{"id":50074,"date":"2015-05-27T11:17:49","date_gmt":"2015-05-27T15:17:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nybg.org\/plant-talk\/?p=50074"},"modified":"2015-05-27T11:17:49","modified_gmt":"2015-05-27T15:17:49","slug":"speaking-for-the-trees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/2015\/05\/behind-the-scenes-2\/speaking-for-the-trees\/","title":{"rendered":"Speaking for the Trees"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anna Toledano<\/a> is NYBG\u2019s Interpretive Specialist. She helps to produce signage, audio tours, and mobile experiences for the Garden\u2019s special exhibitions and permanent collections.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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What\u2019s in a sign? At The New York Botanical Garden, the answer is quite a lot. In my day-to-day at the Garden, I tell the stories of the collection and of the special plants featured in our exhibitions. Our team works to communicate what our specimens can\u2019t say about their histories and their significance solely by appearance. Our key tool to share these stories with you is signage, so that the lesser-known tales of our precious specimens are never far from reach on a visit to our sprawling 250 acres.<\/p>\n

\"orchid<\/a>
Pink and white enhance the palette of this year\u2019s Orchid Show<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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The behind-the-scenes process of developing even the smallest plant sign is more complex that it might seem. When there are countless tomes written about the beauty of the cherry tree, how do we choose five sentences for a sign about it? We glean the expert knowledge of our curators and scientists for ideas and delve into the Garden\u2019s rich archives in the LuEsther T. Mertz Library<\/a>. We also try to survey our visitors\u2014since what you want to read about is what\u2019s most important\u2014to see what questions you have and what you hope to discover.<\/p>\n

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Once we\u2019ve got the content down, we have to decide what the sign is going to look like. Our designers think carefully about colors to complement the plants in our particular collection or exhibition. Consider the signs in the Thain Family Forest<\/a>, which are a warm orange like the foliage in fall. The signs in the nearby Native Plant Garden<\/a> are a verdant green that blends with the changing warm and cool shades of the garden in every season. The goal is to merge our signs seamlessly with the landscape while gently calling attention to the specimens that we wish to highlight. We want our visitors who are hungry for stories to be able to find them, but without disturbing our visitors who just love to take in the view.<\/p>\n

\"Native<\/a>
Try as hard as we might, the elements win out<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The sign is then reviewed by many colleagues to confirm that the facts, writing, and photos are perfectly right. After it\u2019s approved, printed, and installed, it\u2019s not over yet! As our living collections are in constant flux, we continue to update our work to adapt to the changing landscape. Sometimes, despite our best efforts, the landscape has a say too: this past winter Mother Nature was especially vocal, covering many of our signs in a blanket of white.<\/p>\n

We are continually offering new ways to communicate the fascinating stories of our plants to you to ensure that your next visit to the Garden is always more exciting than the last. Mobile experiences, audio tours, and exhibition catalogs are also in our storytelling toolkit. The more methods we use, the more ways that we can engage with all visitors in the way that you want to learn (and we can share our stories, even when our signs might be snowed in!).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Visitors to the Garden are guided by a proliferation of painstakingly accurate and deliberately placed signage. NYBG’s Interpretive Specialist explains the many steps that go into producing educational signage that doesn’t interrupt the scenic beauty of nature.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":81053,"featured_media":50094,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[1282],"tags":[4546,4547],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/245750.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ph0lU-d1E","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50074"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/81053"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50074"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50101,"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50074\/revisions\/50101"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/plant-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}