Last fall, the NYSUFC nominated beloved Cornell Urban Horticulture Institute (UHI) Director and longtime former Council President Nina Bassuk for the Arbor Day Foundation’s Frederick Law Olmsted Award. Current Council President Andy Hillman read the award description and said, “This appears to have been written for Nina!” [...]
Brian Widener at Buttermilk Falls in New Jersey In February, 2015, NYC Senior Forester for Trees and Sidewalks Brian Widener attended the week-long Municipal Forestry Institute (MFI), held at The Oregon Garden in Silverton, Oregon. Here we learn about Brian’s background, his work in NYC, and his [...]
Liana Gooding with her son Ian, son Jared, and husband Mark. Liana (pronounced “Lee Anna”) Gooding is the NYSUFC’s new Executive Secretary. Welcome, Liana! She introduces herself here. I grew up in suburban Rochester, attended SUNY Oswego and have lived in several different areas of [...]
NYC Parks and Casey Tree staff intermingling ♦ Photo Courtesy Casey Trees Last fall, both NYC Parks and the not-for-profit, DC-based organization Casey Trees successfully applied for an arborist exchange through the Society of Municipal Arborists (SMA). This resulted in the first public/private pairing for the [...]
Marty Mullarkey: I grew up in the Bronx in an apartment house. I remember looking out the window across the street to a vacant lot where the only tree in the vicinity grew. Later, when I was 11 or 12, my friends and I found a lot [...]
Can you tell us about your childhood influences that foreshadowed getting interested in urban forestry? Terry Hawkridge: I was always very comfortable in the forests of New Hampshire where I spent time growing up. I went to a forestry camp for a month where we opened up [...]
Ross and Mandy Hassinger with twin daughters Emily and Josephine at the Eternal Flame Falls in Chestnut Ridge Park, Orchard Park, NY, summer of 2014. Were there childhood influences that foreshadowed getting interested in urban forestry? Ross Hassinger: I knew at an early age that [...]
Sumana Serchan is an urban forester with NYC Parks and Recreation. Sumana has a master’s degree in Environmental Management from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and a bachelor’s degree in Natural Resources/Conservation from the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources (University of Vermont). [...]
Nina Bassuk and Peter Trowbridge, rear center, participate in landscape installation along with students in their “Creating the Urban Eden” class. In this second blog post about Nina Bassuk, we learn about her extensive home landscape. She is also an accomplished flutist who graduated in [...]
Previously we featured super dynamo Council cofounder Nancy Wolf. Continuing in that series, we talk here with another beloved Council cofounder and current board member, Cornell Urban Horticulture Director Nina Bassuk, who prefers to go by “Nina.” We asked her about her recollections about the early days [...]