Inside The New York Botanical Garden
Posted in Photography on December 2 2015, by Matt Newman
Our floral design students were hard at work in the style of the Dutch masters recently. Think about signing up for a class—whether you’re a career greenthumb or weekend skill collector, there’s something that’ll pique your interest.
Floral Design in Adult Education – Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
Posted in Adult Education on July 1 2015, by Jenifer Willis
Back by popular demand, ecological landscape designer Darrel Morrison, FASLA, will lead a five-day workshop in the beauty of New York’s Black Rock Forest Consortium this October, focusing on the botanic composition, aesthetic character, and ecological dynamics of native plant communities in the New York City region.
Aspiring horticulturist Marc Wolf attended the field study in its inaugural year and sat down with us to share his take on this total immersion workshop.
Posted in Adult Education on June 26 2015, by Plant Talk
For nearly 40 years, NYBG has offered its prestigious and world-respected Certificate in Floral Design.
And this year, we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Floral Design Summer Intensive Program, in which designers looking to jump start their careers can complete all Certificate-required classroom hours in just five weeks!
This past month, in a beautiful Garden ceremony, 32 new graduates received their Floral Design Certificates. Many are already working in the industry, and for many, the journey to their dream began on the Summer Intensive track.
These graduates now belong to a large and influential network of alumni across the Metropolitan area and beyond, joining such well-known designers as “NYC’s Rose Queen” Alix Astir (2010 Graduate), who runs a successful floral and botanical beauty business; BRRCH Studio’s Brittany Asch (2013 Summer Intensive), whose work has been featured in Vogue, Martha Stewart Weddings, Elle Décor, and more; and Marcela Bonancio (2012 Summer Intensive), who serves a host of corporate clients from her NY-based Lotus Blossom Atelier.
Posted in Adult Education on May 28 2015, by Plant Talk
Although we sometimes can’t see, smell, or taste them, many foods we eat and products we use contain algae, a group of oxygenic photosynthesizers—plants that make oxygen and perform photosynthesis, but are not part of the most familiar subkingdom of green plants.
I wanted to take a look at the itty bitty algae in a popular beverage, Naked “Green Machine” juice, which lists algae as ingredients, so I paid a visit to Robin Sleith, a research graduate student working on his Ph.D. in plant science in the Pfizer Laboratory. His research focuses on algae species, their lineage, and their relationships to land plants.
Intrigued by the prospect, Robin led me to the mycology lab, where they conduct experiments on algae and fungi. As he opened the bottle of juice, he let me know that it’s now considered science, not food, so there was no chance of me consuming it later.
He added a droplet of Green Machine to a slide, and slid it onto the compound microscope. At first, he was skeptical that we would see much at all, because Naked juice lists only 1,335 mg of Spirulina, a type of blue-green algae; 400 mg of Chlorella, another blue-green algae; and another 50 mg of generically described blue-green algae in its ingredients. In a 15.2 fluid-ounce bottle of juice, those amounts are nearly negligible. Robin wasn’t sure the juice would appear as anything more than a great, green glob under the microscope.
To our excitement, we saw algae—lots of it—at just 10-20x power.
Posted in Adult Education on May 1 2015, by Plant Talk
The April issue of Elle Décor magazine features the work of Susan Welti (’96), who runs her Brooklyn-based Foras Studio with NYBG School of Professional Horticulture alum, Paige Keck. A former dancer, Welti now finds a different sort of choreography in gardens and landscapes. We caught up with her to talk about design, careers, and the personal satisfaction that comes from actually changing clients’ lives.
‘For me, Landscape Design is the perfect segue from choreography,” Susan said. “It has space, time, and movement.”
Her Landscape Design classes at the Garden—which she said were “beyond fun”—were humbling and prepared her for an internship with Lynden B. Miller after she completed her Certificate in 1996. She opened her own company, Susan Welti Landscape Design, and started small, but grew rapidly as news of her talent spread.
“I think it’s an amazing field to be in because people here are just desperate to have green, some little bit of nature,” she said. “It sounds counter-intuitive that you could have a really booming landscape design business in the middle of New York City, but it’s true.”
Posted in Adult Education, Photography, Programs and Events on April 28 2015, by Plant Talk
His career spans more than 30 years, and his portfolio includes photographs published in some of the world’s largest publications. He shot the first all-digital cover story for National Geographic, “The Future of Flying,” commemorating the centennial of the Wright Brothers’ flight at Kitty Hawk. As the dust was settling after 9/11, he used what was the world’s only life-sized instant Polaroid camera to create a project called Faces of Ground Zero, which became a book and generated approximately $2 million for the relief effort.
And now, he’s coming to the Garden to deliver a special lecture, “The Nature of Photography: Life in the Field,” on Wednesday, April 29.
Posted in Children's Education on April 2 2015, by Plant Talk
Marissa Ayala is a school garden pioneer, at least in the eyes of her students and colleagues at Muscota New School in Manhattan.
Ayala had taken informational gardening courses before, but needed to polish how she tied gardening skills back to K–5 science curriculum. So, she enrolled in School Gardening 101 in February this year at The New York Botanical Garden. She wanted to get to know other educators who share her mission and to gain NYBG staff expertise to elevate her knowledge and ability to instruct a more rigorous curriculum.
“I wanted to make sure the garden was used in as meaningful a way as it could be,” she said.
Her biggest takeaway was the idea of intentionality; her students investigate specific scientific concepts on each visit to their garden plots—from photosynthesis and renewable energy to geometry and problem solving. This way, Ayala connects the purpose of each visit to the curriculum taught in her classroom.
Posted in Adult Education on April 1 2015, by Plant Talk
Hillary Parker’s painting career started with a mistake.
“Serendipity has always directed the way for me,” she said.
She enrolled in college to become an elementary school art teacher. In her senior year, a schedule mix-up landed her in an advanced painting course instead of the introductory one. She was granted access to the class on the condition she could handle the work and their weekly critiques.
For her first project, she chose an artichoke, potato, a head of garlic, and green onions from her own refrigerator and painted individual studies of each of them. Then the big day came.
“True to his word, the professor started going down the row of student artwork, harshly critiquing them,” Parker said. “When he got to mine, he paused, turned and smiled at me, looked back at my little veggies, and pointed to the artichoke. He said, ‘I want to eat that for dinner.’”
Posted in Adult Education, Programs and Events on March 31 2015, by Plant Talk
“An unsung American hero,” is how film director Carey Lundin describes landscape architect and pioneering conservationist, Jens Jensen (1860–1951), who rose from street sweeper to prolific city park designer amid Chicago’s steel industry boom. On Earth Day, April 22, the Garden’s Humanities Institute hosts the New York premiere of Lundin’s award-winning documentary, followed by a panel discussion exploring ways we can honor Jensen’s legacy. We sat down with Carey to hear more about the important man behind the film.
What inspired you to choose Jens Jensen as your subject matter?
I was born in Chicago and I love a great underdog man against the machine story, and I mean that two ways, both the political power machine and the rise of the machine age. Jensen fought for humanity against both.
Posted in Adult Education on March 5 2015, by Plant Talk
Floral Design Certificate program alumnae Brittany Asch (’11), is going her own way—including around the world and into Vogue. But this spring, she’s back at the Garden to inspire aspiring designers and to teach “Finding Your Own Aesthetic,” the first in our new Cutting Edge series featuring trending floral designers.
Brittany, who founded her studio, BRRCH, in 2013, has had a lot of success as a relatively young new designer. She said she owes her confidence in pursuing floral design to her experiences at NYBG.