Our Environment: "Blooming in Brooklyn" by Scott Turner

Our Environment: "Blooming in Brooklyn" by Scott Turner

Last weekend we drove 185 miles from our Providence home to visit the newest life to come to Brooklyn, NY.

I’m not talking about the borough’s hyper-gentrified cascade of condos or its towers that now encircle and darken certain streets.

We came to see how plants in the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens (BBG) were transitioning from winter to spring.

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Our first stop was amidst the pussy willows in the Discovery Garden and Water Garden. The BBG said that these include “the fantastical pink pompoms of the Japanese pink pussy willow, the creepy, gothic-looking black pussy willow, and the rose-gold pussy willow, whose blossoms seem to glow.”

Under a warm sun, beaming from an azure sky, we found the Japanese pinky pussy willows, which, depending upon where you stood, held flowering spikes that looked pink, pink-white or glowing red.

These spikes were possibly the softest objects we’d ever touched. They were more delicate than velvet, silk or satin. And, to see such structures radiate like rubies in the light simply doubled the pleasure of our visit with them.

The pussy willows grew alongside a tinkling brook, where calling White-throated Sparrows and a crooning Song Sparrow foraged, while a Red-bellied Woodpecker chattered overhead.

We also strolled past plots of native pussy willows, which were the classic silver or gray, as well as other types of the shrub, which weren’t labeled. These plants included one pussy willow that displayed fluffy silver flower spikes with neon green highlights.

Competing for shrub stardom in the garden were various flowering witch hazels (in yellow, red or orange), especially Chinese witch hazel, with its fragrant, showy blossoms. Cornelian cherry was also in bloom, featuring tight clusters of tiny star-shaped yellow flowers.

Several bulbs were blooming. These included distinct carpets of naturalized purple crocuses, pale-blue squill or snowdrops in lawn areas. In bare soil, we found winter aconite, with its radiant yellow flowers, and elsewhere in the garden were specimens of hellebore, with large open green flowers and evergreen foliage.

The gardens featured an array of trees and shrubs with twisting twigs, such as scarlet curls willow, or stoutly branched species like pawpaw. Other plants displayed, at least in part for their eye-catching twigs and/or buds, included magnolia, sassafras, sumac, Katsura, and red buckeye.

In particular, we were impressed by the bright stems of several species of dogwoods, such as yellow-twig, flame, red and Baton Rouge. Meanwhile, sumac, catalpa, and Japanese pagoda tree all featured some form of fruit, with the most eye-catching berries belonging to winterberry. This compact holly, which drops its leaves each fall, showed off a crown of bright red berries.

Our favorite non-floral find was that of an insect hotel. These stem-stacked, tube-filled, bamboo-heaped structures, with varying diameter holes, provide sanctuary for insects. Condos for critters! Indeed, there were a few flies zipping around the tiny hollows. We also walked through a swarm of wispy gnat-like bugs dancing over a path. Insects, of course, are signs of spring.

With all of the ongoing physical, cultural and other transformations in Brooklyn, we found the 1910-founded BBG as eye-catching, calming, and vital as ever; a sanctuary for and repository of nature’s bounty in the middle of a trendy borough.

 

Scott Turner is a Providence-based writer and communications professional. For more than a decade he wrote for the Providence Journal and we welcome him to GoLocalProv.com.