f a human and a bird each spied the blooms featured in Andrew Garn’s book (Cornell University Press, 2021), their takeaways would be staggeringly different. Humans value flowers for their beauty; birds see them as oases—especially native plants, which co-evolved with birds to provide food and shelter. Garn traversed many of the city’s 26 distinct habitat types—including swamps, forests, and urban parks—to find photogenic examples of the more than 2,000 wildflowers in the five boroughs. “I went down this path of photographing wildflowers after hearing how many are actually around me every day,” Garn says. He hopes that by highlighting individual plants, others will take notice. Beautiful things persist everywhere, his book reminds us, even in the cracks of a sidewalk—and with a little care, they can blossom into a haven for birds, too.
