Ed Toth on native plants and NYC ecology

Last Thursday’s installment of the Freshkills Park Talks lecture series was terrific.  Ed Toth, Director of the Greenbelt Native Plant Center (GNPC), discussed the importance of floral biodiversity in urban settings, the GNPC’s history and operations–it’s one of the only municipal native plant providers in the country, if not the only one–and several citywide initiatives it’s taken on recently, including the Great Pollinator Project.  Ed also outlined two GNPC projects that will be part of the North Park section of Freshkills Park: a founder seed farm and a pot-in-pot tree nursery.  The audio clips below offer some choice segments of his talk.  They’re each 4-5 minutes long.  An audio-less PDF of his full presentation is available here.

Clip 1: The need for sustainable ecosystems and the value of natively adapted, genetically diverse species.

Clip 2: The GNPC’s founder seed operation and the push to supply regionally native seed.

Clip 3: The GNPC’s role at North Park, actively and visibly initiating a process to heal the landscape.

Next month’s talk, “Designing Freshkills Park,” will be given by Jerome Chou and Grace Tang, landscape architects at Field Operations, who will discuss the ideas behind the Freshkills Park design and their work on the first park projects, including North Park.