Check Out These New Titles on Plants and Gardening
John Suskewich is Book Manager for Shop in the Garden.
Will these 10 books stop me from ordering seeds I probably won’t get around to sowing until 2018? Will they prevent me from having a six-foot-tall Panicum come up in front of an eight-inch-tall Catananche? Will they convince me not to try growing Rhododendron yakushimanum for the third time in 10 years in my yard with heavy clay soil and a high water table? Probably not; but here are 10 new books—on plants and gardens and nature and why it all matters—that were recently published or are coming out later this year and that I’ll be reading anyway, no matter what benefit I may or may not get from them!
A Landscape Manifesto,
by Diana Balmori
Innovative and influential landscape architect Diana Balmori writes on the theory, practice, and future of her profession.
Ken Smith Landscape Architect,
by Ken Smith This imaginative practitioner, who has changed our idea of what landscape architecture can be, looks at his most important projects.
Garden Guide: New York City,
by Nancy Berner and Susan Lowry
From Gotham’s horticultural Baedeker comes a new edition—it’s always amazing to see how many gardens you can visit here in NYC!
The Japanese Tea Garden, by Marc Peter Keane No American interprets Japanese garden history and practice better than our colleague Marc Peter Keane.
Two Species Normally Found in Spring Spotted on Bird Count
Carol Capobianco is Editorial Content Manager at The New York Botanical Garden.
Local birder Rob Jett reports on his Web site The City Birder that two pine warblers and four Baltimore Orioles—bird species that at this time of year are usually much farther south (as in Florida and south of the border)—were recorded on December 27 at the Botanical Garden during the National Audubon Society’s annual Christmas Bird Count.
The Garden falls within the Bronx-Westchester count area, which this year marked its 86th season. (Roger Tory Peterson was one of the more famous participants.) This is the seventh time in the past 11 years that orioles (see photo at right, by Steve Nanz) were found in the count area, but four is a record high.
Debbie Becker, who leads the Garden’s weekly bird walks, has seen pine warblers (photo at left, by Steve Nanz) here since early December. And, she says that seeing orioles in December—often near the crabapple trees or the Rock Garden—has become more common. She has conducted her own “unofficial” bird count at the Garden in December for about 20 years. She thinks the sightings of birds such as orioles and warblers in winter may be the result of climate change, and some birds that usually migrate instead find a secure home with plenty of sustenance at the Garden.
All your favorite New York landmarks are in one place for one final weekend of the Holiday Train Show. This is your last chance to:
• See the trains among twinkling lights wind past the old Yankee Stadium, the Brooklyn Bridge, and, new this year, the original Penn Station and Brooks Brothers flagship store.
• Become an honorary engineer and take a picture with Thomas the Tank Engine™ along with his friend, Sir Topham Hatt, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• Make a field notebook about ginger, cinnamon, and other spices in Gingerbread Adventures. Save room for decorating and sampling gingersnaps!
Laura Collier is Marketing Associate at The New York Botanical Garden.
Best-in-Show from the Royal Horticultural Society, the Dianne Bouchier Founder’s Award for Excellence in Botanical Art, president of the American Society of Botanical Artists—with these accolades it would be hard to guess that instructor Dick Rauh had a career in motion picture special effects and graphics before he began to pursue botanical illustration.
When his wife enrolled in floral design classes at The New York Botanical Garden, Dick, too, began taking classes at the Garden, a little before retiring. He had always liked to draw trees, and while he was taking gardening classes, NYBG was starting its Botanical Illustration program. Dick began taking the art classes and by 1986 had completed his Certificate in Botanical Art and Illustration.
Dick’s connection with the Garden deepened as he continued to study. Because he was creating illustrations for scientists, he took botany classes to gain a better understanding of the plants and their makeup and also earned a doctorate in biological sciences from CUNY.
Celebrating the Season and Looking Ahead to Our Spring Exhibition
Carol Capobianco is Editorial Content Manager at The New York Botanical Garden.
Garden staff members have been busy learning all they can about Emily Dickinson and her poetry in advance of the Botanical Garden’s spring exhibition, Emily Dickinson’s Garden: The Poetry of Flowers, May 1–June 13, 2010. We take note wherever and whenever we see her name.
So when we saw in a datebook, by chance, a gingerbread recipe by Emily Dickinson, we decided to blog about it, since the Garden currently is presenting Gingerbread Adventures in the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden as part of the Holiday Train Show.
With a little digging around I learned that Dickinson had a bit of a reputation as a baker in her hometown of Amherst, Massachusetts. In fact, she was particularly known for her gingerbread (and Rye and Indian bread), and would lower a basket of it to children below (photo by Lewis S. Mudge, courtesy of his estate), according to Emily Dickinson: Profile of the Poet as Cook, with Selected Recipes, by Nancy Harris Brose, Juliana McGovern Dupre, Wendy Tocher Kohler, and Jean McClure Mudge, and published in 1976. We have a copy of this 28-page booklet in the LuEsther T. Mertz Library, where in spring 60 objects that tell the story of Dickinson’s life will be on view in the Rondina and LoFaro Gallery. (Complementing this will be a re-creation of her garden in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory and a poetry walk throughout the Garden’s grounds.)
My intention was simply to post the recipe here, with permission from Jean Mudge, and let you try it out for yourself. However, I got caught up in the “everything Emily” mood, and to celebrate her 179th birthday (December 10), I decided to try making the recipe myself to share with co-workers.
If you’ve read our informative signs at the Holiday Train Showor have absorbed our wonderful show-related blog posts, Web content, or media coverage, you know by now that the New York landmark replicas in the show are made of plant parts and fungi.
But do you know what each does when it’s alive, before it becomes an architectural element such as a roof shingle, window, or column on the fantastic buildings and bridges?
Take our quiz and match each plant part and fungus to its botanical role. (You can peek at the signs for hints on your visit to the Holiday Train Show this final week). Let us know how many you got right!
1. Bark
A. moves water and nutrients from roots to leaves
2. Cone
B. holds and protects the seeds of flowering plants
I’m Back at the Garden; Please Come Visit—I Can’t Wait to See You
Thomas the Tank Engine™ is an annual visitor to The New York Botanical Garden.
Hello everyone! It’s Thomas, and I want to tell you about my next exciting destination—The New York Botanical Garden! I pull into the station on January 2 to welcome all the children who visit each day through January 10.
I see so many smiling faces every year during my visit to the Holiday Train Show. I sometimes wish I were small enough to wind through the miniature New York landscape made of sticks and leaves and pine cones like the trains in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory.
At the Garden I have a very important job of meeting families at the Ross Lecture Hall and posing for photos with lots of boys and girls. Remember to bring your camera!
Sir Topham Hatt will travel with me to make sure we are right on time and that everything runs smoothly while we have fun at the Holiday Train Show. We’ve brought treats like stickers, tattoos, and coloring sheets to share with all our friends. Everyone can earn these and become honorary engineers when they come and see me.
Larry Lederman’s Images on Display; Available as 2010 Calendar in Shop
The form and beauty of trees drew Larry Lederman into landscape photography nine years ago, when he began visiting the Botanical Garden weekly in all kinds of weather. For Lederman, a member of the Board of Advisors, the Garden is a beautiful and diverse landscape where he can follow the growth and seasonal changes of the trees, each occasion offering singular enchantments.
Some of his resulting images are currently on display in an exhibition, The Presence of Trees, in the Arthur and Janet Ross Gallery, through April 11.
“The presence or absence of trees often defines a landscape,” Lederman has said. “In art, forests signify wilderness and clearing, its loss. The trees in these photographs are in the so-called cleared places, nurtured to be part of our lives. Growing either alone or one in relation to others, they respond to the seasons, invest the landscape with their permanence and character, and connect us to nature. They influence our moods, affect our behavior, and shape our lives. These photographs view trees as expressive presences evocative of the diversity and wonder of life.”
His images take a fresh look at trees in the landscape and reveal their beauty and structure during all seasons, underscoring their character and influence in the natural world.
In 2003 the Botanical Garden published his first calendar, Woodland Creatures, which led to his annual series, Trees. Copies of his 2010 calendar, which include several images from the exhibition, are available at Shop in the Garden.
During the past 15 years, my staff and I have devoted a great deal of effort in the creation of the C.V. Starr Virtual Herbarium, which is an on-line catalog of the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium. Entries in the Virtual Herbarium are created by transcribing the data from the specimen label into an electronic database, and often capturing a digital image of the specimens as well.
We have digitized just over 1 million of our 7.3 million specimens so far. Although we don’t know exactly what objective drives each of the 8,400 daily visits to the Virtual Herbarium, we deduce from reviewing the sources of these “hits” that most users are seeking basic biodiversity information.
Carol Capobianco is Editorial Content Manager at The New York Botanical Garden.
As in past years, Gingerbread Adventures in the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden features a wondrous display of gingerbread houses created by some of the area’s most imaginative bakers.
This year’s theme was “Fairy Tales,” and the bakers delivered charming interpretations of classic children’s favorites.
Jill Adams of The Cake Studio, Brooklyn, featured the archetypal princess and frog prince in front of a castle. Kate Sullivan of Lovin Sullivan Cakes, Manhattan, gave life to the tale of the Three Little Pigs, with a big, bad wolf at the front door. Liv and Kaye Hansen of Riviera Bakehouse, Ardsley, tell the story of The Pied Piper of Hamelin with confectionary rats overrunning the town.
Irina Brandler of Sugar and Spice Bake Shop, the Bronx, offered her rendition of the Russian folklore witch Baba Yaga, who “lives in a house which walks about on chicken legs,” and Mark Tasker of Balthazar Bakery, Manhattan, created a red-and-white circus tent, “Greatest Show in the Big Apple,” with a rotating center ring inside.
Come and have fun as I—and the moms and kids around me—did picking out the types of candy and other treats that creatively construct each design: frosted cereal as roof tiles, candy canes as columns, pretzel sticks as firewood, bubblegum as a ceiling light fixture, and so much more.
John Suskewich is Book Manager for Shop in the Garden.
A Landscape Manifesto,
