It’s obvious that we love photography here at the Garden. We love our Morning Eye Candy and photo essays. But best of all, we love the photos that you, the visitor, share with us!

So to show you how much we love you and your photos, we’re offering half-off admission for a limited time, holding Saturday afternoon photography tutorials, and we’re throwing a photography contest in honor of our latest exhibition, Caribbean Garden which opens on Saturday. The contest will have two categories: Macro and Sense of Place, and the winner in each category (two total) will get a seat in a spring semester photography class! (See all the details here).

There’s just a few things to remember:

1. Tripods are not allowed inside the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory.
2. To be eligible a photograph must have been taken during the course of the Caribbean Garden.
3. Photographs entered into the contest should have Caribbean Garden as their main theme.
4. We’ll be using Flickr for the contest, so you have to be a member of our Group Pool (learn more about our Group Pool).
5. To vote, you do not need to be a member of the Flickr community, but you will need a free Yahoo or Google account.
6. In case of a tie, we’ll convene a panel of NYBG experts to pick a final winner!

So get your shutter finger warmed up, dust off your lenses, charge up your batteries, and get ready to snap some pictures! And please, if anything is unclear, let us know in the comments below. We hope you’re as excited as we are!

Sonia Uyterhoeven is Gardener for Public Education.

Last week we were looking at some dwarf conifers that would be suitable for the perennial garden. Remember that miniature conifers grow less than one inch a year; dwarf conifers grow 1-6 inches per year; and the epithet ‘nana’ that you often see in cultivar names means ‘dwarf’.

This week we will look at miniature and dwarf conifers as excellent candidates for container gardens. When choosing your conifers for a container garden make sure that you not only pay attention to the growth rate (a miniature or dwarf conifer will be your best choice), but also to its growth habit. Some conifers spread and are not suitable for containers (use them as ground covers). Look for mounding, rounded or upright forms.

Dwarf conifers thrive in containers and are comfortable with restricted root growth. Nonetheless, it is best to choose a container that is at least 4-6 inches wider than the container that your conifer came in so that you give it space to grow.
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The 1852 Stone Cottage in snow (photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen)