Green Screen at The HSNY

If you haven't visited The HSNY at our new location in midtown Manhattan, you must put it on your 'to do list' as a wonderful place to spend the afternoon. Our Library boasts an extensive collection on gardens and gardening that includes fascinating horticultural magazines to inform and inspire gardeners, would-be gardeners and anyone interested in plants. The contemporary art Gallery, which is open to the public, combines an innovative curatorial strategy with a unique gallery space to showcase emerging and established contemporary artists in all media who create plant-based art, supported by a series of film screenings and other engaging events.

Along with all this, we have custom designed and built a green screen which adorns the south facing windows in our office. This 'screen' is filled with many wonderful varieties of Cacti, Succulents, Ferns, Begonias, Peperomia, and even Euphorbia. There is a wide range of shapes, textures and colors that are represented in the foliage of our plant selections, along with varied bloom times, to make the display last year round.

If you are an apartment dweller in New York, you are well aware of how limited space is. The green screen is a perfect solution for introducing live plant material into your environment. This screen can actually help conserve energy by providing a layer of insulation, and even act as soundproofing. Plus these plants will grow and fill in the window creating a privacy screen.

I suggest you stop in and see for yourself what a unique and useful addition this green screen has become in our loft space.

In Bloom This Week at HSNY

In our Green Screen here at HSNY we get to have a lot of fun growing a wide array of plants. Among them we have a number of epiphytic species, including these Tillandsia, or air plants as they are commonly called. They are situated in a trough of moisture retentive gravel and get watered and misted a couple times a week this time of year. After a day in the field working at a Green Branches Learning Garden in Brooklyn yesterday I came in this morning to find these showy pink blossoms emerging from the rigid green leaves. Well, technically speaking the pink portions are showy bracts and the flowers will actually be smaller and emerge from the tiny purple buds you see. But either way, a great little show.
If you are in the neighborhood come in and visit to see these spectacular plants. The blooms will not last too terribly long as the office is considerably more dry compared to the humid locales of Central America where the genus is naturally indigenous.
The HSNY Green Screen was designed by Marpillero Pollak Architects, installed by David Melrose, and is maintained by those of us here at The Horticultural Society of New York. It is a living work in progress, and along with the HSNY library and exhibitions gallery, is open to the pulbic Monday through Friday from 10am to 6pm.

Hope to see you soon.

Recent Photos: HSNY Green Screen

Here at The Horticultural Society of New York (148 W. 37th Street - 13th Floor) our Green Screen is looking really good these days so I wanted to post and share some images for those of you that have not had the chance to visit recently. Designed by Marpillero Pollak Architects, installed by David Melrose, and maintained by yours truly, the HSNY Green Screen includes plants of all shapes and sizes situated in a series of shallow troughs covering most of our south-facing windows. A mixture of herbaceous tropicals, succulents, bromeliads, epiphytes, ferns and vines, the Screen has become a great living experiment right here in our public headquarters and I urge anyone and everyone to come and visit. Above is a Tillandsia concolor, commonly call an air plant, and with all the sun and humidity recently it has begun blooming profusely.

The staghorn fern (Platycerium bifurcatum) in the background and the crocodile fern (Microsorium 'Crocodyllus') in the foreground require regular misting but have held up very well since I planted them a year ago. If you have ever tried to grow a staghorn fern in your home you know how challenging it can be so I love showing people how we have been able to keep it going here in an office environment.

One of our newest additions is this amazing plant with contrasting hairy, reddish stems and bright chartreuse terminal growth. It appears that the flowers are pure white, tiny and emerge from the chartreuse bracts of the plant, but we are still learning as it continues to come into flower. I have yet to identify it to genus and/or species.


In the center of this shot, in front of the thin, tubular Euphorbia tirucalli 'Sticks on Fire' and behind the Hedera 'Round Leaf' is Neoregelia 'Tiger Cub', a staff favorite which we have a number of throughout the Screen. With plenty of sun and enough moisture kept in their cups the Tiger Cub neoregelia continues to put out its pups (new growth in the form of side shoots) even when the office gets very dry.

You can see some things are containerized within the screen like the Peperomia maypurensis with its thick bronze leaves. You can't see it in this photo but the creeping fig (Ficus pumila) in the foreground has begun clinging and climbing up the nearby windowsill. Again, we enjoy the screen as a horticultural experiment and love to see how the plants grow and spread by their own accord.

With its cylindrical creeping leaves, the Sansevieria ballyi has been a Green Screen staple from its installation in 2006. Beyond it Sedum 'Angelina' has adapted well to the indoors here at HSNY even though most people know it as a reliable and winter-hardy green roof plant in New York City. Overall the succulents, such as the Sedum, love the Screen because they do most of their water and nutrient storage in their leaf tissue and therefore do not need tons of space for their roots. Beyond those the large leafed plants in the distance are a combination of Begonia conchifolia 'Bulls Eye' and Syngonium podophyllum 'Roxana', commonly called Bulls Eye begonia and Roxana arrowhead vine respectively.


Over the winter the rex begonia vine, Cissus discolor, died back and I wasn't sure if it would come back again. However, I pruned it back hard, continued to water minimally through winter, and did my best to be patient. To all of our surprise, not to mention the surprise of the amazing growers out at Landcraft Environmentals who raised most of these plants, spring came and the vine has bounced back tremendously. I do think they would prefer a home with greater humidity but a regular early morning misting is keeping them colorful and cascading all over.

The containerized plant in the foreground is Homalocladium platycladum, commonly called a ribbon plant. Some times you will also find it referred to by its other, less attractive name of tapeworm plant. It too prefers quite a bit of humidity given the thin "ribbon" leaves and stems but when happy they grow quite big. Beyond it the Echeveria 'Milk Chocolate' put up a large spire of flowers last year and I can't wait for it to bloom again. When you visit you will see how we have easily propagated broken-off succulent leaves and allowed them to grow into plants of their own.

Under two pieces of the Screen are large radiators so we improvised and filled those sections with moisture retentive gravel and containerized succulents and epiphytes. In the winter its just a matter of keep the gravel moist on a regular basis and the result is a nice dose of humidity that rises up and helps all of the other layers deal with the dry heat.

HSNY is open to the public Monday - Friday from 10am - 6pm. With a mission to improve the quality of life through horticulture, HSNY is a horticultural resource and community outreach provider intended for all, and we love to help foster growth and education every chance we get. Usually Katherine Powis, HSNY Librarian, and I are here, but if not there is signage and other staff to help you identify what you are looking at. There is also the living example of an extensive green roof (below) and plenty of sensational reference books to keep you enthralled so do come and visit us soon.

Reminder: All photographs taken by Alex Feleppa and should not be used or reproduced in any form without written consent. Thank you. -AEF

Question Regarding the HSNY Green Screen

(Ficus pumila, commonly called creeping fig is one of the many plants we have growing here at HSNY. Photo credit: Alex Feleppa)

Question:
I found the blog recently - and LOVE the window display I see in the photos of the HSNY office.
I wonder, what is the plant I've circled in the enclosed image? And how was this window system constructed? I feel like vertical space isn't used often enough, and this seems like a great way to do it.

Answer:
Thanks for writing; that is a great question.

The plant you have circled in the images you sent is Ficus pumila, or creeping fig. As you can see in the photograph creeping fig has small heart-shaped leaves that can cling and climb quite easily on most vertical surfaces. Native to the warmer parts of China and Japan, these small evergreen plants are only hardy in USDA Zones 9-11 and therefore we utilize them best as houseplants. I have found from maintaining the "Green Screen" here at HSNY that these plants do benefit from regular watering and misting, especially through the dryer winter months.

The entire HSNY headquarters here on West 37th Street, including the offices, art exhibition space, library, and Green Screen, was designed by Marpillero Pollak Architects. If you have not been, I highly recommend you stop by HSNY and see our space in person. We are always happy to have visitors and are open Monday through Friday from 10am to 6pm. The installation of the Green Screen components was done by David Melrose, an artist and builder based in Brooklyn. The troughs that the plants are situated in are affixed to the walls via those darker vertical brackets, all made of metal. The troughs do not have drainage holes so we incorporated a layer of gravel beneath the different soil mixes and used predominantly smaller plants and succulents that require less space for their roots. Some plants require more regular watering and misting than others, but by and large the screen has been doing very well since it was originally installed in 2006.