Brooklyn Botanic Garden
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Mammal Monday
Curling up on a roof on a cold winter day. For two days, this raccoon spent daylight hours up here on a neighboring roof. The gutter, and poor roof drainage, provided water from the recent snowfall. It disappeared just a few minutes before sunset the first day. I thought it might be a goner, for…
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Brooklyn Botanic Axes Arborist
Two Monday’s ago, the management of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden cut down a quirky and beloved tree. Staff and community opposed the arborcide. The garden’s own staff didn’t think the gloriously stumpy “BBG Treehouse” needed to come down, so, like some capo di tutti capi, the institution got outside contractors to do the killing. Then,…
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BBG Treehouse Razed
It’s evil tidings Tuesday, evidently. Yesterday, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden removed the last of a beloved London Plane tree. Most of the giant old tree had been cut down earlier. Left until yesterday was a viable, hollowed-out stump, continuously, gloriously sprouting at the top. It was known as “the treehouse,” a quirky landmark that quickly…
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Vigilance Against Poachers
Yesterday, some bird poachers were interrupted in Prospect Park by Park Rangers and park staff. Earlier, one of the poachers actually walked through a group of birders with a caged American Goldfinch in one hand and a glue stick (used to trap birds, a variation on bird lime; very nasty stuff) in the other. It’s…
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Meanwhile, in the Wedding Venue Garden
In the last week, two employees of what many are still calling, for sentimental reasons, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, confided in me about the low level of morale there since the purge of its research program in August. In September, the Garden’s Board of Trustees approved a new mission statement; the old one had proved…
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Petition to Restore Science at the BBG
A petition has been launched by Chris Kruessling, the Flatbush Gardener, addressing the Board of Directors of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in an effort to restore the science and research mission at that institution. If you care about science, botany, Brooklyn, transparency, and a venerable institution gone astray, please sign. Background: Chris has been reporting…
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Whose Botanic Garden?
The NY State Legislature reserved 39 acres for a botanical garden in Brooklyn in 1897, on land that had originally been part of the proposed site of Prospect Park. The triangle northwest of Flatbush Avenue became instead Institute Park, home to the Brooklyn Museum, Mount Prospect Park, and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The Botanic Garden…
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BBG Purge
This is what I know, having heard it through the Vitis vine: on Wednesday at 7pm, the Brooklyn Botanical Garden fired six members of its science department, wiping the department out. By e-mail. What a classy move! The Metropolitan Flora project has been suspended. The head of the community-building GreenBridge was axed. The herbarium has…
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Flying Now
The Common Sootywing (Pholisora catullus). A tiny — wingspan is less than an inch — fluttery butterfly, that looks black from a distance, but up close is revealed to be a rich brown.
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The Future
The Native Flora Garden is expanding at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Most of the one-acre extension, which effectively doubles the size of the NFG, can be seen here from a distance. The new space will include pine barrens and coastal plain habitats.Here’s a peek through the fencing of the pine barrens habitat to come. Pitch…
Backyard and Beyond 