Inside The New York Botanical Garden
Learning Experiences
Posted in Learning Experiences on April 7 2010, by Plant Talk
Come Celebrate Grand Opening, Saturday, April 10
Gregory Long is President and CEO of The New York Botanical Garden.
On Saturday, April 10, the Botanical Garden celebrates the opening of its new Midtown Education Center with a free Open House and programs involving New York City’s finest gardening authors and professionals. I invite you to drop in at the Center at 20 West 44th Street (between 5th and 6th Avenues) for the event, which will run from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Speak with the Garden’s experienced instructors in Botanical Art & Illustration, Floral Design, Gardening, and Landscape Design. Take mini-classes, watch demonstrations, hear about the skills you can learn, and review portfolios of current students while considering the courses from among the daytime, evening, and weekend classes.
Since 1917, The New York Botanical Garden’s Adult Education Program has helped students receive unmatched horticultural training. Many of our students have discovered new careers through the Garden; others have cultivated their passion for new, rewarding green hobbies. The top-notch instructors, hands-on classes and seminars, and engaging lecture series you’ve come to expect from the Botanical Garden are now conveniently located just two blocks from Grand Central Terminal.
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Posted in Learning Experiences on March 23 2010, by Plant Talk
| Lecture Series Presents Fritz Haeg on Replacing Suburban Lawns
 Replace your front lawn with a diverse edible landscape: Fritz Haeg, author of Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn, will show you how March 25, from 10 a.m. to noon, in the last installment of the Adult Education gardening lecture series From the Ground Up: Gardens Re-Imagined.
Edible Estates is Fritz’s ongoing project that converts lawns into productive landscapes. He will discuss the related social and environmental issues the project addresses, and look at the historical progression of urban land use, gardening as a form of activism and survival, and the growing interest in urban agriculture.
Get new ideas on how to shape your front lawn into a garden of eating.
Get Your Tickets
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Posted in Learning Experiences on March 16 2010, by Plant Talk
 Join exceptional English gardener and best-selling author Anna Pavord (The Tulip and The Naming of Names: The Search for Order in the World of Plants) at the Garden on Thursday, March 18, for a delightful presentation of her new book, Bulb. Intended as a reference for gardeners, the book guides readers through nearly 600 bulbs—from Acis to Zigadenus—showcasing each plant through stunning photographs.
Pavord’s presentation, A Luxuriance of Bulbs, will be followed by a reception and booksigning, and then by a viewing of The Orchid Show: Cuba in Flower. This is her only scheduled New York City appearance on her international book tour.
For details and to purchase your tickets, click here. |
Posted in Learning Experiences on March 3 2010, by Plant Talk
Prepare for Gardening Season with this Special All-Day Program
Carol Capobianco is Editorial Content Manager at The New York Botanical Garden.
It may not feel like it, but spring begins this month. Gardeners—me included—are chomping at the bit for it to get under way and for that telltale whiff in the air. (You know, that certain smell that stops you as you step outdoors one day in late winter and puts a smile on your face.)
Of course, there is always enough garden-related chores to do indoors before the warmer weather arrives, and sometimes spring comes too soon for my own good. I still haven’t mended my favorite gardening pants or switched my gardening paraphernalia into the larger tool bag I bought last fall or ordered a new pair of gardening shoes to replace the ones with worn-out soles or thought enough about my plant wish list.
But, still, I’m ready for the sun and soil, and I’m sure you are, too. So come to Spring Fever Saturday on March 6 to be with kindred spirits who want to spend the day learning how to fine tune their soil, select early blooming trees and shrubs, prune woody plants, and other such tasks to prepare their gardens and lawns for that special time of year called spring.
For more information about each of the sessions offered—participants may select as many as three from six topics—or to register, click here or call 718.817.8747.
Take a Class
Posted in Learning Experiences on February 17 2010, by Plant Talk
Looks to Renowned Lecture Speakers for New Ideas
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Pamela Davis, a Master Composter with the New York City Compost Project, is a Landscape Design and Environmental Gardening student in the Garden’s Continuing Education Program. |
Now with the winter weather, I am limited to “armchair gardening” until I start my plants by seed indoors next month. Gathering all the gardening catalogs and magazines I received recently, I sat down on my couch with a cup of hot chocolate and proceeded to review them.
The first magazine I looked at was the February/March issue of Organic Gardening. I opened to the “Features” section and noticed there was an article by Barbara Damrosch. I was introduced to her book The Garden Primer as recommended reading for the vegetable gardening class I took in pursuit of my Gardening Certificate through the Continuing Education program. Her book is clear, concise, and full of so much information for beginner and experienced gardeners alike. I read it like a novel! So I just knew that I would be in for a treat reading her article.
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Posted in Learning Experiences on February 10 2010, by Plant Talk
Carol Capobianco is Editorial Content Manager at The New York Botanical Garden.
Liz Costa, Associate Vice President for Corporate and Foundation Relations, and her husband, Rob Yagley, moved in to their own home in September. Their small yard is framed by several trees, which can be challenging to landscape. As their first spring planting season approaches, they decided to seek help from the Botanical Garden’s Continuing Education program.
So both signed up for this Saturday’s Shade Gardening event—a day of classes for gardeners who want to understand the different levels of shade, design shade gardens, choose appropriate plants, and more. Liz and her husband have even split up the chores—she’ll attend three of the six sessions offered and he the other three so that they cover all the topics.
“As apartment dwellers most of our lives, we knew we needed help with our new yard, especially with gardening in the shade,” said Liz. “When we spotted the six different sessions offered on one Saturday, we knew we found the best way to start thinking about our shady spot!”
To find out more about Shade Gardening Saturday or to register, click here and search “shade garden” or call 718.817.8747.
Posted in Learning Experiences on February 9 2010, by Plant Talk
Author of The Garden Primer Encourages Growing Food Year-Round
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Barbara Damrosch, author of the recently revised The Garden Primer, writes a weekly column for The Washington Post and has designed display food gardens at Stone Barns Center in Westchester. She will discuss growing food year-round as part of the From the Ground Up Lecture Series on February 18. |
The anticipation of flavor is the best appetite stimulant, as all kitchen gardeners know. It’s one thing to look forward to a meal, or a favorite dish. But a favorite crop in the ground is even more tantalizing.
The global supermarket cornucopia dulls the appetite by making every food available. Cooks can make any recipe, at any time, just by tossing ingredients into a cart. As a result, they rarely know seasonal tastes like those of garden peas, sown in early spring and harvested after long anticipation, bursting with sweetness as only fresh-picked peas can. Or the juiciness of the first red, ripe tomato, warm on the vine. Or the first corn, the first melon, the zing of sprightly fall greens such as arugula or mache.
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Posted in Learning Experiences on February 2 2010, by Plant Talk
GEAR UP Introduces Students to Careers in Plant Sciences
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Yadana Desmond is Program Coordinator and Instructor for the GEAR UP program at the Botanical Garden. |
It was a cold Saturday morning in January, a day off for most students, but 27 ninth graders from area high schools were intently studying the artwork in the gallery exhibition of the LuEsther T. Mertz Library and the plants in the Garden’s Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, absorbing every detail to later create their own ink and watercolor illustrations. In the afternoon they would go on to make cell and anatomical observations of plant slides under the microscope. And this was just Day 1 of the 9-session course.
It was all part of GEAR UP, a federal initiative administered locally by the Bronx Institute at Lehman College that partners with community institutions such as the Botanical Garden to prepare middle and high school students for college and careers.
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Posted in Learning Experiences on January 27 2010, by Plant Talk
Career-Changer Redirected Through Continuing Education Classes
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Valerie D’Antonio holds a Certificate in Landscape Design from The New York Botanical Garden’s Continuing Education program and is principal and owner of D’Antonio Landscape Design, Inc. She will tell her career-changing story during the free Career Night on February 3. |
In the early 1980s I bought a small row house in Hoboken, N.J., on a street named Garden (who knew?!). After the closing I popped open a bottle of Moet, looked out the kitchen window at my new backyard, and thought, “What do I do with that space?”
At the time I worked for AT&T, and co-workers pointed me in the direction of The New York Botanical Garden, where I began to seek gardening advice. I decided to start small and attended NYBG’s one-day classes on window-box gardening. The classes gave me the confidence to plant and install boxes on the five front windows of my three-story house. The bright red geraniums, purple lobelia, and white alyssum were striking against the house’s white-painted brick. Soon after, my neighbors began asking me to plant their window boxes.
Twenty years later, after I left my corporate job, NYBG again came to my rescue. I was still lamenting my lackluster backyard when I received the Garden’s Continuing Education catalog where I found that the Garden offers certificate programs, lectures, and seminars aimed at developing a career in the world of horticulture.
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Posted in Learning Experiences, Programs and Events on January 22 2010, by Plant Talk
Children and Families Explore the Hidden Wonders of the Winter Garden
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Noelle V. Dor is Museum Education Intern in the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden. |
Oh, the weather outside may be frightful… But the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden is still delightful!
Though the vibrant colors of autumn have long faded away and freezing temperatures command us to slow down and stay in, there is a wealth of hidden wonders to be discovered in our Winter Garden, from the vivid reds of bare dogwood branches to tenacious crabapples, darting cardinals, and the secret lives of leaf buds. Various little treasures brighten up the muted landscape—and they can brighten your winter blues, too!
The selection of activities available for children and their families includes the creation of a scientific field notebook, which will guide them through a winter scavenger hunt and sensory exploration of the Children’s Adventure Garden; a fascinating round in the world of tree rings and their own life stories; and a winter collage craft using fallen plant parts collected from the garden.
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On Saturday, April 10, the Botanical Garden celebrates the opening of its new Midtown Education Center with a free Open House and programs involving New York City’s finest gardening authors and professionals. I invite you to drop in at the Center at 20 West 44th Street (between 5th and 6th Avenues) for the event, which will run from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Speak with the Garden’s experienced instructors in Botanical Art & Illustration, Floral Design, Gardening, and Landscape Design. Take mini-classes, watch demonstrations, hear about the skills you can learn, and review portfolios of current students while considering the courses from among the daytime, evening, and weekend classes.
