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.
Three new books in the LuEsther T. Mertz Library will inspire readers to embrace desert landscapes and plants.
Desert Gardens of Steve Martino (2018) is a lavish ode to the landscapes of the landscape designer Steve Martino. Authored by Caren Yglesias, a licensed architect and lecturer in landscape architecture and environmental planning at UC Berkeley, with photographs by Steve Gunther, the book is well-designed and executed. Because of their artistic nature, some of the photo-documentation abstracts the designs of the gardens; it is helpful that each garden includes a site plan that illustrates the layout of the site in more measured detail. Twenty-one of Martino’s gardens in the American southwest are treated. Martino, who focuses on using plants that are native to the Sonoran region, creates gardens that are evocative of the desert from which they spring. East coast gardeners and designers may not look to Martino for practical landscape design inspiration, owing to the differences in climates. However, his use of structure and color can be universally enjoyed by those who create, maintain, and appreciate garden landscapes.
Winter is suddenly upon us and, as the temperatures plummet and the city braces for the inevitable snow and ice, many will find their way to the garden’s iconic Enid A. Haupt Conservatory to decompress, take a leisurely stroll among the lush, tropical foliage, and escape the bitter cold. Some, perhaps inspired by the lowland rain forest houses or the desert displays, will jet off to warmer climes. While I freely admit that I already work in paradise, it’s nice to get out and see some of my plants in habitat now and again.
I recently took an exploratory trip through the Sonoran desert of Mexico and into Arizona. By design I made no specific plans and, like a slightly less profane version of Anthony Bourdain, I had “No Reservations.” From the dusty desert proper through the dense Chaparral shrubland and semi-arid grasslands of Arizona, much of the area ranges in temperature from broiling hot to bone-chilling, depending on month and time of day. Here it was late October and still scorching with nary a cloud in the sky to provide respite.
The landscape is truly as beautiful as it is unforgiving, and the same may be said of the plant life. My arms and legs looked as if they’d been shredded by a tidal wave of furious cats; such were the hazards of botanizing in a region so thick with spiny inhabitants. I would later discover the name for a cowboy’s protective “chaps” was actually derived from the word “Chaparral”—an arid and prickly biome on the Sonoran desert’s northern border. One quickly discovers the Chaparral functions quite efficiently as human sandpaper.
The Orchid Show may be hogging the spotlight for the foreseeable future (and with good reason), but there are further aspects of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory worth exploring. The desert houses? Definitely.
Three new books in the LuEsther T. Mertz Library will inspire readers to embrace desert landscapes and plants.
