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Brooklyn Botanic Garden 2003 Annual Report
Scientific Research
In 2003, the Garden's efforts to deepen the knowledge of plants and to communicate this vital information to professionals and the general public were acknowledged by a number of prestigious awards. BBG's New York Metropolitan Flora project (NYMF) became the proud recipient of the American Association of Botanical Gardens and Arboreta 2003 Award for Program Excellence. Begun in 1989, NYMF is the Garden's long-term project to inventory all plants growing in the New York metropolitan region. BBG researchers already have identified several new, endangered, and potentially invasive species and have rediscovered species thought to be extinct. Their work is being used by other scientists, urban planners, land managers, and government policymakers to preserve and restore the metropolitan environment—an area covering 7,650 square miles with a population of more than 18 million people.
BBG's Director of Publications, Janet Marinelli, was honored with the American Horticultural Society 2003 Horticultural Writing Award. Her writing in the Garden's handbooks and Plants & Gardens News and in books such as Stalking the Wild Amaranth: Gardening in the Age of Extinction has helped pioneer a new ecological approach to landscape design and "has made a significant contribution to horticulture," in the words of the AHS. The BBG web site, www.bbg.org, one of the world's most extensive botanical-garden web sites, was honored with an American Association of Botanical Gardens and Arboreta 2003 Dorothy E. Hansell Award Honorable Mention. And the Garden's horticultural newsletter, Plants & Gardens News, added to its string of awards received in recent years with a 2003 Garden Writers Association Garden Globe Award for Best Writing. The winning essay, which appeared in the fall 2002 issue, is "Eccentric Enthusiasts," about the wags, curmudgeons, and genuine oddballs who have left their mark on garden history.