Stop fighting some of y'all and let's get down to business and play nice!.

OK, I'm originally a city kid and still mostly a city old guy so I don't know all that much about gardens and flowers except they are pretty, smell nice, and have cool lines and shapes for pictures. Enter my 25-year old LOVELY granddaughter Sarah Anne, who is a landscape designer and horticultural expert. She writes articles and professional papers on the subject, teaches, manages a massive garden at a veteran's long-term care facility and is a registered horticultural therapist. Sorry, I gotta brag about that kid! Point is, she has commandeered Grandpa to do all her photography and teach her how to shoot!

So, for the last few years, I have been dragged to the Central Canada Experminatal farm which has a massive ornamental garden and arboretum as well as a vast agricultural section. So, I have been converted from a guy who thought horticulture was about HOARDING all kinds of old and useless photographic junk to "Mr. Flower Power!

Lenses? Easy choices. A good macro- I like 100mm on a full-frame body so I can get in my tight shots without placing my big feet in the flower beds. Then I like a normal and wide-angle focal length to shoot landscapes, groups of flowers and plants and being able to illustrate the artistic aspect of landscaping and floral design. Withte wide-angle and normal focal lengths I can shoot the relationship of the flowers and plants to buildings fences, trellises, and barns.

My kit is a camera with 3 lenses, a 100mm macro, 50mm normal, and a 35mm wide-angle, a Gitzo carbon fibre tripod with a ball head, and a few of those collapsible spring-loaded small reflectors.

Sometimes I will shoot a more clinical shot to identify certain flowers and plants. While I am at it I will shoot some more abstract, artful, or strictly interpretive images so I can mess around in post-processing and have a bit of fun.

If you are shooting a special exhibit- somethg that you can't go back to if you want to re-shoot somethg, it is best to be slightly over-equipped to make sure you have what you need for both planned and unexpected opportunities.

Sometimes I just pack a regular camera bag. On longer treks, I have a small dolly kinda cart to haul around all my stuff. I am used to schlepping heavy gear to industrial and construction sites so a few extra pounds in the gardens ain't too bad. it's enjoyable but the pain set in later at night! Bengay and Tylenol are a good fix!

Where have all the flowers gone? Most of them come back every year!

PS- I looked this up: https://www.nybg.org/event/kusama/

You are gonna need those lenses!

There’s a slight misreading going on. It was plain enough to me that Architect is not recommending for the OP to use the lenses he listed. He said that he himself would bring those lenses and offered a reason or two for it. It was simply an edumacational example.

Most notable is that he specifically eschewed any “official” macro in favor his 100-400. Hogsterland is waaaaaaaay too hung up on quite unnecessary “true macro” lenses, unnecessary given the usual subject matter involved.

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I’ve done the very same thing, using a 100-300 for an inaccessible macro subject. I got the shot from 5 feet away. A Hawglust 105 macro would hafta be only 20” away, which was just not possible. The shot was not at all compromised by using the “totally wrong” lens ... wide open and against the sun ! Stoopid me, I sold that lens, missed it, and bought another one.