Wicked Plants with Amy Stewart at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

A large group assembled for Amy Stewart’s tour of Wicked Plants along the Annual Border of Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s Lily Pool Terrace. Wicked Plants Tour at Brooklyn Botanic Garden Saturday afternoon, Blog Widow and I went to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden for an afternoon of Wicked Plants: a tour led by Amy Stewart, a book signing, and a cake baked for the occasion. Amy Stewart, rigged with portable amplification Amy Stewart Sarracenia, Pitcher Plants Wicked Plants Tour at Brooklyn Botanic Garden Ricinus communis, Castor Bean plant Ricinus communis, Castor Bean plant Book purchase display Wicked Plants Book Signing

The Cake

A Wicked Cake enters the Lily Pool Terrace Cake Entrance “Everything is edible, except the boards,” said one of the cake wranglers. Well, that and the stems of the flowers. The flowers were incredibly lifelike. Edible Tulip It’s hard to justify eating artistry like this. But it was a hot and humid day, so what can you do?! Edible Hydrangea Amy regards a Tulip before taking a bite of it. Amy Stewart with edible Tulip Blog Widow peals a petal off a Tulip. It tasted vaguely like wax lips. Technically edible. Blog Widow eats a Tulip The base was seven layers of chocolate and vanilla cake with mocha cream. Delicious, and worth the wait. Seven Layer Cake

Glam Shots

Not everything we saw that day was wicked. Double-Flowering Lotus Double Lotus Dragonfly Pachydiplax longipennis, Blue Dasher (Male), Lily Pool Terrace, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, July 2009 Hens and Chicks Hens and Chicks Okay, wicked, but kinda cool, huh? Spiny Solanum

Slideshow

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Related Content

Flickr photo set

Links

Wicked Plants, Brooklyn Botanic Garden Wicked Plants, Amy Stewart Pretty Poison: Plants to Die For, CBS News Sunday Morning, 2009-08-02

BBG Visitor Center design wins City award

Design cross-section of BBG’s planned Visitor Center (courtesy Weiss/Manfredi)

The Public Design Commission of the City of New York (formerly the Art Commission) awarded Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Weiss/Manfredi design firm, the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, and the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation its 2008 Award for Excellence in Design, conferred on July 1 at a ceremony at the New Museum. The award recognizes the superb integration of form, function, and sustainable practice in the design of the Garden’s new Visitor Center.
Press Release

See BBG’s Visitor Center page for more renderings.

The Visitor Center aspires to earn LEED Gold certification and will feature sustainable design elements including a living roof, recycled building materials, passive solar components, geothermal heating, and bioswales (recessed catchment zones filled with water-loving plants) that will improve storm-water management and relieve the burden on the municipal sewer system. The 22,000-square-foot complex will also house an expanded garden shop, a much-needed orientation room for tours and classes, an information desk, a dramatic oval-shaped event space, a refreshment bar, and other visitor amenities.

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How to move a 200-ton Ginkgo, 2008-11-18
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The Brooklyn Blogade at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden,2008-10-12

Links

Brooklyn Botanic Garden Wins Award for Green Visitor Center Design

Brooklyn Botanic Garden Visitor Center, Weiss/Manfredi
Visitor Center, BBG

The Native Flora Garden

See also The Osborne Garden and The Bluebell Wood.


For the past four years I’ve been cultivating my backyard native plant garden. I’ve been adding compost and mulching with leaves and shredded Christmas trees, as much as I can get of all of it. I’m not yet able to grow The Precious (below), but I’m learning in Soil Management class that what I’ve been doing is just what’s needed to develop the humusy, woodland soil it requires. Someday, I’ll have some in my garden (obtained, of course, only from a conservation-oriented source such as the Vermont Ladyslipper Company). Meanwhile I can enjoy them in BBG’s Native Flora Garden.

Cypripedium calceolus var. pubescens, Yellow Lady-Slipper
Cypripedium calceolus var. pubescens

I find the native Lady-Slipper orchids achingly beautiful. They seem more to float than to be held up by their slender stems. Maybe they would seem less fantastic if they were more common, spreading like dandelions, and less specialized in their environmental requirements. Maybe, but not by much.

There are other beauties in bloom right now. The early Spring wildflowers have been replaced by the regime of those which bloom in late Spring, and even early Summer. Geranium maculatum is one example of something I associate more with Summer than Spring. It is, in some settings I’ve seen, a common wildflower. But I covet it for my own garden nonetheless.

Geranium maculatum
Geranium maculatum
Geranium maculatum

Some of the Spring ephemerals are already entering senescence. Here’s Dicentra cucullaria Dutchman’s Breeches, as it appeared Tuesday afternoon in one part of the Garden. Contrast that with how it appeared just three weeks ago in a different location.

Dicentra cucullaria, Tuesday afternoon
Ephemerizing Dicentra cucullaria

Dicentra cucullaria, three weeks earlier
Dicentra cucullaria, Dutchman's Breeches

Spring ephemeral describes a life habit of perennial woodland wildflowers which develop aerial parts (i.e. stems, leaves, and flowers) of the plant early each spring and then quickly bloom, go to seed and then quickly die back to its underground parts (i.e. roots, rhizomes, and bulbs) for the remainder of the year. This strategy is very common in herbaceous communities of deciduous forests as it allows small herbaceous plants to take advantage of the high amount of sunlight reaching the forest floor prior to the leaf-out of woody plants.
Wikipedia: Ephemeral plant

It’s interesting that Wikipedia lists Dicentra eximia among the Spring ephemerals. It’s still going strong at BBG. My experience is that it blooms for months, and lasts at least through the summer, barring drought. This is one of the things that makes it an excellent performer in the garden.

Tuesday afternoon, near the Bog habitat
Dicentra eximia

Interspersed with Dodecathon meadia in the Serpentine Rock habitat
Serpentine Rock Area

Three weeks ago
Dicentra eximia, Eastern Bleeding-Heart

The march of the Rhododendron in the Osborne Garden continues into the Native Flora Garden, more evidence that early Summer is replacing late Spring.

Native Flora Garden

Rhododendron prinophyllum, Rosebud Azalea
Rhododendron prinophyllum

Rhododendron periclymenoides, Pinkster Azalea
Rhododendron periclymenoides, Pinkster Azalea

Two purple beauties from the Pine Barrens habitat, something which I would only be able to recreate in container in my garden.

Viola brittoniana, Coast Violet
Viola brittoniana, Coast Violet

Lupinus perennis, Sundial Lupine
Lupinus perennis, Sundial Lupine

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Native Flora Garden, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 2009-04-27
Native Flora Garden, BBG, 2008-04-18

Photos from Tuesday (Flickr photo set)
All my photos (Flickr collection)

More on native plants

Wildflower Week in NYC, 5/1 through 5/9, 2009-04-29
Growing a Native Plant Garden in a Flatbush Backyard, 2007-08-06
Resources: Native Alternatives to Invasive Plants, 2007-05-22
Native Plant profile: Dicentra eximia, Bleeding-heart, 2006-05-22
Notes from a visit to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Late July 2005

Links

Native Flora Garden, Brooklyn Botanic Garden

The Osborne Garden

See also The Native Flora Garden and The Bluebell Wood.


The Osborne Garden of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, with the Brooklyn Museum as a backdrop, yesterday afternoon.
Osborne Garden

As befits a formal garden, the plant palette of the Osborne Garden – the grand entrance to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden from Eastern Parkway – is somewhat restricted. The main body of the design is a large rectangular lawn, flanked by symmetrical ranks of azaleas, crabapples, and Wisteria arbors. But who’s complaining.

The symmetry is obvious as one enters the garden from Eastern Parkway. But that symmetry is deceptive. There are decidedly different experiences of entering into the garden when one goes to the left or, as I prefer, to the right. There’s a progressive sense of enclosure, in part because of the rock wall and the rise of Mount Prospect Park. And the light is decidedly different, more sheltered and shadowed, on the right-hand, western path.

Osborne Garden

Osborne Garden

Osborne Garden

Osborne Garden

With its rock wall and bedding displays, the western path also offers more horticultural variety.

Pseudofumaria lutea

Mushrooms

And best of all, it leads to the shade garden. The azaleas of the Osborne Garden hint at the explosion of Rhododendron in bloom throughout the Garden right now.

Shade Garden

Shade Garden

And just to the left of that border is the secondary entrance to the Native Flora Garden, of which I’ll have photos tomorrow.

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The Osborne Garden and Shade Garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 2008-05-16
The Osborne Garden, 2008-04-06

Osborne Garden, BBG (Flickr Photo Collection)

Links

Osborne Garden, Brooklyn Botanic Garden< /span>

The Bluebell Wood

See also The Native Flora Garden and The Osborne Garden.


The Bluebell Wood at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden is at its peak. See it this week, or wait another year.

Blubell Wood

More than 45,000 bluebells (Hyacinthoides hispanica ‘Excelsior’) are planted under a mature stand of oak, birch, and beech trees just south of Cherry Esplanade. In May, the bluebells burst into flower and create an enchanting woodland display.
The Bluebell Wood, Brooklyn Botanic Garden

The Bluebell Wood is one of those big, cymbal-crashing displays for which only large gardens can afford space. Like Daffodil Hill, this really only looks good at one moment of one season. The rest of the year, at best, it creates the negative space to appreciate the trees – oaks, here – and the views through to the other gardens beyond. At its worst, it’s an eyesore, when the foliage is bedraggled and brown, and the Wood is just something you walk through, preferably quickly.

But for now, the Bluebell Wood is having its moment, and it’s a glorious one.

Blubell Wood

Blubell Wood

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The Bluebell Wood at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 2008-05-19
My photos of BBG’s Bluebell Wood

Links

The Bluebell Wood, Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Plant Sale, Brooklyn Botanic Garden

BBG Plant Sale

This afternoon I attended the Members-Only Preview of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s 2009 Plant Sale. The sale opens to the general public all day tomorrow, Wednesday, from 9am to 7pm, and continues Thursday morning, from 9am to 12noon.

I haven’t been able to go for the past few years. I forgot how much fun it can be. It gets crowded at times, but it’s the most pleasant crowd to be in. Everyone is smiling, checking out each other’s little red wagons full of plants, offering advice and tips. The only potential meltdown I observed involved a young girl bringing an orchid to her mother, proudly sharing that this was the prettiest flower she could find. The orchid was not going into the wagon, and I moved on before things got ugly.

Because I was going to Soil Management class after the sale, I was limited to what I could carry by hand. Which was a good thing. Here are the six plants I came away with:

  • Fargesia rufa
  • Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’
  • Polygonatum falcatum ‘Variegatum’
  • Polystichum makinoi
  • Trillium erectum
  • Trillium grandiflorum

The two Trilliums are destined for the backyard native plant garden, of course. I’ve coveted a Fargesia for several years. I had one in the first garden, in the East Village. The genus was then known as Sinarundinaria; by any other name, still a lovely addition to a partially shaded location. This one, I think, will replace the Viburnum at the shady front of the house. The other three will go along the shady path on the north side of the house. There will be photographs of these in situ once they’re planted.

Waiting
Waiting

Why?!
Why?!

Shade Plants
Shade Plants, BBG Plant Sale

The Big Tent
The Big Tent

Father and Son
Father and Son

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Plant sales this week in Brooklyn, 2009-05-01

Links

Brooklyn Botanic Garden 2009 Plant Sale

Wildflower Week in NYC, 5/1 through 5/9

Mertensia virginica, Virginia Bluebells blooming yesterday afternoon in the Native Flora Garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
Mertensia virginica, Virginia Bluebells

This Friday, May 1, through next Saturday, May 9, is the Second Annual New York City Wildflower Week (WFW):

The 2nd annual NYC Wildflower Week celebrates all things green and wild in the Big Apple—the hundreds of native flowers, trees, shrubs and grasses that are found in the five boroughs. It gives New Yorkers numerous ways to connect with and be inspired by their local environment. Free activities throughout the city include: botanical walks, garden tours, ecology lectures, children’s events, planting opportunities, cooking classes, and food tastings at top restaurants. It is the largest celebration of National Wildflower Week, an initiative begun by Lady Bird Johnson.

Events are two numerous to list here. Please see the WFW calendar for a complete listing of and details on all events. They cover all five boroughs. See below for events in Brooklyn, which are also listed in the Flatbush Gardener calendar in the sidebar.

Aquilegia canadensis, Eastern Columbine blooming in the Union Square Native Plant Garden in May 2008.
Aquilegia canadensis, Eastern Columbine, Native Plant Garden, Union Square

Sunday, May 3, 11am: Native Plants of the Marsh of Marine Park

Guide: Ranger Allison McCarthy (allison.mccarthy@parks.nyc.gov)
Location: Meet outside Salt Marsh Nature Center, 3302 Avenue U
For more information, call 311 and ask for the Brooklyn Urban Park Rangers.
Description: Join the Urban Park Rangers for a hike through the salt marsh and learn about New York City’s beautiful native flora that flourish in the wetlands of Brooklyn. Dress for the weather, bring comfortable walking shoes and water, hat. You may also like to have a camera, hand lens, field guides, water, bug spray.

Sunday, May 3, 3:00pm: Prospect Park

Guide: Anne Wong, Director of Landscape Management (awong@prospectpark.org)
Location: Meet at Prospect Park Audubon Center
Description: Tour recent restorations in the woodlands and along the waterways in Prospect Park. The walk will focus on native plantings as well as invasive plant problems.

Dodecathon meadia, Eastern Shooting-Star, yesterday afternoon, Native Flora Garden, Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
Dodecathon meadia, Eastern Shooting-Star

Wednesday, May 6, 11am: Brooklyn Botanic Garden Native Flora Garden,

Location: Meet at the front entrance of the Native Flora Garden (by the wooden gates, across from the Lilac Collection)
Guide: Ulrich Lorimer, Curator of BBG’s Native Flora Garden
Description: Highlights will include many spring ephemerals such as trillium species (Trillium spp.), mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum) and violets (Viola spp.). Native azaleas will also be in bloom including the flame, pinxterbloom and sweet azaleas (Rhododendron spp.). A multitude of fern species will be emerging as well as aquatics such as golden club (Orontium aquaticum) and blue flag iris (Iris versicolor).

Lilium canadense, Canada Lily, July 2006, Native Flora Garden, Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
Lilium canadense, Canada Lily

Thursday, May 7, 3:30-5:00pm: Brooklyn Bridge Park

Location: Meet at corner of Main Street and Plymouth Street in DUMBO
Description: This program is presented by the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy with guest speaker and native plant specialist Sara Stopek. It features a guided tour of native plants and wildflowers in Brooklyn Bridge Park. The tour is followed by a native wildflower planting project by students from Science Skills High School.
To sign up please contact: Kara Gilmour, Education and Stewardship Coordinator, email: kgilmour@bbpc.net, or call 718-802-0603 x18

Berries of Phytolacca americana, Pokeweed, in my backyard native plant garden in Flatbush, Brooklyn, in October 2007.
Berries, Phytolacca americana, Pokeweed

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My photos of BBG’s Native Flora Garden (Flickr Collection)

Links

New York City Wildflower Week (WFW)
Native Flora Garden, Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy

Native Flora Garden, Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Last Friday, I had the opportunity to visit the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The Native Flora Garden was how I hoped it would be. Some of my favorite native woodland wildflowers were in bloom.

That was before our weekend heat wave and record high temperatures. Starting this week, I’ll be returning on Tuesday afternoons, when I take my Soil Management course toward my Certificate in Horticulture at BBG. The instructor is Uli Lorimer, who is also the curator of the Native Flora Garden.

Slideshow

Selected Photos

The view just inside the southern entrance to the garden.
Native Flora Garden

There is a large drift of Viola sororia forma priceana, Confederate Violet, just inside the southern entrance to this garden. I would not mind this growing as a “weed” in my garden in place of the common purple violets I’m constantly digging out.
Viola sororia forma priceana, Confederate Violet

Dicentra eximia, Eastern Bleeding-Heart, grows inside and outside the entrance, and throughout the garden. I have a white-flowering form in my backyard garden which is just starting to bloom.
Dicentra eximia, Eastern Bleeding-Heart

D. cucullaria, Dutchman’s Breeches, blooms nearby with similar wands of dangling flowers and lovely ferny foliage.
Dicentra cucullaria, Dutchman's Breeches

Erythronium americanum, Trout-Lily (yellow) and Trillium grandiflorum (white). When I visited, the Trout-Lily were blooming in fields of thousands all over the Native Flora Garden.
Erythronium americanum and Trillium grandiflorum

T. erectum, Purple Trillium, was bashful despite its specific epithet.
Label, Trillium erectum, Pruple Trillium

From repeated visits, I’m coming to appreciate the subtle charms of Uvularia sessilifolia, Wild Oats. This is one of the few upright flowers I found, just emerging from the bud; as the flowers mature, the peduncle extends, and the flowers dangle below like narrow bells.
Uvularia sessilifolia, Wild Oats

Caltha palustris, Marsh Marigold, growing in the Bog habitat.
DSC_7627_217

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Flickr Set

And they’re off! (That is, the cherry trees at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden)

The cherries are blooming at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG), just in time for the start of Hanami this weekend. In addition to those already blooming on Washington Avenue and the parking lot, there are four blooming within the main collection covered by the BBG CherryWatch Blossom Status Map:


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My Flickr photo set from this afternoon’s visit

More Hanami at BBG, 2008-04-25
Hanami at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 2008-04-04
Introducing the BBG Hanami Flickr Group, 2009-04-03
Events and Resources: Hanami and more at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 2007-04-03

Links

Cherries, Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Hanami: Cherry Blossom Viewing at Brooklyn Botanic Garden , Flickr photo pool

March of the Magnolias

Magnolia stellata, Star Magnolia
Magnolia stellata, Star Magnolia

The flower above is one of thousands that are now opening in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s Magnolia Plaza. With warmer temperatures expected today and the next few days, this weekend and next week will be a spectacular time to visit. Even the flowers still in bud can’t wait to join the stage.

Bud, Magnolia stellata, Star Magnolia

In a comment on my Facebook status update for this post, Dr. Susan Pell notes:

Actually, the Magnolia zenii blooms first at BBG [not M. stellata, as I had written], but it’s in the back corner of the Discovery Garden so most people over 3′ tall miss it.

Most of the Magnolias will follow M. stellata, Star Magnolia, in quick succession. Sometimes the bloom on a tree lasts only a week, depending on the weather. You should visit in person at least once over the next three weeks. But this year, for the first time even distant visitors will have a chance to witness the parade of bloom, thanks to one of Dave Allen’s time-lapse videos, now in the process off being captured.

Magnolia Timelapse Camera

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A weekend at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Part 2: Magnolia Plaza, 2008-04-07
Brooklyn Botanic Garden, April 14, 2007

Links

Judith D. Zuk Magnolia Plaza, Brooklyn Botanic Garden