Ngoc Minh Ngo is to botanical photography what Annie Liebowitz is to celebrity portraiture and Ansel Adams is to American landscape photography. This is no exaggeration. Her incredible talent for capturing the spirit of flowers and finding poetry in the landscapes allows her to create images that are works of art. In fact, her photographs have been exhibited at the Yves Saint Laurent Museum in Marrakech and Wave Hill Garden and Cultural Center in New York. Last year, Ngoc was awarded the Larry Lederman Landscape Photography Fellowship at the New York Botanical Garden.
We’ve been fans of hers for years and have featured three of her photography books here at Gardenista, including her most recent, New York Green, in which she photographs and writes about her city’s best parks and gardens. So we were thrilled to have her answer our Quick Takes survey here. Read on to learn about the “most inspiring and inspirational” gardening book she’s ever read, her favorite plants to plant in shade gardens, and more.
Photo by Ngoc Minh Ngo.
Your first garden memories:
As a child in Vietnam, I was allowed to stay up late to watch the cherry blossoms bloom at night. It was magical because the flowers and the event were so unusual. They were like nothing I had ever seen before. It seemed surreal that the flowers only bloomed for one night. The whole experience was like a dream.
Garden books you’ll want to revisit:
Gardens by Derek Jarman. This is the most moving and inspiring book about gardens I have read since I first came across it almost 30 years ago.
Instagram accounts that inspire you:
@rootprojectuk, @phoebe_cummings, @edmunddewaal.
Describe your garden’s aesthetic in three words.
Wild. Unique. Picturesque.
Enchanting plants:
Almost everything, but especially short-lived flowers that bloom in the spring, like bloodheart, columbine, starflower, trillium, bloodroot, etc. And also flowering trees like dogwood, magnolia, etc.
Plants that make you want to run away:
Impatiens.
Favorite staple plants:
All scented plants.
Hardest gardening lesson I’ve ever learned:
For years I have tried to grow a variety of flowers that are difficult to grow in a shade garden.
Gardening and design trends you’ll need in the future:
Overgrown flowers.
My favorite way to bring the outdoors inside.
I like to pick flowers from the garden and place them by my bedside no matter the season.
Favorite hardscape materials:
gravel.
Must-have tools:
Good pruning shears.
Your favorite nursery, plant store, or seed company:
Sadly, my favourite local nursery, Gowanus Nursery, has closed, my favourite nurseries further afield are Snug Harbor Farm, Annie’s Annuals, Flora Grubb, Petersham.
Your wish list:
A real garden where you can grow fruit trees and vegetables.
Not to be missed:
All the gardens and parks featured in my book New York Green, including Brooklyn Bridge Park, Naval Cemetery Landscape, Wave Hill, etc. In the UK, Prospect Cottage, Derek Jarman’s gardens in Dungeness, Charleston Farmhouse in Sussex, Rousham in Oxfordshire, and Rokhna in Morocco.
Real reasons to garden:
Because everything is beautiful.
What are your upcoming projects?
I’m excited to bring my latest book to the world next year. Due to be published in March 2025, Roses in the Garden explores a topic very dear to my heart. A culmination of years of thinking, reading and photographing roses, the project allows me to explore both the nature and culture of this timeless flower through a series of gardens around the world.
Thank you so much, Ngoc! (You can follow me on Instagram: @minh_ngoc)
Check out the complete Quick Take archive here.
(Visited 382 times, visited 7 times today)
