Inside The New York Botanical Garden
Posted in Wildlife on November 6 2017, by Patricia Gonzalez
Patricia Gonzalez is an NYBG Visitor Services Attendant and avid wildlife photographer.
Today we take a look back at just a few of the animals that have made themselves known—especially in the Perennial Garden—over the last few months. The transition from summer to fall brought out all sorts of characters!
Posted in Around the Garden, What's Beautiful Now on October 30 2017, by Matt Newman
Fall is here at last, and you can feel it in the air (we actually have to wear jackets this week!). That means the collections are dressing up in their autumn finery, from the changing leaves of the Forest, to the fall blooms of the Perennial Garden. It’s a great time to enjoy the outdoor collections before everything buttons up for winter.
[Not a valid template]Posted in What's Beautiful Now on October 23 2017, by Matt Newman
The Forest may only just now be hinting at its fall colors, but soon you’ll see all the reds, oranges, and yellows of this vivid season in action, sweeping across the canopy as cooler weather sets in. But do you really know why and how the leaves change colors? To answer that question, we put together a little video, spotlighted below now that the true fall scenery is beginning to make itself known. Learn a bit more about leaves this week!
Posted in Wildlife on October 19 2017, by Patricia Gonzalez
Patricia Gonzalez is an NYBG Visitor Services Attendant and avid wildlife photographer.
A painted turtle (Chrysemys picta) at Twin Lakes – Photo by Patricia Gonzalez
Posted in Wildlife on September 26 2017, by Patricia Gonzalez
Patricia Gonzalez is an NYBG Visitor Services Attendant and avid wildlife photographer.
A female Ruby-throated Hummingbird (Archilochus colubris) in the Perennial Garden – Photo by Patricia Gonzalez
Posted in Wildlife on December 14 2016, by Patricia Gonzalez
Patricia Gonzalez is an NYBG Visitor Services Attendant and avid wildlife photographer.
Some of my best wildlife sightings at the Garden this year have been right before I check in for work. Earlier this week, I saw a wild turkey just outside our offices at the Visitor Center. She was standing on one of the planters, looking right at me!
Wild turkeys are a common sight at the Garden and other green spots during the winter. The framing could not have been better! She soon jumped down and walked on the lawn—one more for the books.
A wild turkey at the Visitor Center – Photo by Patricia Gonzalez
Posted in Wildlife on November 30 2016, by Patricia Gonzalez
Patricia Gonzalez is an NYBG Visitor Services Attendant and avid wildlife photographer.
A bluejay (Cyanocitta cristata) in the Ross Conifer Arboretum – Photo by Patricia Gonzalez
Posted in Photography on November 16 2016, by Matt Newman
Along the Bronx River – Photo by Patricia Gonzalez
Posted in Photography on November 4 2016, by Matt Newman
Larry Lederman‘s lens takes you to the Garden when you can’t be there and previews what to see when you can.
Fall at the Garden is a time of tremendous change, but it begins in small fits and starts. You can see it in the way shafts of light slip through the trees, and in the first hints of leaf color peeking from the tips of their branches. In recent weeks, Larry Lederman has explored these scenes with his camera, visiting the Native Plant Garden and the Thain Family Forest—often the most vivid fall displays at the Garden.
Here you’ll see deciduous trees at the earliest stages of their seasonal switch, just beginning to show color and certainly wearing the early morning fall sun well.
[Not a valid template]Posted in Learning Experiences on October 31 2016, by Todd Forrest
Todd Forrest is NYBG’s Arthur Ross Vice President for Horticulture and Living Collections. He leads all horticulture programs and activities across the Garden’s 250-acre National Historic Landmark landscape, including 50 gardens and plant collections outside and under glass, the old-growth Thain Family Forest, and living exhibitions in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory.
For 47 years, 4 months, and 20 days, I just didn’t know enough about pepos. “What’s a pepo?” you might ask. Pepo is the botanical term for the fruit of plants in the Cucurbitaceae (gourd family). Sure, I knew a little about pumpkins, spaghetti squash, butternut squash, zucchini, and cucumbers. I had eaten Hubbard, acorn, and delicata squash grown, harvested, roasted, and slathered in butter by my brother-in-law, a gourmand who farms in coastal Maine. I even knew that the luffa defoliators my fresh-faced friends swear by are made from the dried fibrous flesh of a gourd relative native to Africa.
The little I thought I knew about pepos could never have prepared me for the bounty of beauty I encountered when I made the journey, with a group of NYBG trustees and staff members, to NYBG Board Member Amy Goldman Fowler’s farm in the Hudson Valley one glorious October day. Amy has raised the art and science of growing vegetables to a level unimaginable to those of us who tinker in backyard plots. With the discipline of a research scientist and the passion of an artist, Amy grows a bewildering selection of melons, squash, pumpkins, and gourds (not to mention tomatoes and peppers and who knows what else) on her farm each year.