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.
This year marks the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare in 1616. Throughout the world, scholars and institutions have been celebrating the bard’s life and work—including the World Shakespeare Congress held in Stratford-Upon-Avon and London last week and this week. On an appropriately literary note, one of the books about Shakespeare that has been published in 2016 comes from Jackie Bennett and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. That book is Shakespeare’s Gardens.
Shakespeare and his usage of plants in his works is a popular topic in botanical and garden history. In fact, the NYBG Mertz Library has over thirty books related to the playwright. The earliest, The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare by Henry N. Ellacombe, was published in 1884. With such a rich legacy of books on this topic, the question becomes what another publication could add to the corpus.
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.
Gardening on a Shoestring: 100 Fun Upcycled Garden Projects speaks to the home crafter in us all. The newest book from Alex Mitchell (author of several titles including The Edible Balcony: Growing Fresh Produce in Small Spaces), Shoestring offers simple gardening tips, plant recommendations, and money-saving shortcuts to achieve popular garden plantings.
My initial expectation was for Shoestring to be laid out somewhat like Pinterest, but in book form. I expected each project to be numbered, and each task to be a simple, one-off guide for a particular gardening craft. Actually, Shoestring is laid out more like a conventional gardening book, with sections dedicated to topics such as initial garden set-up, container gardening, food gardening, and pest control. Although this wasn’t what I was expecting, the format works incredibly well. Not only does Mitchell offer garden projects within a variety of topics, the layout of the book acts as a clear narrative for the beginner gardener. A section of Shoestring even addresses how to achieve particular garden designs—such as a prairie garden or a topiary “garden”—on a budget.
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 library staff at The New York Botanical Garden has been eagerly awaiting A Botanist’s Vocabulary arrival on the market and in our collection. Finally, this beautiful new book from Susan K. Pell and Bobbi Angell has arrived!
The first, visceral impressions were positive. The size and heft of the book is pleasant, and not overwhelming. Those who have studied botany, or interacted much with botanists, will know that talking about plants in technical terms can sometimes feel like speaking another language altogether. How can one begin to pack all of that vocabulary into a single book, or even, really, a single brain? A Botanist’s Vocabulary is a beautiful and balanced start.
The red cover catches the reader’s eye right away, especially considering how frequently books about plants are accented in green. A quick leaf through the pages immediately draws the reader in—Angell’s illustrations are lovely in their botanical detail, and also in their simplicity. Angell, writing about this project in the June 2016 issue of The Botanical Artist, says of the book, “My focus was to make clear, crisp drawings for easy understanding by gardeners and botanical artists,” a focus that carries through beautifully in the work.
Old and rare books are most prized for their special characteristics of publication and form, less so for inscriptions and signatures put in them by their owners. However, these inscriptions and signatures, bookplates, and other marks of ownership often vividly illuminate the lives and times of their owners.
A copy of Quadripartitum botanicum de simplicium medicamentarium facultatibus… by Simon Paulli (1603–1680), published in 1708, in the Rare Book Collections of the Mertz Library reveals through its notable first owner European society being transformed by science and a new spirit of international cooperation at the beginning of the 18th century. This thick volume of materia medica written by a Danish scholar and court physician was regarded at the time as the standard work on medical pharmacology and an essential reference volume for contemporary physicians and scientists.
Speakers of the day: Susan Stewart, Stephen Kellert, and Andrea Wulf
On May 20, 2016, more than 300 students, scholars, members of the general public, and NYBG staff poured into Ross Hall for Alexander von Humboldt: The History, Science, and Poetry of Ecology. There they listened intently to three remarkable interdisciplinary speakers: author Andrea Wulf, ecologist Stephen Kellert, and poet Susan Stewart.
The Symposium also coincided with—in fact, it officially opened—NYBG’s Science Open House, held from May 20–22, offering a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the laboratories, Herbarium, and other scientific departments of this premier plant research institute. This annual weekend saw a vast increase in the number of participants enjoying the various tours and Garden-wide demonstrations, due in part to the excellent introduction provided by Barbara Thiers, Director of the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium and Vice President for Science, before the Symposium started.
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 Rooftop Growing Guide comes from NYBG’s own Annie Novak, the Manager of the Edible Academy. Novak writes clearly, with accessible prose and an eye to the practical. Yes, we should think big…. and look up! However, while it may seem that the sky is the limit when it comes to rooftop growing, Novak continuously reminds the reader of real-world concerns and offers detailed and practical advice to would-be rooftop gardeners.
Chapter titles include “Why Rooftops?,” “Assessing Your Rooftop,” “Containers, Greenhouses, Green Roofs, and Irrigation Methods,” “The Dirt on Rooftop Soil,” and several other sections that carry the reader through a successful rooftop garden. Simple graphic guides are included to lead the reader through activities such as assessing one’s roof or understanding seed viability and germination rates. Supplemental content is arranged carefully in sections that include technical how-tos and profiles of rooftop gardens and gardening activities.
Visitors to a garden are often impressed by the showy, brightly colored roses and barely notice the smaller, humbler daisies. Likewise, visitors to the Rare Book Room in the LuEsther T. Mertz Library of The New York Botanical Garden often admire the large folio volumes of botanical illustrations by renowned botanical artists, but are unaware of the treasures among the smaller print volumes on the shelves. For the last two years I’ve been examining the names written and bookplates pasted in these books, trying to trace the histories of these books and to identify their former owners. This detective work has revealed that many books have led fascinating lives.
One book that has had a particularly noteworthy life is Apologia adversus amathum lusitanum by Pietro Mattioli, first published in 1558. Mattioli (1501–1577) was a well-known physician, botanist, and natural scientist from Siena, Italy. His book is a discussion of another book, first published in 1557, In Dioscoridis Anazarbei de materia medica libri quinque, enarrationes eruditissimae by Lusitano Amato (Juan Rodrigo Del Castel-Branco) (1511–1568), a well-known Jewish-Portuguese physician and natural scientist. Amato’s book is a discussion of De materia medica, written in the first century A.D. by the Roman physician Dioscorides (c.A.D. 40–90). De materia medica was a comprehensive compilation and description of plants and their derivatives and of animal and mineral substances used as medicines at that time and was one of the most important reference books on medical substances in the Western world for 1600 years.
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 Culinary Herbal: Growing & Preserving 97 Flavorful Herbs follows fast on the heels of another title from Timber Press, The Herbal Apothecary. Co-authors Susan Belsinger and Arthur O. Tucker, along with photographer Shawn Linehan, bring “more than a century of experience in gardening and cooking” to bear in Herbal. The book is, in the authors’ words, a “book for gardeners who like to cook and cooks who want to grow the best-flavored culinary herbs, as well as for the everyday herbal enthusiast.” After a few words about taste and scent, and the role they play in cooking and eating (hint: they’re essential!), Belsinger and Tucker move right into the herbs.
Herbal is organized alphabetically by common name, and each herb is presented with a full-color photograph that lays it out, cut, as if ready to be cooked with. The description includes whether or not the plant is annual or perennial, its cold tolerance, preferred light, and moisture and soil requirements. General notes about the history of the plant are included, along with a list of edible parts, comments on how the plant might be prepared in foods, and sections on cultivation, propagation, harvesting, and preserving.
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.
Gardening is often praised for the health benefits it provides. Those who garden or have gardened regularly can attest to the physical challenges and demands of the hobby or profession, and the full-body workout that gardening can often provide. Gardener’s Yoga positions itself as a resource that will allow readers to ease the aches and pains associated with gardening, and strengthen muscle groups often used in common garden chores. Additionally, the yoga poses that have been selected are intended to be easy on the hands and knees, as these areas of the body often withstand repetitious movement when gardening.
In January of this year, Victoria Johnson began a talk in the Library by taking us back in time to the shores of the New Jersey Palisades, where Alexander Hamilton fatally dueled with Aaron Burr in the year 1804. Johnson used the duel to set the stage for another interesting historical figure: Dr. David Hosack (1769–1835). A physician to both Burr and Hamilton, as it happened, Hosack was involved in the infamous duel, but his role in history goes beyond this one dramatic moment. Johnson shared her historical research to paint a passionate personal account of who Dr. David Hosack was, and to elaborate on his impact in the botanical and medical world of the early Republic.
Hosack was the founder of the first medical botanical garden in the American Republic, known as the Elgin Botanic Garden. Erected on 5th Avenue between 47th and 51st street in the year 1801, it roughly spanned the area where Rockefeller Center stands today. After a decade of effort, Hosack assembled a collection containing more than 1,500 species of plants, among which were materials collected from the Louisiana Purchase during the famous Lewis and Clark expedition. Plants from all over the world were represented at Hosack’s garden. Young medical students from Columbia College were able to study the garden’s resources for a hands-on understanding of the plants’ healing properties. Though short-lived, the research done at this garden would pave the way for famous 19th-century botanists such as Amos Eaton, John Torrey, and Asa Gray.
This year marks the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare in 1616. Throughout the world, scholars and institutions have been celebrating the bard’s life and work—including the World Shakespeare Congress held in Stratford-Upon-Avon and London last week and this week. On an appropriately literary note, one of the books about Shakespeare that has been published in 2016 comes from Jackie Bennett and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. That book is Shakespeare’s Gardens.
