Shrubberies

Update 2014-11-23:

• Completed Step #4 today, nearly injuring myself in the exertion. Did I mention that established grasses have deep and extensive roots?
• Also completed Step #5, replacing the Panicum.
• Added Step #9. I'd overlooked this shrub, and need to find a place where it can be featured, while still kept in bounds with the garden. I think where the Aronia once stood, a transplant I did in the Spring of this year.

Update 2014-11-10:

• I'm taking photos as the work progresses. See Before and After below.
• Reordered based on the progress I'm making. Because the Rhododendron is shallow-rooted, I decided to leave that until the last weekend before Thanksgiving, when I'll visit my sister and deliver her plants.

---

It's a long weekend for me. The weather favors gardening.

I've got seven shrubs - and one or two mature perennials - to plant, transplant, and move out. Here's the plan.

Fall in Miniature: BBG's Bonsai in November

A yose (group-style) bonsai specimen of Acer palmatum, Japanese Maple, developed by Stanley Chinn currently on display at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Yose typically group multiple specimens of the same, or closely related species, in the same planting to simplify cultural requirements. Chinn's masterful touch is the selection of cultivars with different fall foliage colors. This specimen is unusual in that there appear to be only two, rather than the typical three or some other odd number, of the trees in the grouping.


There is no better time of year to visit the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's C. V. Starr Bonsai Museum than right now. Most of the trees on display are in peak fall foliage color. And while the wind has knocked the leaves off many of the trees on the grounds, the sheltered bonsai have been spared those indignities.

This season, they've placed an additional display table at the northern end of the greenhouse, opposite the entrance.

Slideshow

Japanese Garden, BBG, Veteran's Day

Stone Basin with Cherry Leaves, Japanese Garden, Brooklyn Botanic Garden


The Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden was another station on my tour of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden on Veteran's Day with Blog Widow. What's the connection between Veteran's Day and BBG's Japanese garden? Its designer, Takeo Shiota, died in a U.S. internment camp during World War II.

There are different styles of Japanese gardens. The hill-and-pond style is intended to be viewed from a fixed point, in this case, the pavilion that reaches out over the shore of the pond. The stone basin above adorns the entrance to the pavilion.

It is a blend of the ancient hill-and-pond style and the more recent stroll-garden style, in which various landscape features are gradually revealed along winding paths. The garden features artificial hills contoured around a pond, a waterfall, and an island while carefully placed rocks also play a leading role. Among the major architectural elements of the garden are wooden bridges, stone lanterns, a viewing pavilion, the Torii or gateway, and a Shinto shrine.

The steep hills, representing distant mountains, are a maintenance nightmare: they cannot be mowed by walking a mower across them. Instead, the mower must be rigged to bypass its safety features, and carefully lowered and raised down and up the slopes using ropes controlled from the tops of the hills. BBG staff are gradually replacing the turf of the original design with slow-growing dwarf Ophiopogon, Mondo grass. These will eventually provide the same scale and texture as lawn without the hazards to life and limb.

One of the treacherous slopes along an idyllic path.

Natural History: Patrick Dougherty at BBG

The view from within.


Blog Widow and I observed Veteran's Day by visiting the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The Fall foliage was still brilliant, especially in the Bonsai Museum. My other must-see destination was "Natural History," BBG's first site-specific installation, by Patrick Dougherty. This was my first visit to the Garden since it was installed in August:

The sculpture at BBG is woven from nonnative woody material that was collected from Ocean Breeze Park on Staten Island. The harvesting site was chosen by BBG's director of Science because of its proximity to the Garden and its large population of nonnative willow (Salix atrocinerea), which is designated an invasive species in New York State. Removal of saplings of this species helped protect the site's excellent assemblage of herbaceous plants. The park is owned by the City of New York and is targeted for restoration under the City's PlaNYC sustainability initiative.

During a visit to BBG a year before beginning the work, Dougherty drew sketches and made word associations based on the feelings he experienced while exploring the potential work site. When asked about some of the words that came to mind as he contemplated what he wanted to build in Brooklyn, Dougherty smiled and said "lairs; a place for feral children and wayward adults."

The sculpture will be on display until August 2011, when it will be dismantled. It's going to look awesome in snow.

Slideshow

Fall Foliage at BBG's Bonsai Museum

Detail of the fall foliage of a Moyogi (informal upright) specimen of Acer palmatum in BBG's Bonsai Museum.

Local Leafin': Street Tree Walking Tour Sunday 10/24

Japanese Maple leaves (red), with Linden in the background (yellow), at the corner of Rugby Road and Cortelyou Road in Beverley Square West, Flatbush, Brooklyn, November 2007.


The Sustainable Flatbush Fall 2010 Street Tree Walking Tour will be this Sunday, October 24. Tours begin at 11am and 12noon. I'm proud to once again be one of your guides. Your other guide will be Sam Bishop, Director of Education of Trees NY. As in the past, tours will start at Sacred Vibes Apothecary, our other community partner. This is also listed as a NeighborWoods Month event.

After a dry summer, October brought ample rains just in time to salvage some fall foliage. Dogwoods, Locusts, and Ash Trees are showing strong color. The neighborhood should be at near-peak foliage conditions for the year for the tour.

On the tour, you can see:

• Acer platanoides, Norway Maple
• Aesculus hippocastanum, Horsechestnut
• Amelanchier, Serviceberry
• Betula nigra, River Birch
• Cercis canadensis, Redbud
• Cornus florida, Flowering Dogwood
• Cryptomeria japonica, Japanese Red Cedar
• Fraxinus americana, White Ash
• Ginkgo biloba, Ginkgo
• Gleditsia triacanthos, Honey Locust
• Liquidambar styraciflua, Sweetgum
• Metasequoia glyptostroboides, Dawn Redwood
• Pinus strobus, White Pine
• Platanus x acerifolia, London Plane
• Pyrus calleryana, Flowering Pear, Callery Pear
• Quercus palustris, Pin Oak
• Quercus robur 'Fastigiata', Columnar English Oak
• Sophora japonica, Japanese Pagoda Tree, Scholar Tree
• Tsuga canadensis, Eastern Hemlock
• Ulmus americana, American Elm

... and many more.

Map

Fall Back, 2010

Persephone with her pomegranate. Dante Gabriel Rossetti - Proserpine (Oil on canvas, 1874) - Tate Gallery, London


This year's autumnal or September equinox occurs at 03:09 Universal Time (UTC) on September 23. In my local time, Eastern Daylight Time (EDT), it's 23:09, 11:09 PM, on September 22.

The Earth's seasons are caused by the rotation axis of the Earth not being perpendicular to its orbital plane. The Earth's axis is tilted at an angle of approximately 23.44° from the orbital plane; this tilt is called the axial tilt. As a consequence, for half of the year (i.e. from around March 20 to around September 22), the northern hemisphere tips toward the Sun, with the maximum around June 21, while for the other half of the year, the southern hemisphere has this honor, with the maximum around December 21. The two instants when the Sun is directly overhead at the Equator are the equinoxes.
- Wikipedia: Equinox

Citizen Pruner Training Fall Schedule

The London Plane Tree in front of my house.


TreesNY's Citizen Pruner Tree Care Course is being offered in Brooklyn and Manhattan this season, covering basic tree biology, street tree identification and care. Upon successful completion of the final exam, participants receive a license that certifies them to legally prune trees owned by the City of New York. In New York City where there is limited money for tree maintenance but significant need, Citizen Pruners provide a tremendous benefit to our urban environment.

The twelve hour course consists of four weekly two-hour classes and four hours of hands-on experience in the field. Participants may miss up to one classroom session. The weekend field outing is mandatory. Specific dates vary by location. Locations and Dates for classes in the Bronx, Queens and Staten Island are still to be determined.

The course fee is $100 and includes a comprehensive manual and other materials. Course fee is non-refundable.You can register and pay online with Visa, Mastercard or Discover. To pay by check, make your check payable to Trees New York, and indicate the course location on the check

Saturday, October 24: Meet the Trees

Fraxinus americana, White Ash, one of the street trees that will be on the tour.


On Saturday, October 24, Sustainable Flatbush will host its first Fall Street Tree Walking Tour. And I'm looking forward to once again be one of the guides for the tour.

---

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Brooklyn, NY October 16, 2009

SUSTAINABLE FLATBUSH FALL 2009 STREET TREE WALKING TOUR
Saturday, October 24, 2009—Rain or Shine

Based on the success of the annual walking tour events in celebration of Arbor Day and spring in bloom, Sustainable Flatbush is now introducing the inaugural Fall Street Tree Walking Tour. The tour guides will be Tracey Hohman, professional gardener, and Chris Kreussling, aka Flatbush Gardener, both neighborhood residents.

Fall Approaches, 2009

September Dogwood, Beverly Road, Flatbush, Brooklyn, 2009

My clear signal for the onset of Spring is the blooming of Snowdrops, Galanthus species. The reddening leaves of Dogwoods, Cornus species, tell me that Fall has really begun in my neighborhood of Flatbush, Brooklyn. Soon to come are the yellows of the Locust trees, Gleditsia and Robinia species, and the psychedelic rainbows of White Ash, Fraxinus americana. The big show is put on by the Maples and Oaks.

Conditions are ideal for spectacular foliage this year. We've had ample rains over the summer following near-record Spring rains. The NY State Foliage Forecast predicts that peak foliage will reach New York City around the last week of October. This timing couldn't be more perfect. On Saturday, October 24, fellow gardener Tracey Hohman and I will be guiding the first Fall Foliage Street Tree Walking Tour for Sustainable Flatbush. We'll be walking the same route we've visited the past two Springs, so participants can see the same trees this Fall that they've seen in the Spring.

Sustainable Flatbush Street Tree Walking Tour, Arbor Day 2009. That's me in the middle, next to the tree. Photo by Keka

Happy September Equinox 2009

Bas-relief in Persepolis. On the day of an equinox, the power of an eternally fighting bull (personifying the Earth) and that of a lion (personifying the Sun) are equal. The September equinox marks the first day of Mehr or Libra in the Persian calendar. Photo: Anatoly Terentiev


The September equinox (autumnal in the northern hemisphere, vernal in the southern) occurs today, September 22, at 21:18 UTC. Daylight Savings Time puts me at UTC-4, so 17:18, or 5:18pm, local time.

Illumination of the Earth by the Sun on the day of an equinox

Brooklyn Botanic Garden, November 7 2008

The Cherry Esplanade at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden


Blog Widow and I both grew up in New York state. The annual spectacle of fall foliage never fails to leave us in awe. We usually try to make some kind of annual road trip out of the city to enjoy the foliage, but this year our schedules haven't permitted it.

Friday we went to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. It was my first chance to get there this season. It was psychedelic. It was hard to take a bad photo, but these are some of the best of more than a hundred shots I took during our few hours there. Hope you enjoy them as much as we enjoyed being there. All are best viewed at screen-filling enlargement in a dark room.

Cherry Leaves


View toward the Cherry Esplanade from the Cherry Walk.


Cherry Walk


Foliage, Japanese Maple


Hill, Japanese Garden


Pond, Japanese Garden


Cherry Leaf with Koi


Magnolia Plaza


Japanese Persimmon


Bonsai Museum


Bonsai, Ginkgo biloba


Bonsai, Acer palmatum


Beautyberry, Callicarpa bodinieri var. giraldii


Beautyberry, Callicarpa japonica 'Leucocarpa'

Flatbush Daffodil Project, Fall 2008

WHAT: The Flatbush Daffodil Project was founded in 2007 by Flatbush Gardener and Stacey Bell and this year is co-sponsored by Sustainable Flatbush.

We have 1,650 daffodil bulbs and they are going in the ground! Come do some real community gardening with your neighbors, plant daffodil bulbs in tree pits and along the streetscape.

Here's the complete schedule of streets to be planted:

11/2 - Cortelyou Road
11/8 - Newkirk Avenue
11/9 - PS 139 and PS 217

WHERE:
November 2,9: meet in front of the clock on Cortelyou & Rugby Roads
November 8: meet in front of PS 217, Newkirk Avenue between Stratford
Road & Coney Island Avenue

WHEN: November 2, 8 and 9. 10AM to 1pm.

WHY: Plant bulbs in the fall, enjoy the flowers in the spring!

Related Posts

Links

Fall Approaches, 2008

I've been watching fall advance locally: first the red of the Dogwoods, the yellow of the Locusts, the psychedelia of the White Ash. When my system gets back up and running, I'll have some photos of my own to share. Meanwhile, NASA treats us with their annual satellite perspective on the phenomenon. This is how it looked about two weeks ago.

Fall was beginning to color the East Coast of the United States when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image on October 12, 2008. Orange touches trees in the north and at higher elevations, where temperatures are cooler. Lower elevations are still green. The fall color follows the sweep of the Appalachian Mountains through Pennsylvania, New York, and into New England.
- Fall Color in the US Northeast, NASA Earth Observatory

The image also illustrates the dense population of the East Coast. Cities are gray in this photo-like image. The greater New York City region covers a large area on the coast. Boston, Massachusetts, and Providence, Rhode Island are also clearly visible.

Related Posts

2007:

• Fall Approaches
  
• The Luminous Streets
  

2006:

• Fall Color in Beverley Square West
• More Fall Color in Beverley Square West
  

Links

Fall Color in the US Northeast, NASA Earth Observatory

Fall Foliage Photo Contest at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Cherry leaves falling at the entrance to the Viewing Pavilion, Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, November 2006.


Remember how I told you to keep an eye out for BBG.org 2.0? The Brooklyn Botanic Garden is sponsoring a Fall Foliage Photography Contest. The contest started this past Monday, October 13, and runs through November 30. (The photo above is not eligible because it wasn't taken this season.)

Autumn is upon us, and the leaves are already starting to turn at BBG. Come document the change in foliage and then submit your photos to our Flickr Fall Foliage Contest!

The Rules

Photos must be of fall foliage, but you are not limited in format—close-ups, macros, wide-angle shots, landscape images—it's all fair game! Photos must be taken at BBG this year, between Monday, October 13 and Sunday, November 30.

The Prizes

Each week the Garden's web staff will select a favorite image from the group to feature on our homepage and award the photographer with 2 free passes to BBG. All submitted photographs will be featured in a slideshow on the site as well.

How Do I Enter?

It's easy! Just add your photos to our Fall Foliage Flickr group and we'll do the rest!

- Fall Foliage Photo Contest, Brooklyn Botanic Garden

So get clicking!

Related Contents

BBG, November 5, 2005 (Flickr photo set)
Field Trip: Brooklyn Botanic Garden, November 4, 2006
BBG, November 4, 2006 (Flickr photo set)

Links

Fall Foliage Photo Contest, Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Fall Foliage Contest at Brooklyn Botanic Garden (Flickr group)

Botanic Garden’s First-Ever Fall Foliage Photo Contest, Brooklyn Eagle, 2008-11-05

Final NYC Compost Giveback

The Fresh Kills Composting Site in Staten Island


The very last ever, until something changes, NYC Compost Giveback takes place this weekend in the Bronx, and in two weeks in Staten Island. Since there's no funding in the budget for fall leaf pickup, there will be no more leaves, and no more givebacks, after this.

BRONX

Saturday & Sunday, OCTOBER 4 & 5, 8am to 2pm (rain or shine)
Soundview DSNY Composting Site (at the end of Randall Ave. close to the Bruckner
Expressway)

STATEN ISLAND
Saturday & Sunday, OCTOBER 18 & 19, 8am to 2pm (rain or shine)
Fresh Kills DSNY Composting Site (off West Service Rd. near exit 7 of Rt. 440)

NYC residents and community groups from any borough can get unlimited amounts of
free compost at these events. This high-quality, natural soil enhancer is made out
of leaves that DSNY collected from City residents and institutions.

At the Compost Givebacks, NYC residents can also purchase discounted compost bins
for $20 (subsidized by DSNY-BWPRR) to make their own compost.

Related Posts

Compost

Links

Fall 2008 Compost Givebacks and Bin Sales
Sanitation Announces Plan to Collect Fallen Leaves [as garbage, not for composting], Press release, Department of Sanitation, New York City, 2008-09-22
NYC Compost Project

Happy September Equinox 2008

Persephone with her pomegranate. Dante Gabriel Rossetti - Proserpine (Oil on canvas, 1874) - Tate Gallery, London

Related Posts

Equinox
Solstice

Links

Wikipedia: Equinox

The Luminous Streets

P.S. 139, Cortelyou and Rugby Roads, Beverley Square West, Flatbush, Brooklyn


This has been a spectacular year for fall foliage. We had ample, sometimes record, rainfall over the summer. We didn't get a long drought at the end of the summer which often ruins the fall colors. And temperatures finally got cool at night, while warm during the day. We just had our first hard freeze this week.

Barbara Corcoran, avert your eyes. The rest of us can enjoy this gift. We're just past peak this weekend, but there's still plenty of great color. So get out and walk around.

Fothergilla, Vinca minor, and Maple leaves, 329 Westminster Road, Beverley Square West


Japanese Maple, 1505 Albemarle Road, Prospect Park South


Field 11, Parade Grounds, Caton Avenue


Abandoned, East 16th Street


315 East 18th Street, Beverly Square East


346 East 18th Street, Beverly Square East


196 Marlborough Road, Prospect Park South


Beverly Road, Beverley Square West


Japanese Maple in front yard, 260 Westminster Road, Beverley Square West


I've been walking past, beneath, this every morning on my way to the Beverly Road subway station. Nothing like starting your commute in awe.

1422 Beverly Road, Beverley Square West

Brooklyn Leaf Collection Dates

This year, leaf collection dates for Brooklyn are Saturday, November 10 (next Saturday) and November 24. You can bag your leaves only in designated paper leaf collection bags. Put them out at the curb Saturday night for Sunday morning pickup.

In fall 2007, it will be mandatory (according to NYC's Yard Waste Composting Law ) for NYC residents in the city's leaf collection districts to set out their fall leaves in paper bags (or in unlined rigid containers) during the designated DSNY fall leaf collection period.

How to Set Out Leaves for DSNY Collection:

1. Place leaves into large paper leaf bags. Leaves may also be set out loose in unlined garbage cans. You can be fined for setting out your leaves in plastic bags during DSNY’s leaf collection period.

2. Place leaves at the curb on the designated Saturday evenings.

3. Leaf pickup may take place early the next morning, so place leaves at the curb on the designated Saturday night. Leaves not picked up the next day, will be collected later in the week.

Unfortunately, with the closing of the Spring Creek Composting Site, Brooklyn and
Queens residents are effectively cut off from the spring and fall compost givebacks.

Links

Fall Leaf Collection Program, NYC Department of Sanitation

Fall Approaches

Fall Colors around Lake Superior, September 23, 2007. Credit: NASA Terra-MODIS (Satellite-Sensor)

The autumnal equinox of 2007 occurred at 09:51 UTC on Sunday, September 23, or 05:51 Eastern Time. "Autumnal" instead of "Fall" because:

1. It's okay to use for both hemispheres.
   
2. Also, you could use this term on any other planets on which you should find yourself.

In northeastern North America, we measure fall by the changes in foliage. And it's on its way south from Canada.

The calendar may have set September 23 as the first day of autumn in 2007, but the forests that line the eastern shore of Lake Superior had already started to mark the turning of the season. By September 23, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this photo-like image, the forests of northern Michigan and southern Ontario flamed orange as the first trees of the season—maples—began to display their brilliant red and orange fall colors. Veins of green run through the sea of orange where the deciduous forest gives way to deep green pine trees.

The most vivid color is concentrated in Canada’s Ontario Province. Located farther south, Michigan’s trees show only a hint of color. ...

The large image provides an unusually cloud-free view of all of the Great Lakes. Similar spots of color stretch across southern Canada and parts of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. The northern plains of the United States have started to turn yellow as grasses ripen, but the eastern forests in Pennsylvania and New York remain deep green.

- Fall Colors around Lake Superior, NASA Earth Observatory

New York State operates its own fall foliage watch. You can track the progress of the changes on the map provided on their Web site. They were predicting "vibrant, near-peak autumn color" this past weekend for the Adirondacks, the peachy area in northern New York state on the map below.

Here in NYC, we're still in the green, but I've been watching the subtle changes. Individual trees in my neighborhood, including the cherry tree in my backyard, are already picking up shades of yellow and orange.

Vernal equinox and autumnal equinox. These names are direct derivatives of Latin (ver = spring, autumnus = autumn), and as such more apt to be found in writings. Although in principle they are subject to the same problem as the spring/autumn names, their use over the centuries has fixed them to the viewpoint of the northern hemisphere. As such the vernal equinox is the equinox where the Sun passes from south to north [across the equator], and is a zeropoint in some celestial coordinate systems. The name of the other equinox is used less often.
- Wikipedia:Equinox:Names

Links

Wikipedia: Equinox
I Love NY (State) Fall Foliage Report

Related Posts

The Return of Persephone