Patricia Gonzalez is an NYBG Visitor Services Attendant and avid wildlife photographer.
I shot this photo in the wetlands of the Native Plant Garden on April 12 of this year. It’s great that these wetlands are attracting all manner of wildlife, including this mallard drake.
Shortly before the Native Plant Garden opened to the public, my department was given a tour. That’s where we learned that when mallards and other ducks fly into the water for a swim, they also carry in fish eggs that have stuck to their feet during visits to other bodies of water. How cool is that? The fish eggs hatch and populate the new location, and the circle of life continues.
Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) – Photo by Patricia Gonzalez
NYBG Landscape Design student Danielle Faustini is on a crazy mission.
Last week, she started working at a Manhattan landscape design firm, while completing freelance projects and wrapping up her education in The New York Botanical Garden’s Certificate Program in anticipation of graduation on June 7.
Faustini’s education started in last summer’s Landscape Design Summer Intensive, an expedited five-week program that covers half of all required classroom hours toward a prestigious NYBG Certificate. In one year, she finished the required 350 hours, while working full-time as a server in a restaurant and doing freelance design work on the side—hence the crazy.
“Life is short, you know?” Faustini said. “I told myself I would complete the Certificate Program within a year. It definitely wasn’t easy, but you set your mind to something, and you do it.”
Landscape Design students, Danielle Faustini and George Siriotis
Faustini and her Summer Intensive classmate George Siriotis, who also completed the Certificate Program in a year, saw the Intensive as an opportunity to jump into a new career with the support of like-minded, ambitious peers and industry-professional instructors.
This week may be off to a rainy start, but the weekend promises to be full of beauty at our popular Rose Garden Weekend!
The Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden is already approaching peak color, as more and more of our nearly 700 rose cultivars display their the seasonal reds, whites, yellows, and pinks.
On June 6 and 7, you are invited to stroll through the colorful and fragrant rose bushes while enjoying live music, plant care demonstrations and tours with expert rosarians, and light summer refreshments in the shade of the garden’s overlooks.
