Mark Weckel is Director of Research and Land Management, Mianus River Gorge Preserve
From Westchester down to Manhattan, reports of coyote sightings cropped up throughout 2010.
The truth is, coyotes don’t live everywhere (and so far not at The New York Botanical Garden), but they are becoming increasingly more adapted to urban living Researchers from Mianus River Gorge Preserve and WildMetro are using remote cameras (see footage of a coyote at Nature Study Woods in Westchester County below) to monitor urban coyotes to try to figure out one important question: Just how urban can an eastern coyote get?
Coyotes are native to the western U.S., yet have expanded their range throughout the east As of now the only large landmass without a coyote population is Long Island. If coyotes are to colonize Long Island, those living in Westchester and New Jersey will have to go through New York City!
This is giving wildlife biologists the rare opportunity to learn more about how animals adapt to urbanization in real time, which parks and natural areas will support coyotes, how they use man-made and natural corridors, and hopefully, what role these new predators will have to the ecology of the greater NYC metropolitan area.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.
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:
Tripods are not allowed inside the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory.
To be eligible a photograph must have been taken during the course of the Caribbean Garden.
Photographs entered into the contest should have Caribbean Garden as their main theme.
To vote, you do not need to be a member of the Flickr community, but you will need a free Yahoo or Google account.
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.
The Holiday Train Show is over, and we’re already setting-up, planning for, and dreaming about future exhibitions here at The New York Botanical Garden. Up next is a quick mini-vacation to the tropics via the Caribbean Garden. And then, it’s curtains up for The Orchid Show: On Broadway.
Oh, and one other thing: 2011 also marks the Garden’s 120th birthday!
It’s going to be a big year up here in the Bronx. We’ve got a lot of exciting things planned for the coming 12 months, but while we have a moment to sit and think and be contemplative, we thought we’d share this video we made with you. We asked a few people that work in, around, and with the Garden to answer the question, “What does the Garden mean to you? What does it mean to the world?” We hope you enjoy their answers.
We just love this little conifer, Abies koreana ‘Aurea’, known more commonly as the golden Korean fir. And some of us here see a certain, wise, green character from Star Wars in its silhouette. Do you? Or do you maybe see something different?
It’s obvious that we love photography here at the Garden. We love our 
