Tonight at 7 p.m., Atlanta Botanical Garden is hosting a free Alston Lecture with Atlanta writer and design critic Felicia Feaster. The subject, 'The Frightful Botanical,' is a tour of the Victorian fascination with dangerous and uncanny plants. Day Hall doors open at 6 p.m., and the organizer describes the lecture as free and open to the public.
This is not a generic gardening seminar. Feaster's book The Goth Garden connects plants to literature, folklore and visual culture, from Gothic novels to the unnerving stories people invented about orchids. Her examples include angel's trumpet, ghost pipe, wormwood and even ordinary tomatoes. It's a fun intersection of design, photography, history and a slightly strange Halloween mood.
The appeal is also practical: you can go without a major plan, spend an hour hearing something unfamiliar, and come home with ideas for an unusual photography project or an atmospheric garden detail. The lecture is scheduled to be livestreamed on the Garden's Facebook page, and a book signing is planned afterward at the gift shop.
To attend, use the official Garden event page for any last-minute change and allow time to park or arrive from Midtown. This is the kind of Atlanta item Wake Up should surface: inexpensive, nearby, a little unexpected and actually happening tonight.
Alternative for a more hands-on evening: Piedmont Park's free Community Craft Night runs 6–9 p.m. at its Community Center, with recycled materials from Scraplanta. Both are real options, but the lecture gets the front page because the topic is unusually distinctive.