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.
There are 30 essays in Cabaret, (including the epilogue), contained within approximately 350 pages. This means that on average each essay is just over 11 pages long. The variety of topics and the length of each section works very well—readers are able to jump into the text at any point, and spend a few minutes reading a succinct and melodious treatment on a particular topic relating to plants. These 30 essays are divided in 7 sections, but any essay can be read as an independent piece. Considering the nature of this book, (it is intended to be a mélange), the stand-alone nature of each section does not detract from the reading.
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.
When I first heard that Timber Press was publishing a series called The Plant Lover’s Guides, I was excited. I was working as an intern in the library at Longwood Gardens and in the process of falling in love with plants. My roommate at the time was obsessed with sedums and other succulents. “You know,” I mentioned to him casually, “there is a new book that is all about sedums that we are getting for the library.” His eyes lit up at the news, and lit up once again when I put the new book into his hands some months later. It was a perfect match. 2014 saw the release of guides to Sedums, Snowdrops, Dahlias, and Salvias. In 2015, guides to Epimediums, Tulips, Asters, and Ferns arrived. Now, in 2016, we have four new guides—Clematis, Magnolias, Hardy Geraniums, and Primulas.
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.
Gardening on a Shoestring: 100 Fun Upcycled Garden Projects speaks to the home crafter in us all. The newest book from Alex Mitchell (author of several titles including The Edible Balcony: Growing Fresh Produce in Small Spaces), Shoestring offers simple gardening tips, plant recommendations, and money-saving shortcuts to achieve popular garden plantings.
My initial expectation was for Shoestring to be laid out somewhat like Pinterest, but in book form. I expected each project to be numbered, and each task to be a simple, one-off guide for a particular gardening craft. Actually, Shoestring is laid out more like a conventional gardening book, with sections dedicated to topics such as initial garden set-up, container gardening, food gardening, and pest control. Although this wasn’t what I was expecting, the format works incredibly well. Not only does Mitchell offer garden projects within a variety of topics, the layout of the book acts as a clear narrative for the beginner gardener. A section of Shoestring even addresses how to achieve particular garden designs—such as a prairie garden or a topiary “garden”—on a budget.
In celebration of Earth Day, the LuEsther T. Mertz Library would like to acknowledge the march toward greener living. Two recent publications, held by the Mertz Library, highlight the collective and collaborative effort towards a greener world.
Greening Libraries by Monika Antonelli and Mark McCullough. Library Juice Press, 2012.
Greening Libraries edited by
Monika Antonelli & Mark McCullough
Greening Libraries is a compilation of essays and case studies surveying the different ways libraries are environmentally sustainable through design, outreach, and programming. Libraries in many ways have always been sustainable, but now libraries are trying to work alongside the community for a bigger and greener impact and Greening Libraries provides a peek into what libraries around the country are implementing to inspire change around them. Whether libraries are renovating their branches to comply with LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) requirements, providing educational programming, or building partnerships with local organizations that work toward greening their city, these essays highlight importance of the library being at the forefront of the green movement.
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.
Plants with Style: A Plantsman’s Choices for a Vibrant, 21st-Century Garden by Kelly D. Norris. Timber Press, 2015.
Identified by the New York Times as one of “Botany’s New Boys” in 2014, Kelly Norris is the author of a new book, Plants with Style. In the introduction, Norris writes, “The modern eclectic garden isn’t easily defined. It’s earnest, enthusiastic, and unbounded.” Like the garden he describes, Norris excitedly presents the reader with a book that is similarly earnest and enthusiastic. The tone of the opening pages and the love that Norris so clearly has for his chosen profession is infectious. The introduction reads more like a manifesto, with lots of quotable winks, such as “Cultivate your inner plant geek—it’s sexy.”
Like Norris’s beloved and eclectic gardens, Plants with Style takes the reader on a romp throughout plant profiles that the author has curated, artfully-photographed and penned essays for. (As a caution to readers, the typeface used is rather small, and the photographs offer limited botanical detail.) The text is broken down into several sections, “Environment,” “Structure,” “Emblems,” “Vignettes,” and “Essential Kitsch.” The categories are intriguing, a departure from the more systematic approach taken by other books of garden plants. The “Vignettes” section presented the most novel content, and in general Plants with Style would have benefited from more vista photographs and planting combination suggestions throughout the book as a whole.
There aren’t huge departures or surprises from Norris, and many of the plants profiled will be recognized as tried and tested favorites. This is very much a coffee table book, and as such it winds up coming up short in terms of practical gardening advice and innovative plant selections. However, seeing the selected plants through Norris’s eyes, and through his words, is a treat for the logophile* in us all.
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.
The Dictionary of Science for Gardeners by Michael Allaby clocks in at 553 pages and 6,000 scientific terms. Upon first learning about this publication, I was intrigued. Reading the introduction, I became even more fascinated. Allaby has written, edited, or co-authored over 100 books on environmental science. Prior to writing The Dictionary of Science for Gardeners, he edited four other scientific dictionaries for Oxford University Press. He also has an absolutely delightful personal website from which the following quote is taken—“Dictionaries don’t tell stories, well not really although I do my best even with them. I compile dictionaries, you see…Oh yes, I do dictionaries. Want a dictionary? I’m your man.”
The Dictionary of Science for Gardeners covers 16 branches of science relevant to gardeners as determined by Allaby and includes “plant classification, the science of how and why plants are grouped into genera and families, plant geography or how the world breaks down floristically, plant evolution, with the genetic code as an appendix, plant structure and function, or how plants work, fungi, insects, other invertebrate animals, vertebrate animals, bacteria and viruses, the way major nutrients move through cycles, pesticides, soil science including the way soils are classified, ecology, conservation, and weather and climate.” It is interesting to see the branches of botany so defined, and a good indication as to how The Dictionary is written in order for a wide array of scientific terminology to be accessible to readers, including scientific names of birds and bugs that might be seen in a garden.
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.
B is for Bear is an alphabet book featuring plants, animals, and other ecological features in North America. The illustrations were created by cutting away black paper “to reveal the essential shapes and lines” of the elements of nature profiled by Viano. The “revealed” areas were then filled in digitally with subdued pastels. The result is simply beautiful. Examples of Viano’s work, including several illustrations from B is for Bear, can be seen on her website.
Upon opening the book, the reader sees one letter to a page, with the exception of “A” and “Z,” which bookend the collection with two-page spreads. Viano picks an eclectic set of organisms and concepts to illustrate, which makes reading the text unpredictable, echoing the adventures promised by the outside world. Each page includes an uppercase and lowercase letter in the upper left corner. The associated word, all in capital letters, appears in the upper right corner. An illustration dominates the central part of the page which finishes with a short, factual sentence about the plant, animal, or natural phenomenon depicted.
Because of its format and beauty, B is for Bear is appropriate for readers of varying ages. Very young readers might use the text to learn the alphabet, while slightly older readers—the young and the young at heart—can use the book to learn interesting facts about the natural world. This is a children’s book with artistic sensibilities, dedicated to “all of those who let children run a little wild” and appealing to all who are looking for a reason to be lured into an outdoor adventure.
*This collection circulates to Members and Volunteers
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.
The Indestructible Houseplant by Tovah Martin. Timber Press, 2015. 288 pages, 160 color photos. Softcover. $22.95. ISBN: 9781604695014
Martin starts The Indestructible Houseplant with an accessible yet lyrical introduction that welcomes the “window-sill gardener wannabes,” telling them that this book is for them. Martin promises to help readers overcome obstacles—cost, time, light/environment—and develop their own “lush and verdant” interior paradises. Martin writes about her home gardening environment and then moves into practical guidelines for understanding limitations of indoor space, including selecting and placing containers. Here, too, her prose is crisp, accessible, and practical; Martin even includes a section about her selection process for plants to profile, addressing the omission of some historic houseplant favorites, such as flowering maples, Abutilon cultivars.
There are other words that you can use to describe the piece of land between the street and the sidewalk—“tree park” or “meridian” are a couple of them—but of those synonyms, “hellstrip” is my favorite by far.
Thanks to Evelyn J. Hadden’s instructive book, Hellstrip Gardening, I can now use that term with aplomb. Where you or I might see a neglected, soil-filled curbside, Hadden sees colorful, even edible, planting opportunities. Her photo-rich book is organized into four parts, including inspirational curbside gardens around the country, the challenges of planting and maintaining these nontraditional spaces, suggestions for appropriate plants, and how to design and keep up with the needs of your new plot.
Hellstrip Gardening manages to combine the promises of community beautification and the psychological benefits of having nature close at hand with practical and clear-eyed advice. Hadden does not pretend that you will simply plant your hellstrip and it will be appreciated by all, remaining untouched by pedestrians, dogs, rodents, restrictive city or community laws, or road work. Instead, she outlines the realities of planting in semi-public or public spaces and how to approach this kind of gardening with reasonable expectations. Her refreshing and upbeat book is a good choice for anyone who is patient and looking for creative opportunities to establish beauty where others see blight.
Hellstrip Gardening: Create a Paradise Between the Sidewalk and the Curb by Evelyn J. Hadden, Portland, Or.: Timber Press, 2014
Garden Horticulturist Appears for Booksigning as Co-Author
John Suskewich is Book Manager for Shop in the Garden.
The publication of Botanica Magnifica: Portraits of the World’s Most Extraordinary Flowers & Plants gives us an occasion to really celebrate the career of our wonderful orchid curator, horticulturist, and all-around plant enthusiast Marc Hachadourian, the book’s co-author.
As Manager of the Nolen Greenhouses here at The New York Botanical Garden, Marc helps provide the spectacular range of material for the flowering displays that amaze and astonish visitors to our 250-acre Eden in the Bronx. This season, thanks to his propagation skills, the discerning observer would have seen Meconopsis in the Ladies’ Border, the towering Echium pininana from this year’s Dutch Bulbs spring flower show, and the usual killer show of waterlilies and lotuses in the Conservatory Pools.
But of all the plant families, Marc seems to have the greatest kinship for the Orchidaceae. This relationship is beautifully expressed annually in the work he does curating The Orchid Show in the Haupt Conservatory, in the displays he puts on throughout the year in the Library building Orchid Rotunda, and now between the covers of the quite striking new book, Botanica Magnifica. But he doesn’t stop there; he goes beyond orchids and has written more than half the text for the book.
It is an understatement to call this a luxurious volume of flower photography. Botanica Magnifica contains 250 portraits of rare and exotic plants taken by Jonathan Singer “in a manner evocative of Old Master paintings” (ARTnews). He is a Hasselblad Laureate Award winner—like an Oscar for shutterbugs—and his orchid images are especially memorable: the cymbidiums, dendrobiums, and Polyradicion, better known as the ghost orchid, float and fly and drip and droop against their black background with a sculptural quality that belies their transient beauty.
