Gardens & Collections Blog
Collecting in the Wild
You won’t find many of the species growing in the Native Flora Garden expansion at a typical nursery. Most came from seeds collected in the wild by me and other horticulturists and botanists from BBG along with our partners at the Greenbelt Native Plant Center. We applied for permits to visit several natural areas many
A Q&A with Darrel Morrison, Designer of BBG’s Native Flora Garden Expansion
The celebrated landscape architect Darrel Morrison is best known for designing wide-open prairie-inspired gardens like his landscapes at Storm King Art Center and the Native Plant Garden at the University of Wisconsin Arboretum. But the New York City resident's most recent project is much more urban and closer to home:
A Fern Grows in Brooklyn
It’s not every day that a federally listed threatened plant establishes itself in a storm drain, but if you peer through the grate on the path leading through BBG’s Lilac Collection toward the Rose Garden, you will see a small colony of hart’s tongue ferns (Asplenium scolopendrium var. americanum ). The lush, shiny
Are the Cherries Blooming?
Around this time of year, inevitably I’ll be out in the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden and someone will ask, “When will the cherry trees blossom?” and I’ll have to point out, “Well, you’re standing under a really beautiful flowering cherry tree right now.” That’s because most people, when they come to see
Native Flora Garden Expansion: A Link to Our Natural History
Difficult as it is to imagine today, the New York metropolitan area was once home to a broad array of incredibly diverse plant communities. Much of Brooklyn was old-growth oak forest; the New Jersey Meadowlands were cedar swamps and sphagnum bogs; the eastern part of Long Island was a rolling, tallgrass prairie; and the
South African Spring
Most spring bulbs may be weeks from blooming outdoors in the Northern Hemisphere, but their South African counterparts are in all their glory in the Warm Temperate Pavilion. Like tulips, daffodils, and other familiar spring-blooming bulbs, South African bulbs and other geophytes are dormant in summer, an adaptation that
