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Publications
Three new titles were published in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden All-Region Guide series this year: Native Alternatives to Invasive Plants, The Tree Care Primer, and Gardening With Children. These and other BBG handbooks received glowing reviews in publications such as the New York Times, Library Journal, Horticulture, and Publishers Weekly, as well as numerous regional publications. In addition to being distributed to BBG members, BBG All-Region Guides are sold at retail locations and garden shops across North America through a distribution partnership with Sterling Publishing.
Native Alternatives to Invasive Plants by C. Colston Burrell identifies invasive plants and makes it easy for the reader to select environmentally appropriate alternatives. Describing dozens of spectacular native plants for every region—specially chosen as alternatives to the invasive species that are degrading the continent's natural habitats—this title was instantly popular and went into a second printing before the end of the year. This important, double-length volume was dedicated to BBG's president emeritus Judith D. Zuk, whose leadership made the Garden's pioneering books on invasive plants possible. Funding from the Chanticleer Foundation, Federal Highway Administration, and Federal Bureau of Land Management enabled BBG to produce Native Alternatives.
BBG's arborist Christopher Roddick partnered with editor Beth Hanson to produce The Tree Care Primer, which offers comprehensive advice about tree selection, maintenance, and health for amateur and professional gardeners alike. An indispensable guide to the basic concepts and essential techniques of common-sense tree care, the handbook helps gardeners with everything from tree planting to maintenance of mature trees, with all the information one needs to promote the long-term well-being of these giant plants.
BBG educators teamed up to produce the very special publication Gardening With Children, the first All-Region Guide written specifically for children and their caregivers. The book is filled with detailed, four-color illustrations and is printed on wider pages, allowing kids and adults to keep the book open easily as they follow the more than 40 hands-on activities featured inside. Building on BBG's expertise in children's education, the projects are designed to awaken a child's sense of wonder about the natural world while nourishing cognitive development and self-confidence.
Buyer demand drove the reprinting of several popular All-Region titles, including The Best Apples to Buy and Grow, The Butterfly Gardener's Guide, and The Shady Border: Shade-Loving Perennials for Season-Long Color. And BBG also produced revised editions of several older titles from the 21st-Century Gardening Series with updated information and illustrations: Hummingbird Gardens: Turning Your Yard Into Hummingbird Heaven; Wildflower Gardens: 60 Spectacular Plants and How to Grow Them in Your Garden; and Butterfly Gardens: Luring Nature's Loveliest Pollinators to Your Yard.
BBG continued its leadership role in the open-access movement, producing the fourth issue of Urban Habitats, a peer-reviewed scientific electronic journal on the biology of urban areas. The focus of the 2006 issue was the wildlife-hosting capabilities of green roofs. All papers are available at no charge online, and the journal is edited to make the information useful not only to researchers but also to government officials, landscape architects, amateur naturalists, and other interested nonscientists. The number of readers of this journal, now entering its fifth year of publication, has grown enormously—over 30,000 unique visitors from 87 different countries and territories logged on to read articles over the past year.
Plants & Gardens News explored Japanese gardens (Fall 2006), initiatives against invasive plants (Spring 2007), and forest-friendly mulch (Summer 2007), continuing to deliver lively and informative articles from leading experts in the field. The Garden Writers Association (GWA) honored BBG with a Gold Award of Achievement for Best Overall Newsletter for the Spring 2006 issue of P&G News, and gave former director of Publications Janet Marinelli a Silver Award of Achievement for Writing in a Newsletter for the article "Box Turtles in the Garden: Close Encounters of the Reptilian Kind," which appeared in the summer 2006 issue of P&G News.
BBG's Internet resource, bbg.org, also garnered a Gold Award from GWA for Best Overall Product in Electronic Media. The site continued to showcase the Garden and its programs, provide access to BBG's various research databases, and offer informative features on a variety of topics of interest to gardeners. Traffic to bbg.org continues to rise: Readership this year was up five percent over the previous year. And, extending its online presence, the Garden launched a MySpace page, thus reaching out to the diverse and dynamic audience of the social networking world.
One of the most popular online features was the Blooming of Amorphophallus titanum at BBG site. When BBG's titan arum burst into bloom in August 2006, bbg.org followed the giant flower each step of the way. Daily blog entries, an around-the-clock webcam, a growth chart marking the plant's stunning rise to over 5 feet in height, a photo gallery, and a wealth of information about titan arums gave web visitors a virtual face-to-face with this amazing plant. Ultimately, over 100,000 unique visitors logged on to the titan arum site. After the event, BBG posted a time-lapse video of the flower's bloom.
In the spring, during Hanami, web staff redesigned the popular CherryWatch site, a blossom-status map of every Prunus specimen in the Garden, which is updated three times a week during the cherry-blossom season. Also this year, each cherry variety was photographed in its four stages of bloom (pre-, first, peak, and post-peak) for an online Stages of Bloom gallery that offers visitors a taste of the amazing transformation the cherry trees are undergoing at the Garden.
Garden staff launched a Members-only section on bbg.org, allowing Garden members to view back issues of Members News and Plants & Gardens News, collect information about special discounts and privileges, and log on to receive their member discount in the online garden gift shop. Also, bbg.org featured sites for horticultural events, including interpretation to accompany the display of the endangered Wollemi Pine, the rare and exotic blooming of a Puya berteroniana plant, and a spotlight on BBG's demonstration urban garden at the U.S. Botanic Garden in Washington, D.C.