Esther Jackson is the Public Services Librarian at NYBG’s LuEsther T. Mertz Library where she manages Reference and Circulation services and oversees the Plant Information Office. She spends much of her time assisting researchers, providing instruction related to library resources, and collaborating with NYBG staff on various projects related to Garden initiatives and events.
Natural Color: Vibrant Plant Dye Projects for Your Home and Wardrobe has the look of a book that is waiting to be touched. With its slightly-textured cover materials and luscious cover photo it draws the eye while subtlety hinting at the projects it contains. This book by Sasha Duerr, published with Ten Speed Press, builds in part off of her earlier publication The Handbook of Natural Plant Dyes which was published in 2010 with Timber Press.
Natural Color opens with a gorgeous image of a passionflower (Passiflora edulis) photographed by Aya Bracket. Bracket’s photos coupled with precise and artistic page layouts make this book about practical handicraft a work of art in and of itself. Even those who have not dyed materials (and perhaps have no real desire to do so) can appreciate the beauty of this work. Duerr’s couching of her dyeing ethics within permaculture is both intriguing and accessible. One of the names associated with “slow fashion,” Duerr champions both self-sufficiency for people as well as respect for and harmony with the natural world. Many of the projects in Natural Color make use of cultivated garden plants, non-native plants that have become “weeds,” and plants that can be sustainably and responsibly harvested.
Esther Jackson is the Public Services Librarian at NYBG’s LuEsther T. Mertz Library where she manages Reference and Circulation services and oversees the Plant Information Office. She spends much of her time assisting researchers, providing instruction related to library resources, and collaborating with NYBG staff on various projects related to Garden initiatives and events.
The Reason for Flowers is the most recent book from pollination ecologist and entomologist Stephen Buchmann. Buchmann’s primary research is focused on pollinators, and several of his earlier books are specifically about bees.
Flowers, as Buchmann writes, are an integral part of human history. Flowers (or plants, more generally) are cultivated, harvested, killed, eaten, admired, and imbued with a myriad of symbols. On top of human interactions with flowers, there are also pollinator interactions with flowers. In short, the scope of this book is enormous. Fourteen chapters in five sections cover topics from flower fossils to flowers in contemporary science. In between are sections detailing popular flowers in historic gardens from around the world, edible flowers, flowers in art and literature, and “healing” flowers.
Esther Jackson is the Public Services Librarian at NYBG’s LuEsther T. Mertz Library where she manages Reference and Circulation services and oversees the Plant Information Office. She spends much of her time assisting researchers, providing instruction related to library resources, and collaborating with NYBG staff on various projects related to Garden initiatives and events.
Amy Stewart delighted readers with her 2009 book Wicked Plants from Algonquin Books. With a scope that included poisonous plants, plants that cause physical injuries, invasive plants, and addictive plants, Stewart engaged and alarmed her audience with cautionary tales about, and cultural histories of, some of the plant kingdom’s more dangerous and infamous members. Now, in 2016, The Wicked Plants Coloring Book renews the theme, highlighting some of the wickedest and most beautiful plants.
One of the things that made Wicked Plants so engaging was the care taken by Stewart to use Latin names (binomials) for the organisms she discussed. Stewart also situated each species within a larger context. Readers would learn the properties of a plant like Mandragora officinarum (mandrake) and then in turn learn about its relatives. In the case of M. officinarum, “the notorious nightshade family includes peppers, tomatoes, and potatoes, along with deadly nightshade and belladonna.” This context was helpful to readers who did not have botanical or horticultural backgrounds and made phylogeny, or the study of relationships, accessible to the average reader.
Esther Jackson is the Public Services Librarian at NYBG’s LuEsther T. Mertz Library where she manages Reference and Circulation services and oversees the Plant Information Office. She spends much of her time assisting researchers, providing instruction related to library resources, and collaborating with NYBG staff on various projects related to Garden initiatives and events.
With photographs by Richard Hanson, Writer’s Garden is a very thoughtful and lovely book. Bennett explores the gardens and estates of 19 authors in the United Kingdom. The authors themselves—English, Irish, Scottish, or American by birth—left their marks in the form of their gardens on the British landscape. Bennett is an engaging tour-guide through the landscapes that shaped their works, inspired their art, and became their homes. Using an individual’s garden as a way of telling his or her story is indeed a popular device. At The New York Botanical Garden, there have been several garden-wide exhibitions around this theme. Most recently, FRIDA KAHLO: Art, Garden, Life in 2015, which followed Monet’s Garden of 2012, Emily Dickinson’s Garden: The Poetry of Flowers of 2010, and Darwin’s Garden: An Evolutionary Adventure of 2009.
Organized chaos has its charms, as the authors of Cultivating Chaos: How to Enrich Landscapes with Self-Seeding Plants are eager to extol. There is both an anxiety and a freedom that comes with allowing garden plants to live out their life cycles unmolested—setting seeds and dropping them from cradle to grave and back again. In Chaos’s introduction, Noel Kingsbury writes of using self-seeding plants to establish and encourage a more full and vibrant ecological system in the garden. In the pages that follow, the authors take up this idea and expand upon the theme.
Part of embracing “chaos” in the garden requires letting go. When planting communities that are intended to be self-seeding, the gardener should, in theory, release some control. There might be a plan in mind, but there should also be a willingness to see what the plants do when left to their own devices. The gardener might only work to remove undesirable plants and to fill in gaps when different species die off.
Chaos has a great deal of practical advice for the home gardener. The book is divided into four sections, plus a resources section. “How do you garden with self-seeding plants?,” “Let the planting begin,” “Strategies for design and maintenance,” and “Plants for self-seeding gardens” take the home gardener through the process of using self-seeding plants from start to finish. Gorgeous photographs of different gardens adorn the book’s pages throughout the narrative.
Sometimes one comes across a landscape design book that simply demands to be read from cover to cover without pause. Planting in a Post-Wild World is one such book. Part ecological manifesto, part how-to planting guide, and part artistic statement, Post-Wild is a wonderful and refreshing addition to the world of landscape and planting design literature.
Thomas Rainer and Claudia West are co-authors of Post-Wild. Rainer is a registered landscape architect, teacher, and writer, and West is a landscape designer, lecturer, and consultant. Both work in the U.S., but in the evocative preface each writes of the very different beginnings of their understanding of the wild.
Recently, The Wall Street Journal examined an obscure and surprising piece of New York’s botanical history that began right here at NYBG nearly 80 years ago—the Bronx Seedless table grape, a species of the common fruit hybridized in the 1930s by one of NYBG’s most prolific scientists, Dr. Arlow B. Stout. Sophia Hollander interviewed Stephen Sinon, the LuEsther T. Mertz Library’s Head of Special Collections, Research, and Archives, to learn more about this obscure grape species and the enormous impact it had before fading into obscurity—and near extinction.
In addition to his groundbreaking research into avocado plants and hybridizing many new daylily species that continue to delight visitors to the Garden each summer, Dr. Stout partnered with Cornell University’s New York State Agricultural Experiment Stationto make a better grape. Seedless, tasty, and hardy, the end result of “more than 20 years tinkering with grape genetics” was the Bronx grape, named for its home borough. Cultivation of this species faded over time. While not successful as a commercial crop, all seedless grapes that we enjoy today are descended from this Bronx native, the result of NYBG’s commitment to plant science and conservation that continues to be one of our core values.
Now, from the brink of disappearing altogether, this species is being rediscovered as a source of local pride and historic interest. Click here to read the Wall Street Journal article (subscription required) and learn about Dr. Stout’s remarkable life. NYBG has always endeavored to teach people about where their food comes from—sometimes the answer is closer than you think!
Esther Jackson is the Public Services Librarian at NYBG’s LuEsther T. Mertz Library where she manages Reference and Circulation services and oversees the Plant Information Office. She spends much of her time assisting researchers, providing instruction related to library resources, and collaborating with NYBG staff on various projects related to Garden initiatives and events.
There are 30 essays in Cabaret, (including the epilogue), contained within approximately 350 pages. This means that on average each essay is just over 11 pages long. The variety of topics and the length of each section works very well—readers are able to jump into the text at any point, and spend a few minutes reading a succinct and melodious treatment on a particular topic relating to plants. These 30 essays are divided in 7 sections, but any essay can be read as an independent piece. Considering the nature of this book, (it is intended to be a mélange), the stand-alone nature of each section does not detract from the reading.
Esther Jackson is the Public Services Librarian at NYBG’s LuEsther T. Mertz Library where she manages Reference and Circulation services and oversees the Plant Information Office. She spends much of her time assisting researchers, providing instruction related to library resources, and collaborating with NYBG staff on various projects related to Garden initiatives and events.
When I first heard that Timber Press was publishing a series called The Plant Lover’s Guides, I was excited. I was working as an intern in the library at Longwood Gardens and in the process of falling in love with plants. My roommate at the time was obsessed with sedums and other succulents. “You know,” I mentioned to him casually, “there is a new book that is all about sedums that we are getting for the library.” His eyes lit up at the news, and lit up once again when I put the new book into his hands some months later. It was a perfect match. 2014 saw the release of guides to Sedums, Snowdrops, Dahlias, and Salvias. In 2015, guides to Epimediums, Tulips, Asters, and Ferns arrived. Now, in 2016, we have four new guides—Clematis, Magnolias, Hardy Geraniums, and Primulas.
Esther Jackson is the Public Services Librarian at NYBG’s LuEsther T. Mertz Library where she manages Reference and Circulation services and oversees the Plant Information Office. She spends much of her time assisting researchers, providing instruction related to library resources, and collaborating with NYBG staff on various projects related to Garden initiatives and events.
The Art of Gardening takes its reader on an immersive journey through one of the world’s great pleasure gardens—Chanticleer. Like a visit to the garden itself, The Art of Gardening titillates the reader, drawing them in with its gorgeous photography and well-crafted garden essays.
I struggled a bit with this review, perhaps in the same way that I struggle to describe Chanticleer to those who haven’t visited. “A gardener’s garden” is the line most frequently used to encompass the mission and scope of the grounds. Fittingly, the book’s introduction includes a section titled “What is Chanticleer?” The section quotes an interview, which I in turn quote below.
So, what is this place? Why do you exist?
We are a garden; a place of beauty, pleasure, escape.
But, I mean, what do you do? Why would anyone come?
Natural Color: Vibrant Plant Dye Projects for Your Home and Wardrobe has the look of a book that is waiting to be touched. With its slightly-textured cover materials and luscious cover photo it draws the eye while subtlety hinting at the projects it contains. This book by Sasha Duerr, published with Ten Speed Press, builds in part off of her earlier publication The Handbook of Natural Plant Dyes which was published in 2010 with Timber Press.
