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Brooklyn Botanic Garden 2003 Annual Report
Publications
The Garden's newly revamped gardening handbook series, called Brooklyn Botanic Garden All-Region Guides, made its debut in 2003. Three titles—Annuals for Every Garden, The Butterfly Gardener's Guide, and Pruning Trees, Shrubs & Vines—showcase the redesign with a dramatic new cover layout featuring a full-page-bleed photo, handsome photos and text on the back cover, more full-page photos on the inside, and a new, easy-to-read typeface.
In 2003, well over a million web users visited the Garden's award-winning web site, bbg.org, requesting some 3.5 million page views. The web site continued to showcase the Garden and its programs, and new gardening features were added every week. In 2003, as part of BBG's ongoing efforts to serve the online community, Web Manager Alison Dorfman began the process of making the site accessible to all users by complying with new regulations mandated by Section 508 of the federal Rehabilitation Act. By meeting the Section 508 Web Accessibility Initiative standards, the web site will provide "equal or equivalent access to everyone," including the visually impaired, hearing impaired, and physically disabled (an estimated 15 percent of all Internet users).
Throughout the year, BBG's award-winning Plants & Gardens News featured its unique blend of information for plant enthusiasts. In addition to major articles on Cape fuchsias, pink daffodils, and other choice plants, as well as gardening tips based on the latest research, book reviews, and garden designs, the publication included ethnobotanical features such as the summer cover story, "Tasty Tubers and Fabulous Fungi," about unusual foods from Central and South America; pieces on scientific issues such as global warming and how it affects gardeners; and offbeat essays like "Holly, Wood & Vine," about magical horticultural moments in the history of cinema.
The Evolution of BBG's Handbooks
BBG handbooks, first published in 1945, were redesigned in 2003. These acclaimed books, the only series of popular horticultural handbooks published by a botanical garden in North America, continue to be the expert voice on gardening for plant lovers in all 50 states and Canada, as well as 55 other countries around the world. The first books were 64 pages long and printed in black and white. Handbook on Biological Control of Plant Pests, an early volume, was a milestone in helping to launch the organic gardening movement in the U.S.
In the early 1980s, color appeared on the cover of BBG handbooks—one color, with a black-and-white photograph. Gardening With Children dates from that period. Children's gardening is another subject pioneered at Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
By 1990, BBG handbooks featured color photography inside and out and had grown to 96 pages in a perfect binding with a flat spine.
In 1994, the handbooks were redesigned and expanded to 112 pages, and the 21st-Century Gardening Series was launched. Over the next decade, this series won numerous awards as it explored the frontiers of ecological gardening, demonstrating that gardens can be beautiful habitat for people, plants, and wildlife.
Expanded to 120 pages, the new Brooklyn Botanic Garden All-Region Guides, unlike the vast majority of horticultural texts, include expert information from veteran gardeners in every major region of the U.S. and Canada.