Event: Brooklyn Pride Celebration, June 5-10, 2006
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Event: Victorian Flatbush House and Garden Tour, Sunday, June 11, 2006
Flatbush Development Corporation‘s annual Victorian Flatbush House and Garden Tour is scheduled this year for Sunday, June 11, from 11am to 6pm.
The Victorian Flatbush section of Brooklyn ranges from Prospect Park on the north, to Brooklyn College in the south, and from Flatbush Avenue on the east, to Coney Island Avenue on the west. Most of the properties are fully “detached” houses built around the turn of the last century. There are a dozen different identified neighborhoods in this area. Real estate listings typically refer to this entire area inaccurately as “Ditmas Park”, which is just one of these neighborhoods.
The photo above was taken May 4th, 2006. It shows the view looking up the block from the sidewalk in front of our house. In 2005, my partner and I bought our first home in another of these neighborhoods: Beverly Square West. Our house was built in 1900.
Opening Day, Cortelyou Greenmarket
Some of the apple varieties available from Red Jacket Orchards at the Courtelyou Greenmarket on opening day.
Photo taken: June 3, 2006
Photo taken: June 3, 2006
Today was the first day of the season for the Courtelyou Greenmarket which serves our neighborhood:
Greenmarket has organized and managed open-air farmers markets in NYC since 1976. By providing regional small family farmers with opportunities to sell their fruits, vegetables and other farm products to New Yorkers, Greenmarket supports farmers and preserves farmland for the future.
– Greenmarket Farmers Market
The Courtelyou Greenmarket is located in the schoolyard of P.S. 139 on Argyle Road, just up the block from Courtelyou Road. There were only three vendors there for opening day:
- Flatbush Food Co-Op
- Meredith’s Bread (no link available), Kingston, NY
- Red Jacket Orchards
Based on our experience last year, the number of vendors will ramp up through the month of June. There’s about a dozen during the summer, selling all kinds of fresh fruits and vegetables, plus meat, dairy, baked goods and some handcrafts.
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Event: Brooklyn Wild Parrot Safari, Saturday, June 3, 2006
The next Brooklyn Wild Parrot Safari is Saturday, June 3, 2006.
The tours, guided by Steve Baldwin, start at 12 noon
at Brooklyn College‘s Hillel Gate, on Campus Road at Hillel Place, close to the last stop on the 2 train (Flatbush Avenue/Nostrand Avenue).
The photo above was taken September 29, 2005. It shows a parrot checking me out as s/he’s about to get into a fruit from our next-door neighbor’s apple tree. Their apple tree bloomed gloriously last Spring, just after we bought our house. More blooms = more bees = more apples = more parrots. This Spring the bloom was scant, so we expect fewer apples, and fewer parrots, this year than last.
Web Resource: Vintage Gardens, “Antique & Extraordinary Roses”
[Technical update, August 21, 2006: Removed new lines between table rows to eliminate white-space preceding table, per http://groups.google.com/group/blogger-help-publishing/browse_thread/thread/a2999c2c0017b5b0.]
I’m trying to select an “antique” rose or two for the heirloom garden, one which was available in 1905 or earlier. (Our house was built in 1900.) I don’t want to have to learn how roses are classified: Floribunda, Musk, Bourbon, and so on. I want a rose which will perform well in a mixed border: long-/repeat-blooming, fragrant, disease-free.
Many of the rose growers I’ve found online assume that the visitor is a rose “geek.” The only way to look at their offerings is to browse through a hierarchical listing of what’s available. They require that you already know the rose you’re looking for and how it’s classified.
Vintage Gardens provides the best online search tool I’ve found.
Our rose collection has grown to over 3500 varieties, including every rose class from the very oldest to the most modern. It is the largest collection of roses offered by any nursery in the world today. We value each variety and look on this as a preservation collection that provides a valuable resource to gardeners and helps to preserve our heritage of roses. We go to the greatest lengths to maintain correct identifications on our roses. We research and compare with collections worldwide to ensure that our information is as accurate as it can be. In our catalogue we identify the source from which our mother plant came, to assist others who are seeking a specific rose.
Below is a table listing partial results from a search for roses introduced in the 1800s with intense scent and rapid rebloom.
| Name | Year Introduced | Color | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aimée Vibert | 1828 | White | |
| Baltimore Belle | 1843 | Blush Pink | |
| Blanc Double de Coubert | 1892 | White | |
| Blush Noisette | 1814 | Blush Pink | |
| Captain Christy, Climbing | 1881 | Blush Pink | |
| Clotilde Soupert | 1890 | White, “pale blush with a lilac-pink heart” | The photo of this on VG’s Web site is gorgeous. They describe it as “Very round, very double flowers of Victorian perfection …” Just what I need for the heirloom garden! |
| Deuil de Dr. Reynaud | 1862 | Cerise | “… appears to be identical with the Bourbon rose labeled Philémon Cochet (Cochet-Cochet, 1895) at the Roserie de l’Hay.” |
| Devoniensis, Climbing AKA “Magnolia Rose”, “Tradd St. Yellow” | 1858 | Cream, “… primrose yellow, magnolia white or ivory, depending on the weather.” | |
| La France, Climbing | 1893 | Blush Pink | |
| Mme. Bérard | 1870 | Peach Pink, “… honey colored flowers which take on golden-apricot shades in the Spring and Fall …” | |
| Mme. Creux (Kaiserin Freidrich) | 1893 | Apricot-Buff | “As we have observed this over the past few years we grow convinced that this rose is identical with Kaiserin Freiderich, a modest growing Tea-Noisette. We suspect that the latter is more likely the correct identity.” |
| Mme. Ernest Calvat | 1888 | Cerise | |
| Mme. Isaac Pereire | 1881 | Purple, “… intensely colored claret pink, amaranth and magenta” … | Another which looks amazing on VG’s Web site. “… perhaps the most extraordinary of the Bourbons. Large, intensely colored claret pink, amaranth and magenta flowers of surpassing fragrance …” |
| Mme. Lambard | 1878 | Peach Pink, mutable, “… shades of pink, buff, apricot, rose, blush and coppery yellow” | |
| Nastarana | 1879 | White | |
| Pierre Notting | 1863 | Dark Red | This one’s also on my short list for the heirloom garden. “Very full, large velvety red flowers which at their best have no peer among the Hybrid Perpetuals.” |
| Pink Soupert | 1896 | Rose Pink |
Web Resource: New York Metropolitan Flora Project (NYMF)
Updated, 2013-08-25: Corrected links.
Brooklyn Botanic Garden‘s New York Metropolitan Flora Project (NYMF) documents the distribution of woody plant species among 25 counties in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut within a 50-mile radius around New York City. Tools available online include:
- A plant encyclopedia, organized by family, genus, and species. For example: Adoxaceae, Viburnum, V. dentatum
- Lists of plants by county, linked to the detailed species entries in the encyclopedia. For example: Kings County (Brooklyn)
- A searchable bibliography.
While most of the botanical community concentrates on tracking the threats to biodiversity in the tropics, scientists at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden are undertaking the most comprehensive study ever of the plant biodiversity in metropolitan New York. Studying the vegetation changes in highly populated areas is critical to understanding the future of life in our rapidly urbanizing world. …
Understanding the urban landscape is critical in our rapidly urbanizing world. Findings of BBG’s Metropolitan Flora Project serve as vital references for those involved in environmental efforts, from preserving rare plants, to planning parks and greenways, to repairing degraded habitats, to designing home gardens in which native plant communities are preserved or restored.
Links
Brooklyn Botanic Garden: New York Metropolitan Flora Project
Web Resource: Invasive Plant Atlas of New England (IPANE)
The Invasive Plant Atlas of New England’s (IPANE) mission is to create a comprehensive web-accessible database of invasive and potentially invasive plants in New England … An important focus of the project is the early detection of, and rapid response to, new invasions.
Listen to NPR’s “Morning Edition” Listeners’ Letters this Thursday, June 1
I emailed the following letter to National Public Radio (NPR) in response to their broadcast, yesterday, Monday, May 29, 2006, Tending ‘Defiant Gardens’ During Wartime. Today I recorded it over the phone with them for possible broadcast on Thursday morning.
Regarding your broadcast, “Tending Defiant Gardens During Wartime,” broadcast around 7:50am EDT, May 29, 2006.
[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5435131]Thank you for this story, apt for Memorial Day. It made me think: How much “defiance” figures into my own gardening? The garden does not judge me. The insects and plants do not care if I’m angry or happy or grieving.
Gardening connects me to something bigger than me, bigger than everyone. Through gardening, I can tap into a sense of time that dwarfs the brief existence of humankind, the source of all suffering in the world. It reminds me that, whatever happens to me, to us, life prevails.
Gardening is an act of defiance because, no matter what people inflict on each other and themselves in the names of their gods, gardening demonstrates hope.
Article, Fall 2005: The Changing Flora of the New York Metropolitan Region
The authors compare past distribution data from historical records, and current data from Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s New York Metropolitan Flora Project to determine changes in distribution over the past century. They further compare these changes between native and introduced species within the same genus, such as Celastrus scandens, American bittersweet (native) and Celastrus orbiculata (or C. orbiculata), Oriental bittersweet (introduced, and invasive), or Lonicera sempervirens, Trumpet honeysuckle (native) and Lonicera japonica, Japanese honeysuckle (introduced, and invasive).
We statistically analyzed 100 years of herbarium specimen data for woody plants in the New York metropolitan region in order to measure the floristic changes of this area. Change Index values were computed for 224 of the region’s 556 woody species to provide a specific measure of whether these species are expanding, contracting, or stable. The results show that, in general, nonnative invasive species are spreading rapidly in the region, while native species are in slight decline.
– The Changing Flora of the New York Metropolitan Region
Links
The Changing Flora of the New York Metropolitan Region, Urban Habitats, Volume 3, Number 1, Fall 2005, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 1000 Washington Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11225
Radio broadcast, May 29, 2006: Tending ‘Defiant Gardens’ During Wartime
Just broadcast this morning on NPR:
From the Western Front trenches of World War I to the deserts of Iraq, soldiers have found comfort in the simple act of gardening.
Kenneth Helphand, writes about war gardens — not just victory gardens, grown in time of scarcity, but those planted on hostile fronts, including Eastern Europe’s ghettos and the Japanese-American internment camps of World War II. Helphand calls the gardens an act of defiance.
How much “defiance” figures into my own gardening? The garden does not judge me. The insects and plants do not care if I’m angry or happy or grieving.
Gardening connects me to something bigger than me, bigger than everyone. Through gardening, I can tap into a sense of time that dwarfs the brief existence of humankind, the source of all suffering in the world. It reminds me that, whatever happens to me, to us, life prevails.
Gardening is an act of defiance because, no matter what people inflict on each other and themselves in the names of their gods, gardening demonstrates hope.