Tracing the Path

The path of a leafminer. A year ago today. On a field trip to the New Jersey Pine Barrens with Uli and the Brooklyn Botanic science team.

The High Line

I'm a fan of Rails to Trails for their vision in taking defunct passageways that were once vital for shipping or passenger travel and reinventing them as cycling/pedestrian/horse trails all over the country, so touring the High Line here in New York city was pretty cool. Land use might not seem like a hip topic, but when you get down to it, it really is the only game in town and always has been, especially in a town as populated and developed as Manhattan. The High Line is also a good place to learn about designing an urban landscape, gardening or growing plants in tough or unusual places and to think about how to use the space here, this city, now and in the future. It was a beautiful, unseasonally warm day to boot.

When you go hiking in the rain

with the science team in the Catskills, it's hard to take pictures for fear of ruining your camera in the rain and because it's buried in a tubberware in your knapsack under your poncho and a bit awkward to get. I missed getting a shot of the beautiful bark of two native species found in the northeast on slopes like the one we climbed to Giant Ledge; Acer pensylvanicum (Moose Maple or Striped Maple) and Betula alleghaniensis (Yellow Birch). The trips in the field with science team are immersion lessons in botanical names and plants, and joke-telling on the trail. It's also just nice to spend a whole day dedicated to learning by observing plants as they are, uncultivated and in their native habitat (some, not all), and to just go for a walk in the woods up a rocky trail. Tomorrow we go back to cultivation and civilization and by that I mean, of course, probably weeding.

SUNY Farmingdale School of Horticulture

I imagine the horticulture students at SUNY Farmingdale are inspired while studying and working their grounds, much like we hort interns are at Brooklyn Botanic. Though only a fraction of the size, they manage to showcase a variety of design styles and plants in their different gardens.




























A lush tropical garden is only a minutes walk from an old greenhouse that might inspire ideas about the view both looking in and out of windows. (These just happen to be missing glass.) There are beds to double-dig and annuals to plant and watch grow.
















And of course there are trees to wonder at like the Golden Larch pictured below with one branch showing signs of fall color. Again, it seems that everywhere you go in horticulture people are excited about what they do and excited to share their knowledge with you. That's always a nice thing.

Planting Fields Arboretum

When, near the end of a whirlwind two-hour tour of Planting Fields Arboretem, the incredibly knowledgable and enthusiastic Park Manager Vincent Simeone gets really excited about a plant, you have to take notice. Edgeworthia papyrifera (Paperbush) pictured above must be spectacular in bloom and maybe worth a winter visit to witness. Maybe you'd catch some of the greenhouse Camellias to boot. Not that you'd need to look for an excuse to revisit this place even in winter. We covered a lot of ground on the field trip today, but a place so large could be explored for hours and hours.































Lespedeza thunbergii 'Spring Grove' located with the other L plants in the Synoptic Garden.





















Calathea makayana (Peacock Plant)
There's always lovely architecture too at these huge old estates, once enjoyed by so few but now accessible to many, like the Tea House below.



And I haven't even gotten to some of this historic park's grand old trees in this post. Can't wait to go back again.

Eagle Street Rooftop Farm

It isn't every day that you look up and see vegetable stakes dominating the city skyline unless I guess you're spending your days at the Eagle street Rooftop Farm, which we visited this morning.

Field Trip to Chanticleer & Longwood Gardens

Chanticleer charmed us all right away. Even in the parking lot, we were admiring the plants and the place. I loved how this garden had all these little pockets of awesomeness, whether a handmade wooden bench or fence or plants growing in pockets carved out of stumps, all made by the gardeners/artists working there. Longwood was perhaps its perfect contrast..a serious machine of a place with a nightly lightshow and fountains and hoses that pump out fertilized water or treehouses shaped like cathedrals and beehives. The gardeners working at both places though were pretty generous with filling us in on their doings. The only complaint really was the weather, which was blazing.

American holly (Ilex opaca)

Growing wild in New Jersey. An understory native with cool bark. It's not just the berries that make this tree beautiful.

Field Trip to Jersey Pine Barrens

So, today I felt like the special ed kid who accidentally ended up in class with the AP students . Or a bit like Charlie Brown and friends around adults...whenever Uli or someone else said something botanical (and they were flinging the words around like they actually knew what they meant), all I heard was "Waah Wahh wah WAAAh." Sometimes it's good to remember how little you actually know. Today was that day for me. I took some pictures of plants and now have no idea what they are. A few that my unscientifically-trained brain can remember: The ghostly Indian Pipe plant, which doesn't need clorophyll because it feeds off of fungi in the soil. (Monotropo uniflora). The Droseras, (Sundew) tiny plants that are carnivorous. Tephrosia virginiana (catgut) in the fabaceae family, which you can see because it looks pea-like.