New York City Gardens

New York may be most easily recognized by its trademark skyscrapers and brick tenement buildings, but the truth is that the city is actually teeming with luxurious roof gardens and private courtyard oases. Creative gardeners and architects have risen to meet the unique challenges of the urban landscape, designing spaces that celebrate the city while providing a restful escape. New York City Gardens presents New York's evolving tradition of garden culture through images and discussions of thirty of its most outstanding gardens, from world-famous botanical gardens to richly re-cultivated public urban spaces, luxurious penthouse terraces, and innovative art gardens without soil or plants. Many of the gardens are set against vistas of the quintessential New York--Central Park, the Empire State Building, skyscrapers of Midtown, and the sensational skyline of Lower Manhattan. Other gardens reveal surprising and exotic intimate retreats from the bustle of the city. While most were designed by noted landscape architects, including Dan Kiley, Hideo Sasaki, Ken Smith, and Halsted Wells, many others were created over decades by talented homeowners themselves. As more and more city dwellers in New York and beyond look to cultivate their own kitchen and container gardens and individual outdoor sanctuaries, this book provides hundreds of inspiring images as well as historical background and insight into the practical and imaginative solutions of city garden designers.

“If you can't get to the High Line. . . this is the next best thing.” —The Washington Post Before it was restored, the High Line was an untouched, abandoned landscape overgrown with wildflowers. Today it’s a central plaza, a cultural center, a walkway, and a green retreat in a bustling city that is free for all to enjoy. This beautiful, dynamic garden was designed by Piet Oudolf, one of the world’s most extraordinary garden designers. Gardens of the High Line, by Piet Oudolf and Rick Darke, offers an in-depth view into the planting designs, plant palette, and maintenance of this landmark achievement. It reveals a four-season garden that is filled with native and exotic plants, drought-tol­erant perennials, and grasses that thrive and spread. It also offers inspiration and advice on recreating its iconic, naturalistic style. Featuring stunning photographs by Rick Darke and an introduction by Robert Hammond, the founder of the Friends of the High Line, this large-trim, photo-driven book is a must-have gem of nature of design.

“Gardentopia is that rare marriage of the art of landscaping and the technical knowledge of how to compose a landscape—boiled down to readily understood and easily executed actions. This book puts you in the driver’s seat and shows you how to chart the course to your own personal garden utopia.” - Margie Grace, Grace Design Associates Any backyard has the potential to refresh and inspire if you know what to do. Jan Johnsen’s new book, Gardentopia: Design Basics for Creating Beautiful Outdoor Spaces, will delight all garden lovers with over 130 lushly illustrated landscape design and planting suggestions. Ms. Johnsen is an admired designer and popular speaker whose hands-on approach to “co-creating with nature” will have you saying, “I can do that!’ This info-packed, sumptuous book offers individual tips for enhancing any size landscape using ‘real world’ solutions. The suggestions are grouped into five categories that include Garden Design and Artful Accents, Walls, Patios, and Steps and Plants and Planting, among others. Whether you are an experienced gardener or a landscaping novice, Gardentopia will inspire you with tips such as ‘Soften a Corner”, “Paint it Black”, and “Hide and Reveal”.

Accompanying the groundbreaking exhibition "Frida Kahlo: Art, Garden, Life" at The New York Botanical Garden, this vibrant book provides a thrilling new perspective from which to appreciate Frida Kahlo's paintings against the backdrop of her home and garden. Fans of botanical art, garden enthusiasts, and Kahlo's many devotees will find new and exciting imagesand information in this elegant, unique presentation of one of modern art's most revered figures.

“New York City looks nothing—nothing—like it did just a decade and a half ago. It’s a place of newly gorgeous waterfront promenades, of trees, tall grasses and blooming flowers on patches of land and peninsulas of concrete and even stretches of rail tracks that were blighted or blank before.” —Frank Bruni, The New York Times “Betsy Pinover Schiff’s unerring eye and spectacular photographs tell the story of a city, and how its pre-Dorothy and Oz, colorless and downtrodden existence has been redone as if by wizardry in glorious Technicolor.” —Adrian Benepe, former Parks Commissioner of New York City Betsy Pinover Schiff has been photographing urban plantings and chronicling the “greening” of the city for more than two decades. Once limited to private spaces and elite neighborhoods, these plantings now proliferate throughout the five boroughs. Sidewalk Gardens of New York reveals the transformation of the “city of concrete and glass” into one of the greenest and most richly planted urban centers in America. Nature and architecture combine in ways that will surprise even the most seasoned New Yorkers. Featured are tree beds, planters, hanging baskets, and medians that mitigate the frenzy of the street; plazas and pocket parks that offer respite to pedestrians, building plantings that create a welcoming transition between public and private; community gardens; and parks, both the iconic and the newly planted along the waterfront in Brooklyn, Queens, and Lower Manhattan.

“With lush photographs and spare prose” a Brooklyn blogger shares recipes and “records her life as a gardener, a cook and an urban forager.” (The New York Times) Marie Viljoen's beautiful first book draws the reader into a world of unfolding seasons, seen from the perspective of an expert gardener, cook and photographer. Each chapter is a month, divided into three parts: New York City, the author's garden, and her kitchen, each setting the stage for a lavish seasonal menu with recipes drawn from farmers markets, wild-foraged ingredients, and produce grown on her city terrace and roof farm. Named for the size of her tiny Brooklyn terrace, and the blog it inspired, Viljoen's book is a unique perspective of the concrete jungle, where the month is known by the flowers in bloom, the vegetable in season, and the migrating birds crossing a Brooklyn sky. Set against a backdrop of growing up in South Africa and moving to the United States, meeting her French husband, and finding a culinary and emotional home in Brooklyn, Viljoen's book is a love letter to living seasonally in the most famous city on the planet. “If you don't think of this city as a living ecosystem, Marie Viljoen will change your perspective forever.” —Edible Brooklyn “Offer[s] visions of growing, cooking and sharing fresh food as central to living a good life.” —Seattle Times

A floral tour of the metropolis, filled with sumptuous photography: “A magical and unexpected look at New York . . . lovely and brilliant.” —Laura Dowling, former chief floral designer at the White House From stylish floral studios and corner shops overflowing with fresh-cut blooms, through bustling flower markets, to blooming trees and lush public parks, an unexpected softer side of New York is revealed in photos juxtaposing floral beauty with exquisite botanical details found in the city’s iconic architecture. Author and photographer Georgianna Lane adds to her acclaimed works Paris in Bloom and London in Bloom with this collection including: Parks and gardens Floral studios Market flowers Floral displays Field guides to locating and identifying common spring blooms A list of recommended locations and vendors A tutorial on how to create your own New York–style floral bouquet, and more “A bountiful and effervescent garden that brilliantly dots the landscape of the city that never sleeps.” —Robert Wheeler, author of Hemingway’s Paris

From the giant topiary of an airplane in the Queens Botanical Garden to the mannered space of the Frick Collection, here are the stories of more than 100 gardens in New York City. In addition to describing a variety of flora and fauna, This book chronicles the events and personalities behind the green spaces visited by generations of New Yorkers. Includes 50 color photos and visitor information for each garden.