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A Visit to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, April 1, 2007

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[Updated 2007.04.07 14:30 EDT: Added photos from the Rock Garden.]
[Updated 2007.04.07 11:30 EDT: Began adding photos to this post, and added more photos to the map.]

Screenshot of my Google Map of my visit to BBG on Forsythia Day
Screenshot of my Google Map of my visit to BBG on Forsythia Day
The post title and the image above are linked to my first attempt at using the new MyMaps feature of Google Maps. Let me know if/how it works for you. Is this annoying? Helpful? Interesting? Too geeky? Too slow?

The path shows the route I took, roughly, through BBG the day of my visit. Most of the areas and placemarks on the map along the way contain photos. The photos in turn are linked to their Flickr pages. You can also just browse the Flickr set of photos from my visit.

Here are some of the photos from my visit.

Forsythia Distribution

Waiting for Forsythia Waiting for Forsythia Opening the Gates Forsythia Line Forsythia Handouts

Forsythia Distribution Center

Rock Garden

I did get to see the Rock Garden as I had planned. I wasn’t disappointed. I don’t usually get to see this garden. It just seems off the beaten path during my usual visits. I want to visit it more often.


Dyer's Broom? Genista tinctoria Rock Garden Flowers, Erica carnea “Springwood Pink”


Rock Garden Rock Garden Leaves, Dyer's Broom Hellebores, Rock Garden Some kind of Willow flowers Corylopsis pauciflora, Buttercup Winterhazel

Other images


Signs of the Day Cornus mas and my doppelganger Andromeda Flowers Brooklyn-Flatbush Boundary Line

Children's Garden Cornus mas flowers Korean Azalea, Rhododendron mucronulatum Andromeda flowers Brooklyn-Flatbush Boundary Marker

Another reason to loathe real estate brokers …

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Trying to locate their recent report on sales figures, I idly browsed the Corcoran (“Live Who You Are”! Be All That You Can Be!) Web site for my neighborhood. I don’t expect to find Beverley Square West. I would hope to find Victorian Flatbush. They’d don’t even list Flatbush. I found what I expected:

Ditmas Park: Runs from Parkside Avenue to the north, Ditmas Avenue to the south, Ocean Avenue to the east and Coney Island Avenue to the west.
– Corcoran Neighborhood Guide to Ditmas Park

Lest one quibble “Oh, it’s just a real estate name,” they continue in the second paragraph:

… This landmarked district …

WRONG! The landmarked Ditmas Park Historic District lies only within the boundaries of Dorchester and Newkirk Avenues, and Ocean Avenue and the B/Q line. The only other landmarked area within the boundaries they describe is Prospect Park South. The rest of their “Ditmas Park” is not landmarked.

It’s worse than that. They have no idea where they are.

Their descriptions conflate several neighborhoods – some landmarked, most not – and get basic information wrong. They provide the wrong school number for P.S. 139. There’s this:

These homes were originally built for the likes of the Guggenheims and films stars like Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks.

Again, not in Ditmas Park. The Guggenheim Honeymoon Cottage is in Beverley Square West, my neighborhood. The Pickford/Fairbanks House is in Ditmas Park West.

And there’s this:

Many have porches and garages and sit on wide tree-lined streets with English sounding names like Argyle and Rugby.

Only the streets between Coney Island Avenue and the B/Q lines – half the area they claim to describe – carry these names, borrowed from the status of Prospect Park South. Four different neighborhoods span those streets from Parkside to Ditmas, and none of them are Ditmas Park.

The boundaries they give describe only part of greater Victorian Flatbush; they omit half the neighborhoods. Extending the southern boundary from Ditmas Avenue to Avenue H, between Coney Island Avenue Ocean Avenue lie West Midwood, Midwood Park, and Fiske Terrace. The latter two are proposed Historic Districts and are on track to become landmarked. Extending the eastern boundary to Flatbush Avenue, the Albemarle-Kenmore Terraces Historic District lies east of Prospect Park South, between Ocean and Flatbush Avenues, and South Midwood lies between Ocean and Bedford Avenues, and Foster Avenue south to Brooklyn College.

I’ve never had any dealings with Corcoran. We tried working with them when we were shopping for our home three years ago. They had yet to “discover” this area, and so had nothing to show us. Their reach had only extended to Windsor Terrace at that point, and we went to one open house there.

And, don’t bother trying to find a house a house on their Web site. You won’t find any. They only have “townhouses” …

Event, April 26, NYC: First Annual Community Gardens Awards Dinner

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On Thursday, April 26, the New York City Community Gardens Coalition will hold its First Annual Community Gardens Awards Dinner and Fundraiser.

This event is designed to raise awareness about the importance of community gardening, parks, and open space, as well as to serve as our annual fundraiser to provide support of our mission – advocacy for community gardens preservation in New York City. Awards will be presented to four(4) outstanding New Yorkers who have made exemplary contributions to New York City community gardens in 2006.

This year’s event will be held at the Alhambra Ballroom in Harlem, 2116 7th Avenue (W. 126th St.) from 6:00pm to 9:00PM. The program will include a presentation by our keynote speaker, Mr. Gerard Lordahl, Director of Open Space and Greening Program at the Council on the Environment of New York City, and recent President of the American Community Gardening Association, live music entertainment, a delicious dinner/dessert, and the Community Gardening Award presentations. The program will close with remarks from James Austin, President, NYCCGC Board of Directors. A “tax-deductible” contribution of $50 per ticket will admit you to this memorable event and includes a 1-year NYCCGC membership. …

We would like to have as many representatives of our community gardens as possible. … It will be an exciting event and a great opportunity to meet and network with your fellow gardeners. Exciting items also will be raffled during the evening.

Resource: Project BudBurst, another Citizen Science project

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Yet another Citizen Science resource on the Web, this one can be embraced by all gardeners:

Join us this spring in collecting important climate change data on the timing of leafing and flowering of trees and flowers in your area through Project BudBurst. This national citizen science field campaign targets native tree and flower species across the country. By recording the timing of the leafing and flowering of native species each year, scientists can learn about the prevailing climatic characteristics in a region over time. With your help, we will be compiling valuable environmental information that can be compared to historical records to illustrate the effects of climate change.

I love the subtitle on the home page:

A National Phenology Network Field Campaign for Citizen Scientists

Even if you don’t plan to contribute your own observations, there’s lots of information available on the site. No maps or other data posted yet, since this is just getting started. There’s some good introductory information, and special materials for students and teachers.

Phenology is the study of the timing of life cycle events in plants and animals. In other words, studying the environment to figure out how animals know when it is time to hibernate, and what ‘calendar’ or ‘clock’ plants use to begin flowering, leafing or reproducing.

Phenology is literally “the science of appearance.” Scientists who study phenology – phenologists — are interested in the timing of specific biological events (such as flowering, migration, and reproduction) in relation to changes in season and climate. Seasonal and climatic changes are some of the non-living or abiotic components of the environment that impact the living or biotic components. Seasonal changes can include variations in day length, temperature, and rain or snowfall. In short, phenologists attempt to learn more about the abiotic factors that plants and animals respond to.

– What is Phenology?

via Old House Gardens Newsletter #60, April 2007.

Related Posts

Project BudBurst

Links

Project BudBurst

Event, April 14, Manhattan: Identification Day at the American Museum of Natural History

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An annual event at the American Museum of Natural History, Identification Day provides “the public” with an opportunity to pick the brains of experts:

If you like PBS’s Antiques Roadshow, you’ll love ID Day at the Museum, an annual favorite when Museum scientists and experts are at the ready to solve your mysteries of natural history. Bring in backyard finds, basement curios, and flea market discoveries to find out if that funny rock is a fossil or not, or if a certain artifact is a cultural treasure. Whatever the outcome, the event is sure to be fun and informative!
– AMNH email

Unlike Roadshow, however, they don’t do appraisals.

I’ve never gone with anything to identify. It’s just as much fun to stand by a table, listen in, and watch.

Some student of archaeology or anthropology, presumably working on some thesis or other, and having no knowledge of his own of vertebrate anatomy, brought in several shoeboxes of animal bones recovered from a site. When there was noone else waiting for an identification, the woman at the table, clearly irritated but patient, was going through the boxes, bone by bone, to identify them. The student transcribed, barely able to keep up with her identifications as she picked and identified up bone after bone.

I watched as she picked up one tiny fragment of a bone, the size of a pinky nail. She took one look at it, declared “turtle femur,” and set it aside.

She was impressive. For some reason, “turtle femur” has just stuck in my mind all these years.

The Brooklyn Botanic Garden Visitors Photo Pool

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With Spring ramping up, and Hanami upon us, this seems as good a time as any to let folks know about the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Visitors (BBGV) group and photo pool on Flickr. Here’s the original description from Paul-M, who started the group:

Pictures taken at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. This is not affiliated with the garden. I’m just a lover of the place. There is a 12 picture per day maximum.
– About Brooklyn Botanic Garden Visitors

I’m a co-administrator. The group is open to anyone for viewing, and open to any Flickr user for contributing. Contributors retain all rights.

Here is a Flickr HTML badge sampling photos from BBGV. I also have a Flash badge for the group in the sidebar.

I encourage everyone visiting the Brooklyn Botanic Garden this Spring to share their photos!

Events and Resources: Hanami and more at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

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Flower Detail, Prunus “Okame”
Cherry Blossoms

Gowanus Lounge noted an article on New Yorkology about the first cherry tree to bloom this Spring at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, more than a week before Hanami, the cherry-viewing season, officially begins this weekend. I saw that tree in bloom when I visited on Forsythia Day. I didn’t get to write up that visit yet; the least I can do is pump up this tree’s 15 minutes of fame. (It’s not as impressive as the cherry tree which bloomed in December, which I didn’t get to see.)

Before you visit the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, you should visit their Web site. Their Plants in Bloom page shows you what happens where and when: not just right now, but for every month of the year. Some areas are of particular interest only at certain times of the year, and knowing whether or not they’re worth a peek in advance of your trip can help you plan your visit. For example, Daffodil Hill was not quite peaking when I was there on Sunday, while the Bluebell Wood was showing only winter-damaged foliage. Of course, much of the garden has lots of things even when they’re not in bloom, but this still is a good indicator of what you might expect to see.

But this time of year, the hype is all about the Cherry Trees. Hanami runs from this Saturday, April 7, through Sunday, May 6. The big event is the annual Sakura Matsuri, the Cherry Blossom Festival. This year it’s the end of April, Saturday and Sunday, April 28 and 29. There’s always an impossible number of events highlighting many different aspects of traditional Japanese culture, including music, dance, theater, crafts, and more.

Leading up to and during Hanami, BBG maintains a special map on their Web site, just for the cherries.

BBG’s CherryWatch (Hanami) Blossom Status Map showing the single specimen of Prunus “Okame” in bloom at the time of my visit.
Blossom Status Map, Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Each cherry tree on the map is linked to a popup summary of the plant, as shown here, which links to a detail page describing the specific variety. Here’s what BBG has to say about ‘Okame’:

This hybrid of the Formosan and Fuji cherries was introduced to Europe in 1947 from Japan by Captain Collingwood Ingram. Its deep carmine-rose buds open to lighter tinted flowers before leaves appear. This small- to medium-sized tree is excellent for small gardens and is also showy in fall, with orange-red leaves. This variety is recommended by the Garden Club of America’s book, Plants That Merit Attention.
– Prunus ‘Okame’

And here it is: the single flowering cherry tree.

Lone Flowering Cherry and my Doppelganger
Lone Flowering Cherry and my Doppelganger

The other photographer in the photo seemed to be everywhere I was on Sunday, so I had to shoot around him a lot. For example, he was standing next to me (or I next to him) when I took this upward-looking shot against the overcast sky:

Cherry Blossoms

Finally, here’s a different shot of the same cluster of flowers at the top of this post. I like the background of the out-of-focus branches in this one; it works like an oversized mat in a picture frame. I think I’m going to process this one a bit and try to lighten it up without losing the mood.

Cherry Blossoms

Links

Flowering Cherries at BBG

Other Gardens: Red Hook’s Summit Street Community Garden

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[2007.04.05: Corrected some typos.]
[2007.04.02 21:00: Updated with my notes from Saturday’s visit.]

Locations of Gowanus Nursery (red outline) and nearby Community Gardens (labelled light green areas) in Red Hook
Location of Gowanus Nursery and Community Gardens in Red Hook

A pleasant discovery when I visited Gowanus Nursery on Saturday is that there are three community gardens within one block of each other:

  • Summit Street Community Garden, at the corner of Summit Street and Columbia Street
  • Backyard Garden, at the corner of Hamilton Avenue and Van Brunt Street
  • Amazing Garden, at the corner of Carroll Street and Columbia Street

I was able to visit the first two gardens before and after, respectively, I visited Gowanus Nursery. This post is about the Summit Street garden. I’ll have another for the Backyard Garden.

Let me walk you around the garden, roughly in the order I experienced it.

The garden is surrounded by a simple and attractive green steel fence. A really nice inviting feature is the round, head-sized hole interrupting the vertical bars in the gates. Yes, I tested them; they really are head-sized. You can stick your head through and look around inside without the bars in the way. It’s a simple touch, a grace note, but it says, to me, at least: Sorry we weren’t here when you were. Please come back again.

Entrance Gate
Entrance Gate, Summit Street Community Garden, Red Hook

But the gates were open when I got there. Just inside the gates is a dry-laid bluestone landing area, with dry-laid brick paths guiding you forward. The walls of the adjacent buildings ahead of you are at the North side of the garden. We’ll see the border there in a bit.

Entrance Path
Entrance Path, Summit Street Community Garden

I got to meet and speak with two of the gardeners, Kevin King and Claire Merlino. They explained that all the brick and stone used in the garden came from the buildings which used to stand here.

Note to all demolition sites: There is no excuse for throwing out brick and stone in dumpsters destined for landfill. Every garden wants brick and stone. Gardeners, community and others, have lots of creative uses for these durable and attractive materials.

The Rock Garden

To the right of the entrance is the rock garden. Whenever you have to clear a building site for gardening, you will have building debris which is unsuitable for paving, wall-building, and so on. This got piled up near the edge of the property, with the thought that it would eventually get cleared away. As time passed, it also got put to creative reuse, and became a rock garden.

Rock Garden
Rock Garden, Summit Street Community Garden

Rock Garden
Rock Garden, Summit Street Community Garden

Iris reticulata in the Rock Garden
Iris reticulata, Summit Street Community Garden

Erica carnea, Spring Heath, in the Rock Garden
Heath, Summit Street Community Garden

Community in the Garden

The garden got its start in late 1993. The first clean-up was in Spring of 1994. Trash and rubbish had to be removed, but they also needed cleanfill.

There are three building lots here. With the buildings collapsed, there was a large central depression which had to be filled. Gardeners used rocks to tag piles from the nearby Snapple warehouse excavation which they could use for fill in the garden. One of the workers on the site went one better and selected the darkest material he could find and delivered it to the garden; darkest, because it was contaminated with oil from the excavation site. With that teachable moment, the workers came back and removed the “good” stuff and replaced it with the real soil the gardeners had tagged.

Every community garden also needs to balance common and individual planting areas. I like these raised beds as a flexible solution for private planting areas. They’re rectangular with 2:1 proportions; I’m not sure if they’re 4×8 foot or 3×6 foot. Members can subscribe to a full- or half-bed. I also like that the beds are aligned but not on a regular grid, which creates interesting paths through the garden.

Planting Beds
Planting Beds, Summit Street Community Garden

Every community garden also needs to coordinate the needs of the garden with the availability of its members. To the left of the entrance is this sign-up station. The book and pencil are protected, and the stand itself is an attractive garden feature.

Sign-Up Station
Sign-Up Station, Summit Street Community Garden

The West Border

Along Columbia Street is the West Border, one of the common areas.

West border
West border, Summit Street Community Garden

Daffodils and Crocus
Daffodils and Crocus, Summit Street Community Garden

The North Border

Opposite the entrance on Summit Street, against the adjacent building, is the North Border.

The North border
Hellebores and Narcissus in the North border, Summit Street Community Garden

Hellebores and Narcissus in the North border
Hellebores and Daffodils, Summit Street Community Garden

There seemed to be hundreds of Iris reticulata in bloom when I visited. Claire said that there would have been more except that the squirrels considered them a delicacy and devoured most of what had been planted last fall.

Finally, Claire is looking for someone to adopt this Castor Aralia tree. Leave a comment if you or someone you know is interested.

Kalopanax septemlobus (syn. K. pictus), Castor Aralia
Castor Aralia, Summit Street Community Garden

Event, Brooklyn/Queens: Compost Giveback, May 12, 13, 18 and 19

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Compost Demonstration Area at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Compost Demonstration Area

This Spring’s Compost Giveback for Brooklyn and Queens will be held at the Spring Creek Composting Site the second and third weekends of May: May 12 & 13, and May 18 & 19. NYC residents (no businesses) can take away as much compost as they can shovel and transport. They can also purchase compost bins for $20, which is a bargain.

You really need private transportation to take advantage. Bring your own shovels. Heavy-duty puncture-resistant garbage bags, such as contractor’s bags, are ideal. A wagon wouldn’t hurt, either.

The compost bins are high-quality, made from recycled plastic. They come folded flat for transport and snap together for assembly, no tools required. They have a compact footprint, but are big enough to get some heat into the heap. In the photo above, the taller, skinnier black plastic composter in the center of the photo is similar or identical to the discounted model.

Links:

Festival of the Trees #10 and Call for Submissions for FotT #11: Trees in the Concrete

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[Updated 2007.04.05: Corrected submission deadline.]

Still-Life with Hydrant and Tree
Hydrant and Tree

Festival of the Trees #10 is up on Roger Butterfield‘s blog, Words and Pictures. Roger is one of my favorite nature photographers on the Web. He’s in Sheffield in South Yorkshire, England, UK and shares his love and intimate knowledge of his favorite places there.

And I will be hosting Festival of the Trees #11 here at Flatbush Gardener! The photo above symbolizes the theme for this edition:

We are interested in trees in the concrete rather than in the abstract, so while stories about a particular forest would be welcome, newsy pieces about forest issues probably wouldn’t be.
– FotT Submission Guidelines

Yes, I am also interested in trees in the concrete, like the one above. Urban trees and forestry. Street trees, park trees, weed trees. So, for the next Festival of the Trees, I’m especially looking for submissions on this theme. This is not a restrictive theme, so anything which fits the FotT submission guidelines is welcome. If you have a doubt, send it. You can submit entries via the Festival of the Trees Submission Form on BlogCarnival. You can also send an email to festival (dot) trees (at) gmail (dot) com with “Festival of the Trees” in the subject.

The publication date will be May 1st, 2007. The deadline for submissions is April 29. It’s my first time hosting a Blog Carnival, so be gentle.

Important links:

PS: The tree above lives – nay, survives – on Westminster Road, around the corner from my home. I don’t know what kind of tree it is, yet.