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Brooklyn Botanic Garden
USINFO | 2013-05-17 15:17
Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG) is a botanical garden in the borough of Brooklyn in New York City. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown Heights, Flatbush, and Park Slope neighborhoods, the 52-acre (21 ha) garden includes a number of specialty "gardens within the Garden," plant collections, and the Steinhardt Conservatory, which houses the C.V. Starr Bonsai Museum, three climate-themed plant pavilions, a white cast-iron and glass aquatic plant house, and an art gallery. Founded in 1910, the Garden holds over 10,000 taxa of plants and each year welcomes over 900,000 visitors from around the world.
The Garden has more than 200 cherry trees of forty-two Asian species and cultivated varieties, making it one of the foremost cherry-viewing sites outside of Japan. The first cherries were planted at the garden after World War I, a gift from the Japanese government.
Each spring at BBG, when the trees are in bloom, a month-long cherry blossom viewing festival called Hanami is held, culminating in a weekend celebration called Sakura Matsuri. Cherry trees are found on the Cherry Esplanade and Cherry Walk, in the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden, and in many other locations in the Garden. Depending on weather conditions, the Asian flowering cherries bloom from late March or early April to mid-May. The many different species bloom at slightly different times, and the sequence is tracked online at Cherry Watch, on the BBG website.
Less apparent to the casual visitor are BBG's diverse programs in scientific research, youth education, and community horticulture.
Scientists at Brooklyn Botanic Garden are undertaking a comprehensive study of the plants of metropolitan New York, called the New York Metropolitan Flora project, or NYMF. The purpose of NYMF is to catalog and describe all vascular plants growing in the region.
The BBG Herbarium houses about 300,000 specimens of preserved plants, particularly plants from the New York metropolitan area.
These specimens, some from as early as 1818, create a historical record and aid BBG scientists in tracking species, analyzing the spread of invasive plants, and modeling changes in the metro region's vegetation. There are also holdings from the western United States, the Galapagos Islands, Bolivia, and Mauritius.
BBG scientists are conducting research on the evolution and classification of plants, a field called plant systematics. BBG's three Ph.D. scientists are experts in several plant families, including Scrophulariaceae, Cyperaceae, Juncaceae, and Anacardiaceae and have contributed several treatments to the ongoing Flora of North America project.
BBG has been producing publications since 1945, when it launched America's first series of popular gardening handbooks. Today, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden All-Region Guides continue to provide home gardeners with practical information on subjects such as garden design, great plants, and gardening techniques. A recent title, Native Alternatives to Invasive Plants, uses BBG's extensive knowledge of invasive plants to educate gardeners about both the problem of invasive species and garden-worthy native plant alternatives.
BBG's website, bbg.org, showcases the Garden and its programs and offers information for the home gardener in popular features such as Garden Botany and Environmental Gardening. New features are added every week, including seasonal interactive guides such as "ID Your Holiday Tree" and "Cherry Watch," and online resources like the Metropolitan Plant Encyclopedia. BBG's collection of historic photographs and lantern slides was recently made available online. The website was one of the first to be fully compliant with federal laws requiring information technology to be equally accessible to the disabled.
The Garden has more than 200 cherry trees of forty-two Asian species and cultivated varieties, making it one of the foremost cherry-viewing sites outside of Japan. The first cherries were planted at the garden after World War I, a gift from the Japanese government.
Each spring at BBG, when the trees are in bloom, a month-long cherry blossom viewing festival called Hanami is held, culminating in a weekend celebration called Sakura Matsuri. Cherry trees are found on the Cherry Esplanade and Cherry Walk, in the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden, and in many other locations in the Garden. Depending on weather conditions, the Asian flowering cherries bloom from late March or early April to mid-May. The many different species bloom at slightly different times, and the sequence is tracked online at Cherry Watch, on the BBG website.
Less apparent to the casual visitor are BBG's diverse programs in scientific research, youth education, and community horticulture.
Scientists at Brooklyn Botanic Garden are undertaking a comprehensive study of the plants of metropolitan New York, called the New York Metropolitan Flora project, or NYMF. The purpose of NYMF is to catalog and describe all vascular plants growing in the region.
The BBG Herbarium houses about 300,000 specimens of preserved plants, particularly plants from the New York metropolitan area.
These specimens, some from as early as 1818, create a historical record and aid BBG scientists in tracking species, analyzing the spread of invasive plants, and modeling changes in the metro region's vegetation. There are also holdings from the western United States, the Galapagos Islands, Bolivia, and Mauritius.
BBG scientists are conducting research on the evolution and classification of plants, a field called plant systematics. BBG's three Ph.D. scientists are experts in several plant families, including Scrophulariaceae, Cyperaceae, Juncaceae, and Anacardiaceae and have contributed several treatments to the ongoing Flora of North America project.
BBG has been producing publications since 1945, when it launched America's first series of popular gardening handbooks. Today, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden All-Region Guides continue to provide home gardeners with practical information on subjects such as garden design, great plants, and gardening techniques. A recent title, Native Alternatives to Invasive Plants, uses BBG's extensive knowledge of invasive plants to educate gardeners about both the problem of invasive species and garden-worthy native plant alternatives.
BBG's website, bbg.org, showcases the Garden and its programs and offers information for the home gardener in popular features such as Garden Botany and Environmental Gardening. New features are added every week, including seasonal interactive guides such as "ID Your Holiday Tree" and "Cherry Watch," and online resources like the Metropolitan Plant Encyclopedia. BBG's collection of historic photographs and lantern slides was recently made available online. The website was one of the first to be fully compliant with federal laws requiring information technology to be equally accessible to the disabled.
