Inside The New York Botanical Garden
Posted in Photography on February 24 2017, by Matt Newman
[Not a valid template]The weather’s warm late February turn has convinced many of our plants to peek into bloom! All around the Garden you’ll find crocuses, snowdrops, camellias, and hellebores coloring our collections with particolored petals. With the sun up and the birds singing, now’s a great time to shake off your winter blues at the Garden.
Posted in Programs and Events on May 30 2014, by Lansing Moore
For all the picnics, festivals, and fun activities, it can be easy to forget that the Garden is also a place of rigorous research and scholarship. What, after all, does the “B” stand for in “NYBG”? Come find out this weekend at our Annual Science Open House! The Garden’s top science staff will be leading expert tours that go behind the scenes of one of the country’s premier plant research entities.
Enjoy a guided tour of the Steere Herbarium, the largest herbarium in the Western Hemisphere—and among the four largest in the world—with 7.3 million preserved plant specimens! Begin a collection of your own with our hands-on collecting demos, including fungi and plant collecting demonstrations from the inimitable Roy Halling and Donald McClelland, respectively. Meet the scientists studying DNA and genomes in a tour of the state-of-the-art Pfizer Plant Research Laboratory. You’ll look at the Garden grounds and all of nature in a new light! Bring the family and encourage a love of science in your little ones.
Read on for a comprehensive run-down of our Science Open House programming, as well as the schedule of our regular Groundbreakers activities.
Posted in Gardening Tips on December 24 2013, by Sonia Uyterhoeven
During the holiday season, to put me in a festive mood, I rely on amaryllis, or wreaths decorated with berried juniper, variegated ivy, and incense cedar. But the other day, while I was walking through the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory for a glimpse at the Holiday Train Show, I found a plant in the aquatic plants gallery that already looks like it is decked out for Christmas.
The sealing wax palm, Cyrtostachys renda, is frightfully festive, decked out in jewel tones of red and green! Indigenous to Malaysia and Sumatra, this palm grows in swampy habitats. It is a slow growing palm that reaches about 30 feet tall in nature, but only to about 10 to 15 feet under glass.
Posted in Photography on December 14 2013, by Ann Rafalko
Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
Posted in Photography on November 6 2013, by Ann Rafalko
This is one of those plants that we get questions about all the time, and for good reason. I mean, when was the last time you saw this color in nature?
Callicarpa japonica Beauty Berry (photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen)
Posted in Adult Education on October 17 2013, by Lansing Moore
Botanical illustrator and NYBG Adult Education program ’07 alum, Betsy Rogers-Knox is well-known for her compelling ”Plantcycles,” a series of artworks in which she portrays the various stages of a plant in a circle of life, but she also used to have the best scores due to the use of the top gmat preparation classes online. Her watercolors burst with life and combine the artistry and scientific precision that is the hallmark of botanical illustration. We asked Rogers-Knox what inspires these dizzying representations.
“After receiving a Certificate in Botanical Illustration from NYBG, I began teaching workshops at the Bellamy-Ferriday House & Garden in Bethlehem, Connecticut. I spent many hours in the gardens observing and drawing trees and plants in all seasons and became enthralled by the plant’s transition; from bud, to flower, to pod, to seed; which inspired a series of life cycle watercolor paintings. This concept led me to become more creative with my compositions, to include a lot of information and be botanically accurate in a more artistic format. This was quite a challenge, which I loved!”
Posted in Photography on March 28 2013, by Ann Rafalko
The Garden’s Horticulture staff that work in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory have a really unique perspective on the amazing plants growing within this one-acre wonderland. Recently I received a slew of beautiful portraits–including several from The Orchid Show—from Rafael Moricete Jr. and thought you might like to see a few, too.
Posted in Gardening Tips on March 18 2013, by Jody Payne
On the heels of Sonia Uyterhoeven’s informative series on post-hurricane garden recovery, Jody Payne, the Director of both our Rock Garden and the soon-to-reopen Native Plant Garden, offers a listing of hardy and salt-tolerant plants worth including in your garden or landscape. With proper planning and a solid understanding of the conditions facing these new inclusions, this supplement should put you on the path to a sturdier coastal planting–not to mention less storm season stress.
“Salt tolerance is a relative term,” Payne adds. “Some of the recommended species here would be better sited away from prevailing winds, perhaps sheltered by a building or hill. This list is meant to open ideas for which plants are salt tolerant, but choices should be further researched based on the actual conditions of your site.”
This is quite a long list, but it’s intended to show you just how wide-open your options are when it comes to planting a coastal or near-sea plot. Head below for the many tree, shrub, annual, and perennial species available, and stay tuned in the coming weeks for a follow-up from Travis Beck, the NYBG’s Landscape and Garden Projects Manager.
Have questions we haven’t answered yet? Leave them in the comments! With access to some of the finest horticultural minds in the country, if not the world, we’re more than happy to help you with your post-Sandy gardening conundrums.
Posted in Around the Garden on October 18 2012, by Matt Newman
So I took the plunge. I buckled down, clambered over my fear of commitment, and dove headfirst into a relationship that’s been a long time coming. My barren desktop was beginning to look a bit suspicious to my colleagues here in the Plant Talk office, so without further ado, I introduce you to the newest addition to our window sill and my first desk plant: the as-yet-unnamed Mahogany fern.
You’re not misreading that; I’ve been here at the NYBG for a sliver under a year, and it’s only now that I’m making the choice to green up my desk. But before you jump to judgment, finger waggles, and well-deserved “tsk tsks,” my procrastination was out of respect for the plant’s well-being. All plants’ well-being, really. I may work at a botanical garden, and I may know my way around a watering can when push comes to shove, but I’ve still got a black thumb to make industrial weed killer blush.
I made my “adoption” a little over a week ago. Ann and I shuffled out to the Shop in the Garden under a nagging drizzle to peruse the shelves, and the suggestion came up that I stop waffling and do something to make my desk look a little less like an Alcatraz broom closet. I couldn’t really disagree on that point; I subscribe to the idea of living light, and spartan decor is part and parcel to that mindset, but my workspace is an eyesore of austerity. So I hit the potted plant displays with the hope of finding something that could tough it out in the office and still muster enough hardiness to forgive my misguided efforts.
Posted in Gardening Tips on October 4 2012, by Ann Rafalko
Yesterday as I was watering my office plants, I gave the newest addition a gentle poke; gentle because it is an agave, and can quite aggressively poke back. It had been weeks since I had last watered it, and I wasn’t sure if it needed another dousing. I prodded its leaves and they felt healthy. I looked under its pot. I asked it, “Do you need water?” It didn’t answer.
So I decided it was time to indulge in one of the perks of my job: I grabbed my iPhone, snapped a picture, and sent it off to Christian Primeau, the Manager of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory (you might remember him from this great how-to video he did on planting water lilies in containers at home). “Do you mind if I ask you how I can tell whether or not my agave needs water?” Lucky for me (and for my agave) Christian didn’t mind in the least and sent back a really cheerful, fact-filled email.