Inside The New York Botanical Garden
Shop/Book Reviews
Posted in Shop/Book Reviews on September 24 2008, by Plant Talk
John Suskewich is Book Manager for Shop in the Garden.
NYBG’s Farmers Market, which rolls in here every Wednesday through summer and fall, is a feast and a fanfare of fresh fruits and veggies. As beautiful as jewelry but full of thiamin and riboflavin, the produce glistens when the tents are first unfurled, and this year the tomatoes—Black Cherry, Sungold, Brandywine, Bicolor—seemed to glimmer like a Tiffany’s window of semiprecious stones.
Ah the tomato! This, the cynosure of the Solanaceae, is sweetly celebrated in an excellent new publication, The Heirloom Tomato, by our board member and chair of Seed Savers Exchange, Amy Goldman. The book is all about selecting, growing, and eating tomatoes, but the heart of the volume is a 150-page gallery of the fruit, a museum of Lycopersicon, with photographs by Victor Schrager, who turns even homely “Radiator Charlie’s Mortgage Lifter” into a Vermeer. The descriptions by Dr. Goldman include specs for each variety on size, weight, shape, color, and texture, and her interpretative material includes archival research and nuggets of oral history that illuminate our lost rural history as evocatively as a tintype.
The Heirloom Tomato is a book for anyone who loves gardening, plants, food, tomatoes, art and/or language. It is the third volume in the Goldman/Schrager collaboration. They created a template with two works on cucurbits: Melons for the Passionate Grower and The Compleat Squash, and they have now brought it to such a state of perfection I wouldn’t be surprised if they next turned their attention to okra, or maybe kohlrabi.
A selection of images from the book is on display in the Botanical Garden’s Arthur and Janet Ross Gallery in The Heirloom Tomato: An Exhibition of Photographs by Victor Schrager—Portraits of Historic Tomato Varieties from the Gardens of Amy Goldman.
Posted in NYBG in the News, Shop/Book Reviews on August 26 2008, by Plant Talk
Ellen Bruzelius is Director of Special Projects, Garden Retail and Business Development.
Shop in the Garden has been garnering attention lately in the blogosphere with a variety of garden-inspired goods that have struck the fancy of bloggers around the world. From a Chicago-based shopping blog that 
featured our green bicycle basket (also mentioned on Glamnest.com) all the way across the pond to Berlin where a New England-born journalist noted our Summer Pleasures melamine plates on her blog, Tidepooler.com, nybgshop.org has been piquing interest near and far.
Back on our own shores, in New York the Today show and Cookie magazine picked up on new NYBG products developed with licensing partner Lunt Silversmiths. Using glorious images from works in the Rare Book Collections of our LuEsther T. Mertz Library, Lunt has developed a tabletop collection that ranges from elegant silver tea sets inspired by 18th-century designs for Chinoiserie garden follies to garden plant trays and marvelous Mark Catesby-inspired glasses and barware and more.
The Peak of Chic (check out the July 15 and August 6 posts) loved the Lunt Silversmiths products as well as NYBG fine art prints sold through Artaissance.com. These archival quality reproduction prints also stem from historic botanical illustration in the Mertz Library collections. Some are presented in their original form, while others are given a modern sensibility with color and creative cropping.
This Old House featured one of our stainless steel birdfeeders, and Glamnest.com loved our array of colorful imported flower pots.
Not surprisingly, this interest in Shop in the Garden goods reflects the enormous effort put in by Shop staff to develop and find items that are design-driven and not ubiquitous. We’re adding new things all the time, so be sure to visit often.
Posted in Shop/Book Reviews on July 23 2008, by Plant Talk
John Suskewich is Book Manager for Shop in the Garden.
It happens every year. It happened again this year. In June everything looks fresh and vibrant; the parade of tulips has ended in a triumph of roses, and you are smug. Even the delphiniums look as if they might flower a two-foot-long tower, like you are Lawrence Johnston and this is Hidcote or something, and you are smug.
And then by mid-July the garden starts to sag; the color looks washed out, leaves are wilting and turning brown, stems start to tilt, and so you pray for rain. And then it rains. Torrentially. It rains and rains. The Amazon doesn’t see such downpours. And then it stops and you go out on the deck and survey the damage. And you are no longer smug. The garden looks flattened; the plants lean against each other, like partygoers after their seventh mojito, and too late you begin to stake.
But there is a book, The Well-Tended Perennial Garden: Planting and Pruning Techniques, by Tracy DiSabato-Aust, that has the cure for this perennial problem, and it is easier than a 12-step. The simple insight that she presents so elegantly is to prune plants for better maintenance. Genus by genus she tells you when and how and she tells you with such clarity and such conviction that your garden will almost immediately look a thousand times better. You must overcome your initial hesitation caused by the thought “but I will be cutting off all the flowers!” What will result is a better behaved and much more floriferous garden.
To see the benefits of this technique walk through the Jane Watson Irwin Perennial Garden here at The New York Botanical Garden. Designed by Lynden B. Miller and curated by Bruce Dryden, this is a classic example of the mixed herbaceous border, with each element showing its uniqueness but each playing its role in the overall arrangement. Following the tactics of DiSabato-Aust, every plant has been pruned and deadheaded and divided with an almost annoying exactness—I should be so focused!—and the end result is a work of art right here in the heart of the Bronx.
On any gardener’s bookshelf, The Well-Tended Perennial Garden by Tracy DiSabato-Aust is one of the essentials.
Posted in Programs and Events, Shop/Book Reviews on June 20 2008, by Plant Talk
The new slogan for Shop in the Garden, isn’t simply a figure of speech—everything at the Garden is coming up roses.
The Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden is in full form. You’ve got plenty of chances to view these gorgeous specimens and to learn about them during the Garden’s five-month celebration, Resplendent Roses: Flower, Fragrance, and Form.
Until you come to the Garden to see them live, here’s a beautiful set of photos on our Flickr page to tide you over until your next rose fix!
Posted in Shop/Book Reviews on May 1 2008, by Plant Talk
Shop in the Garden, the official store of The New York Botanical Garden, always offers up an amazing selection of products. This time, some of the products are featured by none other than Oprah Winfrey, in O at Home. From gardening accessories to stylish hats and bags, check out some of the individual products below or visit Shop in the Garden to see the whole collection.
Keep the no-see-ums at bay with this sleek mosquito and insect hat.
Demand satisfaction with these rugged yet stylish rose pruning gauntlet gloves.
