Inside The New York Botanical Garden

Archive: November 2016

Community Holiday Open House Menorah and Tree Lighting Ceremony at The New York Botanical Garden

Posted in Around the Garden, Holiday Train Show, Programs and Events on November 30 2016, by Elizabeth Figueroa

Senator José Serrano and family
New York State Senator José Serrano and family

On Sunday, November 20, NYBG held its annual Community Holiday Open House and Menorah and Tree lighting ceremony. Aaron Bouska, NYBG’s Vice President for Government & Community Relations at NYBG, welcomed the audience, which included many members of the Bronx community as well as several elected officials with their families.

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Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life

Posted in From the Library on November 29 2016, by Esther Jackson

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.


Half-EarthHalf-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life is the newest book from acclaimed biologist E. O. Wilson. In addition to Half-Earth, Wilson has authored dozens of books. Unsurprisingly, Half-Earth has echoes of Wilson’s other environmental works. With that in mind, this new book is still a very good stand-alone book about environmentalism, biology, and natural resources. It’s written accessibly both for those working in the sciences and for non-scientists who are eager to learn more about environmentalism and conservation. Half-Earth is ultimately quite philosophical, but includes the framework of a practical call to action.

Wilson writes with great conviction, and Half-Earth is replete with wonderful passages in praise of science. This is a sobering yet useful book to read when so many science writers and others are touting the value of “novel ecosystems” and downplaying the problems associated with invasive species. Wilson doesn’t sugarcoat the challenges that the environment currently faces—the Earth is in trouble in many ways, overpopulation not the least of its worries. There are no simple solutions. The first step is to be educated and informed about the world around us.

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Garden Revolution

Posted in From the Library on November 21 2016, by Esther Jackson

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.


Garden RevolutionTimber Press has really been hitting the mark over the past few years with books related to landscape design, land management, and ecology. Planting in a Post Wild World, read as a landscape design manifesto, was my favorite recent book of this ilk, and Cultivating Chaos offered some truly breathtaking examples of “wild” plantings and garden design.

When I opened Garden Revolution, I expected a book like Post Wild World or Cultivating Chaos. In fact, Revolution looks at the same big questions of land management and ecology, but leads the reader on a rather different journey.

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A Gardener for All Seasons

Posted in From the Library on November 14 2016, by Esther Jackson

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.


NY & NJThe seasonal chores related to gardening can be both a comfort and a pressure for the horticulturally inclined. This selection of recent books details various seasonal aspects of gardening, including the weather, nature journaling, and monthly chores to tackle in our area.

For the practical-minded, there is New York & New Jersey Month-by-Month Gardening by Kate Copsey. Do you feel like you might be forgetting a November chore? Copsey’s book shares guidance with home gardeners who love to-do lists and careful seasonal planning. New York & New Jersey Getting Started Garden Guide by Vincent Simeone is another title that can be used in tandem with Copsey’s recent publication.

Moving from to-do lists to more academic pursuits, next comes the topic of nature journaling with Flora Forager: A Seasonal Journal Collected from Nature by Bridget Beth Collins. I first came across Collins’s work through her Instagram account, where you can see her use of leaves, petals, and other natural materials to create beautiful scenes, landscapes, and animal portraits. Located in the Pacific Northwest, Collins uses materials from her garden and forages from “urban wild areas” in her neighborhood. The journal is laid out into four seasons, each one featuring a unique, full-page collage. Empty, lined pages are adorned with smaller floral pieces that repeat throughout the work. Regular visitors to the NYBG Shop might recall the notecards Collins produced with the Garden last year, now available through Collins’s website.

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Weekly Wildlife at the Garden: Hooter the Owl

Posted in Wildlife on November 9 2016, by Patricia Gonzalez

Patricia Gonzalez is an NYBG Visitor Services Attendant and avid wildlife photographer.


Hooter the Owl

This past weekend, for the fourth consecutive year, The New York Botanical Garden had a live birds of prey demonstration as part of its ongoing Fall Forest Weekends programming. Returning for their second year was the Quogue Wildlife Refuge, a non-profit organization based in Long Island. In addition to 305 stunning acres of protected land, they also serve as a permanent home to wildlife that can no longer be released.

For this year’s presentation, they brought along a great-horned owl, two screech owls, a snowy owl, and a red-tailed hawk. Garden visitors were given a wonderful photo opportunity as the presenters walked through the aisles while explaining the stories of each bird of prey. During their talk they briefly touched on the fact that many resident and migrant raptors call NYBG their home. And just like last year, Hooter the great-horned owl stole the show!

Reimagining Rock Gardening

Posted in From the Library on November 7 2016, by Esther Jackson

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.


Rock GardeningRock Gardening: Reimagining a Classic Style is the newest book from Joseph Tychonievich, published with Timber Press. Tychonievich has previously authored Plant Breeding for the Home Gardener: How to Create Unique Vegetables and Flowers and The Complete Guide to Gardeners: The Plant Obsessed and How to Deal With Them. Organic Gardening Magazine has called him one of “six young horticulturists who are helping to shape how America gardens,” and those who move in the horticulture social media world may recognize his charming and relatable comics about plant geeks.

Rock gardening is back in vogue, according to this new book. For those who live in the greater NYC and Westchester regions, it may never have left entirely. Because of the rocky terrain that our region boasts, “The art of growing alpines and other miniature plants in the company of rocks to recreate the look of rugged mountaintops” is a savvy and beautiful use of space. Beyond beauty, an additional utility can be found in creating drought-tolerant plantings for water-wise gardens. Rock gardens have the potential to be sustainable and low-maintenance while still providing great color and texture. For gardeners looking for an introduction to rock gardening, Tychonievich’s book is a great start.

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Lederman’s Lens: Morning Light

Posted in Photography on November 4 2016, by Matt Newman

Larry Lederman‘s lens takes you to the Garden when you can’t be there and previews what to see when you can.


Fall at the Garden is a time of tremendous change, but it begins in small fits and starts. You can see it in the way shafts of light slip through the trees, and in the first hints of leaf color peeking from the tips of their branches. In recent weeks, Larry Lederman has explored these scenes with his camera, visiting the Native Plant Garden and the Thain Family Forest—often the most vivid fall displays at the Garden.

Here you’ll see deciduous trees at the earliest stages of their seasonal switch, just beginning to show color and certainly wearing the early morning fall sun well.

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