Pest Management

More than 15,000 different kinds of plants grow in NYBG’s glasshouses, gardens, collections, and seasonal displays. To keep the Garden’s diverse plant collections healthy, NYBG horticulturists must be on constant lookout for a similarly diverse suite of insects, diseases, and weeds that make the Garden home. When we find a problem, we employ the principles of integrated pest management (IPM), which stresses knowledge of the plants and the pests that afflict them; vigilantly monitors to find problems while they still can be solved; uses the least toxic means of addressing a problem once it has been identified; and evaluates the results of whatever approach has been chosen to promote plant health. More often than not, the means of solving a problem with plant health at NYBG are cultural rather than chemical.