Mario Lavista, Waterweave for flute and water sounds by Carrie Rose, Tango Etude #3 by Astor Piazzola, Prelude in C Major from the Well-Tempered Clavier by Johann Sebastian Bach, Ave Maria by Charles Gounod and Suvisoitto (Summersounds) flute and grasshoppers by Usko Merilainen.

Wine and treats will be available for purchase before the concert. Attendees should bring chairs. The concert is accessible.

The program fee of $20 for members/$25 for non-members increases by $5 on the day of the event. Advance registration is encouraged at adkinsarboretum.org or by calling 410-634-2847, ext. 100.

Breathing in Nature is sponsored in part by the Caroline County Council of Arts and the Maryland Arts Council.

A 400-acre native garden and preserve, Adkins Arboretum provides exceptional experiences in nature to promote environmental stewardship.

Many stories are woven into the landscape at Adkins Arboretum. This spring, five artists from the mid-Atlantic region brought some of them to light with their sculptures on view June 1 through Sept. 30 in the Arboretum’s 11^th biennial Outdoor Sculpture Invitational—Artists in Dialogue with Landscape. The artists will talk about the stories that inspired their artworks during a reception and guided sculpture walk on Sat., June 3 from 2 to 4 p.m.

“News Alert—Dinosaur Tracks Discovered at Adkins Arboretum!” is Yardley, Penn., artist Elizabeth McCue’s take on how the Arboretum may have looked in prehistory. Set in a curving path, her trackway of huge sauropod footprints marches off into the forest beyond.

The Arboretum’s present-day paths prompted Marcos Smyth of Alexandria, Va., to create “Revelator.” Spanning a path under the trees, it creates an unexpected barrier, forcing walkers to enter its wheelchair-accessible U-shaped tunnel. Inside, it reveals itself as a place of dappled light and shadow where one is largely concealed from the outside world but can see through the latticework of sticks and burlap that form its walls. It’s an invitation to pause, look around and open to the peace and revelations the forest offers before moving on.

Stephanie Garon, of Clarksville, Md., also took up the theme of traveling with three towering figures made of bundles of willow saplings that seem to stride across the Arboretum’s South Meadow. After learning that this land was the home of the native Choptank people until colonization forced them to migrate, Garon began to consider how people around the world are being displaced as climate change makes their homes uninhabitable through sea level rise and intensified weather patterns.

In her travels as an art handler moving art for museums and galleries across the U.S. and Canada, Laurel, Md., artist Melissa Burley often witnesses the effects of increasingly severe storms caused by climate change. Also disturbed by the discarded water bottles and tattered plastic bags caught in fences along the highways, she was inspired by Chief Seattle’s famous words, “Man does not weave a web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web he does to himself.” A startling bright blue in the green of the forest, her sculpture, “Caught in a Web,” is an intimate tableau made of a picket fence and litter with a mirror behind a silvery web that reflects the viewer’s own face.

Another aspect of the same web is revealed by colorful flags set in a patch of delicate ferns surrounding a large tree. “All Together,” a second sculpture by McCue, evokes the Wood Wide Web popularized by Suzanne Simard’s book Finding the Mother Tree. Only recently discovered by scientists, the mycorrhizal network that trees use to communicate and forge symbiotic relationships is hidden underground, but McCue has made it visible by marking its interconnected patterns with hundreds of multicolored flags radiating from a “Mother Tree.”

For Towson, Md., artist Bridgette Guerzon Mills, it was natural to let the forest’s trees tell their own stories. Gathering acorns, seedpods, bark, lichens, moss and leaves, she stitched them onto the pages of a large handmade book where they form a gentle meditation on trees’ role in the forest ecology. As well as containing the seeds of the next generation of trees, such “forest litter” provides food for animals and nutrients for the soil and is crucial to the health of the forest.

A powerful awareness of such intricate interconnections runs through all these artists’ works. In their various ways, they explore the realization that in our ever-changing world, the interconnections humans share with all of nature are crucial to the web of life on earth.

This show is part of Adkins Arboretum’s ongoing exhibition series of work on natural themes by regional artists. It is on view June 1 through Sept. 30 at the Arboretum Visitor’s Center located at 12610 Eveland Road near Tuckahoe State Park in Ridgely. Contact the Arboretum at 410-634-2847, ext. 100 or [email protected] for gallery hours.

A 400-acre native garden and preserve, Adkins Arboretum provides exceptional experiences in nature to promote environmental stewardship.

Music will once again lilt through the trees when Adkins Arboretum hosts Forest Music on Thurs., June 15 from 2 to 4 p.m. Presented in partnership with Chestertown’s National Music Festival, Forest Music is a unique performance art event that brings young musicians and their mentors from the Festival to play in the forest for visitors who travel from near and far to hear them.

Since its inception in 2014, Forest Music has become a highly anticipated annual event. Positioned individually or in small groups along a circuit of wooded paths, musicians play their individual selections simultaneously so that their music can be heard up close or at a distance as visitors walk through the forest. Sometimes harmonizing between one group and the next, sometimes creating strangely magical dissonances, they play in concert with birdsong, the rustle of leaves in high branches and, occasionally, a chorus of frogs.

Over the years, participating musicians have come with violins, clarinets, horns, bassoons, double basses and even steel drums to play everything from Bach to the Beatles to original compositions developed specifically for the Arboretum forest. Held during the National Music Festival’s two-week run, Forest Music draws many of its visitors from the Festival itself while also attracting a large local audience from the Arboretum’s members and friends.

The event will also feature the opportunity to bid on a parlor-size acoustic/electric guitar, generously donated by PRS Guitars. Bids will also be accepted through June 30 at adkinsarboretum.org.

Forest Music is $10 per person. Light refreshments will be served, and wine will be available for purchase. All are welcome; advance registration is strongly encouraged at adkinsarboretum.org or by calling 410-634-2847, ext. 100.

This event is generously sponsored in part by the Caroline County Council of Arts, PRS Guitars and Unity Landscape Design|Build.

A 400-acre native garden and preserve, Adkins Arboretum provides exceptional experiences in nature to promote environmental stewardship.

The National Music Festival brings together inspiring mentors and the next generation of gifted musicians, providing education, scholarships and affordable, adventurous public performances in and around Chestertown, Md. Visit nationalmusic.us for more information.