expulsion from the garden of eden

October 19, 2018 by Phyllis Odessey

Mexican tiger flowers, wild tobacco, Parrot Pitcher Plant, American Black Elderberry, Inkberry,  Rattlesnackmaster, Breadfruit, Tarragon, Marsh Foxtail, and Green Arrow Arum were some of 3,000 plants grown by Dr. David Hosack at the Elgin Botanic Garden in 1803, now the site of Rockefeller Center. Almost forgotten, Dr. David Hosack is the subject of Victoria Johnson’s book American Eden.  Hosack was a medical doctor as well as a professor at Columbia. In 1797 he founded the first botanic garden in the United […]

Categories: Horticulture, Landscape Design • Tags: David Hosack, New York Botanical Garden, Victoria Johnson

make a whole cloth

October 17, 2018 by Phyllis Odessey

How is weaving related to landscape architecture? Beka Sturges described her practice as a collective interlacing of warp and weft.  Her talk, entitled, “Giving Voice to the Land” was not the usual landscape architecture recap of projects.  Sturges challenged her listeners to question their ideas about nature.  Sturges opened with a quote by William Cronin  “By imagining that our true home is in the wilderness, we forgive ourselves the homes we actually inhabit…” Not familiar with Cronin’s work, I looked up […]

Categories: Landscape Design, Designers • Tags: New York Botanical Garden, Beka Sturges, Reed Hilderbrand

teeth of the lion

May 28, 2018 by Phyllis Odessey

The largest and most robust dandelions I have seen were in Iceland.  In a country where there is little flora, the common dandelion is everywhere.  The front yard, gardens, public spaces, driveways, Taraxacum officinale are prized for their color and form in an otherwise stark landscape.  Members of the Asteraceae family, this troublesome weed was the subject of Dr. Lena Struwe’s talk at NYBG:  The Love and Hate of Dandelions and Their Symbolism in Today’s Society . Although not particularly […]

Categories: Horticulture, Philosophy • Tags: Dandelion, Dr. Lena Struwe, New York Botanical Garden

deconstructuring the garden

February 23, 2018 by Phyllis Odessey

The Johannes Kip engraving of Cleve Hill (1712) was one of Arne Maynard’s  childhood inspirations. Equally important was the trip Maynard took with his godmother around the UK when he was thirteen. Kirby Hall was one of the gardens Maynard visited as a pre-teen and the images of this garden stuck with him:  lack of color, simplicity, pattern making  and plainness. These attributes became the foundation blocks of Maynard’s design at his first house. “I never once put pen to […]

Categories: Designers, Gardening, Horticulture, Landscape Design • Tags: Allt-y-bela, Arne Maynard, Monmouthshire, New York Botanical Garden, New York Botanical Garden Winter Lecture Series, Wales

plants are teachers of reciprocity

December 1, 2017 by Phyllis Odessey

“Introducing people is like a label making machine…a wikipedia entry.  Let me tell you about the woman I know. She is an influencer of my soul.  I approach Robin Wall Kimmerer like one would approach Mick Jaeger.  She is a teacher, writer, poet and scientist ”  Elizabeth Gilbert introducing Robin Wall Kimmerer. I have going to NYBG lectures at for years, and this was the most of out of the box talk I have ever been to. Kimmerer assured the audience that her […]

Categories: Gardening, Horticulture, Philosophy • Tags: Elizabeth Gilbert, New York Botanical Garden, Robin Wall Kimmerer

forensic attention to detail

November 1, 2017 by Phyllis Odessey

I asked a friend: “What was your takeaway from the Arabella Lennox-Boyd lecture?”  “She works for really rich people.” With a few exceptions, the projects Lennox-Boyd showed were grand estates on huge pieces of property.  One such long-term project is Eaton Hall, the seat of the Duke of Westminster, an 85 acre property with herbaceous borders over 296 ft. long and a 150 page maintenance guide for the gardeners penned by Lennox-Boyd. Lennox-Boyd began her lecture with her childhood home, Palazzo Parisi, 60 […]

Categories: Designers, Horticulture, Landscape Design • Tags: Arabaella Lennox-Boyd, New York Bot 2017 Landscape Design Portfolio Lecture Series, New York Botanical Garden

respond, heal, contribute

October 18, 2017 by Phyllis Odessey

When was the last time you heard a landscape architect say “I don’t do residential. I don’t do suburban.  I work in degraded urban spaces.”  Signe Nielsen opened her talk entitled “Optimistic Landscapes”  for the NYBG Landscape Design Portfolio Series with that opening salvo.   Nielsen spoke about 3 projects:  Hunts Point Landing, The Lowline and Pier 55.  If you have ever gone to the Hunts Point Market; you know it’s hard to navigate, ugly and on first glance has no livable space.  […]

Categories: Horticulture, Landscape Design, Philosophy • Tags: 19th Annual Landscape Design Portfolio Lecture Series, New York Botanical Garden, Signe Nielsen

in the eye of the beholder

March 10, 2017 by Phyllis Odessey

You might think creating a herbarium is a really tedious task.  And I guess it can be.  The New York Botanical Garden currently has a small show of a few of the 7.8 million specimens that are housed on the upper floors of the International Plant Science Center on view.  It is the second largest herbarium in the world.  The Herbarium contains all plant groups – flowering plants, conifers, ferns, mosses, fungi, lichens, liverworts and algae from all over the world. […]

Categories: Horticulture • Tags: New York Botanical Garden

i am here to share my anxiety

September 28, 2016 by Phyllis Odessey

I thought the lecture by Martha Schwartz on Monday night would save me from my own anxiety…watching the Presidential Debate. The lecture started at 6:30 pm and I was home in plenty of time to watch the debate. The best I could hope for was that Schwartz’s lecture would be like a good aperitif before a bad meal. Schwartz voiced her concern about the debate, but also her apprehension, fear, and panic about the current climate change situation, “I want to become […]

Categories: Architecture, Art, Designers, Landscape Design • Tags: Martha Schwartz, New York Botanical Garden