In the book, Tallamy, known as the “guru” of native plant gardening for his earlier, award-winning book, Bringing Nature Home, actually recorded as many as 20 different bird species—many beautifully photographed in the book—eating berries and insects from an alternate-leaf dogwood tree planted outside his bathroom window.
“So many birds visit this tree during the summer that our bathroom has become the hottest birding destination in our house,” he jokes. But the serious message of this story and one of most important points of his entire new book is that “our plants are our bird feeders!”
Accompanying the sweeping new updates to our Shop in the Garden site (have a look!), I’m beyond proud to announce the NYBG‘s latest partnership—a design collaboration with one of the world’s preeminent designers, Oscar de la Renta. For almost 50 years, de la Renta’s design house has produced some of the most timeless and recognizable styles in accessories, bridal, home decor, fragrance, and so much more, meaning it was only natural that we’d team up to create an equally inspired tabletop collection informed by Garden imagery.
Oscar’s own lifestyle paired with his passion for entertaining in his country home made these botanically-inspired housewares a natural progression for his Country Gift and Entertainment Collection. Now in its third installment, the set traditionally includes table linens, brass giftware, and earthenware accessories—accents to spruce up the kitchen and dining room alike. But this time around, the inner green thumb takes root! As an avid gardener and floral expert himself, Oscar de la Renta hand-picked images from The New York Botanical Garden’s peerless collection of rare books and engravings to interpret through his signature aesthetic. The result is a set of 15 table and giftware pieces emblazoned with the life and color of the country garden.
Joyce H. Newman holds a Certificate in Horticulture from The New York Botanical Garden and has been a Tour Guide for over seven years. She is a blogger for Garden Variety News and the former editor of Consumer Reports GreenerChoices.org.
Roy Diblik, designer and nurseryman
Roy Diblik’s new book, The Know Maintenance Perennial Garden, out this month from Timber Press ($24.95 paperback) and available in NYBG’s Shop in the Garden, is a veritable goldmine for gardeners dreaming of lush, low-maintenance planting designs. The book provides dozens of fresh, detailed plans and gorgeous color photographs of easy-care, yet highly artistic, gardens.
Diblik is a designer and nurseryman best known for supplying the extraordinary perennials—around 26,000 plants in all—for Dutch designer Piet Oudolf’s inspiring Lurie Garden at Millennium Park in downtown Chicago. Diblik actually grew many of the plants and helped with the layout and design. He has more than 35 years of experience as co-owner of Northwind Perennial Farm located in the rolling hills of southeastern Wisconsin.
The book contains 62 garden plans laid out in color-coded grids. Many of the plans express themes, Diblik notes, that are “loosely inspired by the colors, compositions, and emotions” of Impressionist paintings by Cezanne, Monet, and Van Gogh, among others. Some plans replicate Piet Oudolf’s pioneering use of grasses for The High Line in New York City, and others recreate the dynamic plantings at England’s Great Dixter garden in Sussex.
Joyce H. Newman holds a Certificate in Horticulture from The New York Botanical Garden and has been a Tour Guide for over seven years. She is a blogger for Garden Variety News and the former editor of Consumer Reports GreenerChoices.org.
Virginia and Leonard in the garden (by permission of the Keynes family).
For gardeners and those who love Virginia’s Woolf’s literary works, there’s a gorgeous new book with exquisite contemporary photographs, written by Caroline Zoob, called Virginia Woolf’s Garden: The Story of the Garden at Monk’s House, out this month from London publisher Jacqui Small LLP ($50.00) and available in NYBG’s Shop in the Garden.
Monk’s House in the Sussex village of Rodmell was Virginia and Leonard Woolf”s country retreat from 1919 until Virginia died in 1941. She wrote most of her major novels at Monk’s House and drew inspiration and comfort from the lush foliage and beckoning brick pathways weaving through various ‘garden rooms.’ A terrace with millstones, a fishpond garden, an Italian garden, a walled garden, and a flower walk were all created by the Woolfs over the years, starting from an overgrown three quarters of an acre behind a little house, with an orchard and an old tool shed that became Virginia’s writing room.
Author Caroline Zoob and her husband Jonathan actually lived and worked at Monk’s house for more than a decade beginning in 2000 as tenants of the National Trust, planting and tending the gardens, looking after all the buildings, and opening the house twice a week to the paying public. Their deep understanding of the place and what it feels like to physically be there makes this book very special.
Joyce H. Newman holds a Certificate in Horticulture from The New York Botanical Garden and has been a Tour Guide for over seven years. She is a blogger for Garden Variety News and the former editor of Consumer Reports GreenerChoices.org.
Visitors to Stone Barns Center’s farm and food gardens in northern Westchester were treated to an engaging interview with Alice Waters this past weekend, as well as the 200 new recipes in her latest vegetable-focused book, The Art of Simple Food II: Recipes, Flavor, and Inspiration from the New Kitchen Garden, out this month from Clarkson Potter ($35.00) and available in the NYBG’s Shop in the Garden.
Ms. Waters, a kind of legend in her own time, has authored something like 14 books, launched the Edible Schoolyard Project all over the world, and is a chef and owner of the famous Chez Panisse restaurant and cafe, which she founded with others in 1971. She pioneered the cooking philosophy that today we call “farm-to-table.” Her restaurant, located in Berkeley, California, uses only fresh, flavorful seasonal ingredients that are shopped for and produced locally and sustainably.
Joyce H. Newman holds a Certificate in Horticulture from The New York Botanical Garden and has been a Tour Guide for over seven years. She is a blogger for Garden Variety News and the former editor of Consumer Reports GreenerChoices.org.
Just in time for your holiday gift list, Marta McDowell, best known at the NYBG for her lively and informative landscape design classes, has created a wonderful new account of the writer Beatrix Potter and her love of gardening. The richly illustrated book, Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life: The Plants and Places That Inspired the Classic Children’s Tales, reveals the connections between Potter’s beloved characters—Peter Rabbit, Jemima Puddle-Duck, Squirrel Nutkin, Mrs. Tittlemouse, and many others—and Potter’s own childhood menagerie of pets; how she so keenly observed them for her pencil and paint drawings; and how much she was influenced by visits to her grandparents’ rural estate north of London and holidays at various country houses in Scotland and England.
The book has the most gorgeous collection of drawings, maps, photographs, and illustrations carefully selected and laid out to complement the narrative. In her preface, McDowell explains that Potter disliked using botanical Latin, so the main narrative of the book avoids identifying plants that way. However, the end of the book provides two extensive charts, covering 18 pages, that not only list all the plants Potter actually grew in her own garden, but also the plants that she drew and wrote about—all with botanical names included.
As a world-renowned neurologist and author, as well as a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, Dr. Oliver Sacks suffers no shortage of credentials. And yet, in 2000, an encounter with a group of dedicated fern enthusiasts at The New York Botanical Garden welcomed him into an arena where his relative inexperience proved a boon. Written during a two-week expedition in Mexico, Oaxaca Journal blends the esoteric minutiae of one of the world’s oldest plant groups with an exploration of culture, history, and modern adventure.
Oaxaca Journal overcomes the din of scientific jargon through the ease of Sacks’ prose. Even its simplistic approach to storytelling plays to the experience through the self-effacing charm of the author’s pen. His is a travel narrative without any particular direction, admittedly and unapologetically listing sidelong into the native–and at times gritty–reality of Mexican life, just as it charts a course for botanical relevance.
Peter Kukielski is on a mission to rescue the rose’s reputation.
In transforming the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden into one of the world’s most sustainable and beautiful showcases for America’s flower, Peter is preaching a new rose gospel: Roses don’t need to be bathed in chemicals, they don’t need tons of water, and they can smell as beautiful as they look.
Peter is a wonderful evangelist for this misunderstood flower; he’s full of knowledge and always willing to share it. Stop by the Shop to meet Peter and pick-up your copy of this essential volume, then head to the Rose Garden to gain inspiration for your own home. Copy this list of all the garden’s roses onto your phone or iPad (try Evernote or print it out if you must), and mark your favorites. When your head is full of rose-scented dreams, head home, and with Peter’s wonderful book, turn your garden into your own rose-tinted paradise.
Ed. note: Selena Ahmed, ethnobotanist and author of the gorgeous new book Tea Horse Road will be at the Garden for a book signing this Saturday, May 21 at 3 p.m at Shop in the Garden. I first saw Selena’s book in a colleague’s office. The absolutely stunning photographs, taken by Michael Freedman, drew me in, but it is Selena’s tales that bring this fascinating book to life. We are currently working with Michael, who is traveling China, to put together a post of his photographs, so stay tuned. But why wait? Pick up a copy of Tea Horse Road this Saturday. You won’t be disappointed.
My new book, Tea Horse Road: China’s Ancient Trade Road to Tibet, with photographer Michael Freeman explores lives and landscapes along the world’s oldest tea trading route. Our journey starts in tropical montane forests in China’s southern Yunnan Province. This is the birthplace of the tea plant, Camellia sinensis (Theaceae). The cultural groups of Yunnan including the Bulang, Akha have produced and consumed tea for centuries for its well-being and stimulant properties. They traditionally grew tea plants as trees of several meters tall without the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides.
While tea cultivation spread where climatic conditions allowed, the practice of drinking tea reached far beyond. During the 7th century, the Tibetan kingdom to the north of Yunnan came into contact with tea, and the drink soon became central to the Tibetan people’s diet. Tea functioned to reduce the oxidative stress of Tibet’s high altitudes and as a dietary supplement in an environment with limited fruit and vegetable production. These same extreme conditions mean that tea has remained an imported item from tropical and sub-tropical areas in China’s Yunnan and Sichuan provinces. The demand for tea led to the creation of a network of trails extending more than 3,000 kilometers, carved through forests and mountains, with Lhasa at its core. This network collectively became known as the South West Silk Road or Cha Ma Dao, the Tea Horse Road.
However, tea was only one side of the trade equation: China was in constant search for warhorses that made its armies more mobile allowing the kingdom to maintain control over the empire. Abundant natural resources along with tea and horses were exchanged on the Tea Horse Road over the course of 2 millennia, linking cultures and natural resources beyond their surroundings. In its day, the Tea Horse Road touched the lives of many. These were the tea farmers on the southern mountains, the caravan leaders, the Tibetan lados skilled at traversing high passes and the porters with 100-kilo loads on their backs. This book is their story, narrated against the backdrop of some of the world’s most rugged and powerful landscapes.
Trade along the Tea Horse Road declined in the 20th century as horses ceased to have a major military use. Roads were paved allowing for more efficient transport, and policies and markets transitioned. As the Tea Horse Road acquires a historical presence, it is easy to forget its vital former role of maintaining community health, sustainable agriculture, livelihoods, and cultural exchange.
Ken Greene, co-founder of the Hudson Valley Seed Library, is one of the most honest plant people we’ve ever met. Ken cares about plants in a way that is inspiring, moving, and intoxicating. At the Hudson Valley Seed Library he and his band of seedy friends are leading a full-blown local seed revolution. The Seed Library is a throwback to a time when seed sellers put fascinating pictures on their packages and pithy descriptions in their catalogs, to a time when every kitchen gardener saved his or her favorite seeds and passed them down from generation to generation. To that end, the Seed Library sells memberships (ed. note: we think a Seed Library membership makes a great holiday gift!) that offer discounts to those growers who return some of their seeds to the Library in an effort to expand the pool of Hudson Valley-grown varieties. Ken also commissions a group of local artists each year to illustrate beautiful Art Packs for a handful of varieties.
As you can tell, we really like Ken and the Seed Library (And we’re not alone. Check out this great profile from the New York Times). They’re helping preserve local plant diversity and educating a new generation, teaching them that gardening isn’t just a way to eat good food, it’s also a thoughtful act that resonates through generations. We were delighted when Ken agreed to share his list of “Favorite Things” for holiday giving. As you’ll see, Ken always has seeds on his mind. Who knew seeds could act as inspiration for such beautiful gifts?
The answer to our titular question is provided by Doug Tallamy and Rick Darke in their new book, The Living Landscape: Designing for Beauty and Biodiversity in the Home Garden, out this summer from Timber Press ($39.95) and available in NYBG’s Shop in the Garden.
