Inside The New York Botanical Garden
Posted in Gardens and Collections, Video on August 13 2008, by Plant Talk
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Rustin Dwyer is Visual Media Production Specialist at The New York Botanical Garden. |
Waterlilies and Lotus in the Conservatory Pools from The New York Botanical Garden on Vimeo.
Posted in NYBG in the News on August 12 2008, by Plant Talk
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Nick Leshi is Associate Director of Public Relations and Electronic Media. |
Over 40 years ago, Andy Warhol famously turned a can of tomato soup into a pop culture icon. Now photographer Victor Schrager has turned his camera lens on the tomato itself, elevating it to a high art. The September 2008 issue of Veranda magazine features two articles written by Tom Woodham, gloriously illustrated by Schrager’s stunning images of tomatoes from the gardens of Amy Goldman, a member of The New York Botanical Garden’s Board of Managers.
The pictures give justification for one of the magazine’s headlines, “Tomatoes: The Most Beautiful Fruit.” If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I imagine anyone viewing such a variety of shapes and colors would agree that this bountiful produce captured on film is beautiful indeed.
Read the rest after the jump
Posted in Gardening Tips on August 11 2008, by Sonia Uyterhoeven
Well-behaved Waterlilies
Sonia Uyterhoeven is Gardener for Public Education at The New York Botanical Garden.
Waterlilies come in all sizes; it is important to find one that suits your location. Waterlilies that are appropriate for a tub garden should be up to 3 feet in diameter; a good size for a small pool is 4 to 6 feet in diameter.
One popular small-sized waterlily for those of us living in Zone 6 is Nymphaea ‘Pygmaea Helvola’. It is a free-flowering waterlily that is well-suited for small ponds and containers, with mottled purplish leaves and bright semi-double yellow flowers. If red is your color, the 3-4 feet Nymphaea ‘James Brydon’ is good for a small pond. Prefer pink? Then you might be looking for Nymphaea ‘Joanne Pring’. Nymphaea ‘Chrysantha’, ‘Colorado’ and ‘Josephine’ are a few more small ones that you will find in our pools in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory Courtyards.
Plant your waterlilies in an aquatic container (lined with burlap if needed) or a plastic pot. Use top soil to pot them up (potting soils are too light and should be avoided). Cover the container with pebbles or pea gravel and fertilize once a month with aquiform tablets that are pressed into the soil (waterlilies are heavy feeders). Initially, elevate the pot with bricks so that the young plant gets enough light. Six hours of sunlight will keep it blooming prolifically.
Posted in Programs and Events on August 8 2008, by Plant Talk
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Jessica Blohm is Interpretive Specialist for Public Education. |
Clearly the theme of the week is color!
Obviously there are tons of flowers in bloom at the Garden with magnificent color!
Look for red roses, orange zinnias, yellow daylilies, green ferns, blue hydrangeas, and purple salvia.
OMG, you have got to get down to the garden to see all this beautifulness.
Really, you wrote an acrostic about color?
Not only are there plenty of colors to see at the Garden, but there are also exhibitions and workshops involving color. For instance, this weekend Sonia Uyterhoeven will explore the color wheel during her Home Gardening Demonstration, Celebrating Color and Form in the Garden, which will help gardeners find effective color combinations for their own gardens. Also, the exhibit Shapes of Nature in the Summer Garden, in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, features many varieties and colors of coleus and caladium, providing inspiration to gardeners looking to add color to those shady garden spots.
And clearly, the many fabulous Henry Moore programs that are going on at the Garden should not be forgotten; as Kate Murphy, our Communications intern says, “There is always more Moore.”
For a full schedule of this weekend’s programming, click on the links below. And for a totally fun look at color in a different way, see Disney cartoon character Ludwig Von Drake talk about the topic these YouTube videos: “The Wonderful World Of Color” and “The Spectrum Song.”
Posted in Programs and Events on August 7 2008, by Plant Talk
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Written by Kate Murphy, a junior at Fordham University, with additional reporting by Genna Federico, a senior at St. John’s University; both are interns working in the Communications Department this summer. |
The 2008 Olympic Games open tomorrow in Beijing. And though China’s capital and second largest city seems a world away, you might be surprised to learn you can find a little bit of China right here at The New York Botanical Garden.
The Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden features a collection of Global Gardens—gardens planted and tended by volunteers in the spirit of different cultures and countries. Shirley Cheung, along with her husband, Frank, and her mother, Mrs. Miu, has maintained the Chinese Garden for over 15 years. As a schoolteacher, Shirley gets the summers off and likes to tend the Chinese Garden every day. She and her husband try to come in the early morning, usually before seven, to beat the heat.
The Chinese Garden contains plants both for show and for cooking, but Shirley prefers the latter, using almost everything she grows in her own kitchen. She likes to grow new things every year: This year they’re harvesting kohlrabi, a cultivar of cabbage, which she explains is popular in China and grows easily here. The leaves of kohlrabi, which cannot be found in food markets because they are discarded before being sold, are good for digestion. She suggests growing your own kohlrabi and steeping the leaves to make a tea for this purpose.
Another plant you’ll have to grow at home if you want to enjoy Shirley’s recommendation is garlic. While most everyone can find garlic at a local supermarket, the green tops are harder to find. Shirley insists that this is the best part and tastes great on chicken or fish.
The Chinese Garden also contains three different kinds of beans, tomatoes weighing in at over two pounds, and bitter melon, a fruit that in China is said to “cure 100 diseases.” Another highlight is the pumpkin flower, which can be picked, dipped in egg batter, fried, and enjoyed as a delicious treat.
Shirley calls the Chinese Garden her “paradise,” and her doctor told her to continue, because it’s keeping her young.
“It’s a lot of work, but a lot of fun,” Shirley says. “It’s the best life you can have!”
Posted in Gardens and Collections, Video on August 6 2008, by Plant Talk
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Rustin Dwyer is Visual Media Production Specialist at The New York Botanical Garden. |
Posted in NYBG in the News on August 5 2008, by Plant Talk
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Genna Federico, a senior at St. John’s University, is an intern working in the Communications Department this summer. |
It’s hard to avoid social networking sites on the Internet lately. These sites are ways to rekindle old friendships, consider new ones, find people with common interests, or even discover new business opportunities.
Now you can also add The New York Botanical Garden to the online discussion.
We recently expanded our profiles on Facebook and MySpace to let a broader public stay informed of what’s happening at the Garden. Check out the pages, watch the videos, share your thoughts, spread the word, and maybe decide to become our new BFF!
And for those of you who want to share your photos, don’t forget our Flickr group. It’s already jam-packed with some really stunning shots; will your masterpiece be the next addition?
Posted in Gardening Tips on August 4 2008, by Sonia Uyterhoeven
The Cutting Garden
Sonia Uyterhoeven is Gardener for Public Education at The New York Botanical Garden.
Cut flowers can transform your home in the summer, and many flowers are easy to grow in the garden. When designing your garden, plan for flowering shrubs such as lilacs, hydrangeas, and viburnums; grasses; and foliage plants such as hostas, Rex Begonias, and ferns.
The basic rules of thumb for cutting flowers from the garden are as follows:
Posted in Programs and Events on August 1 2008, by Plant Talk
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Jessica Blohm is Interpretive Specialist for Public Education. |
This week, while planning the upcoming fall Kiku (Japanese chrysanthemum) exhibit, I came across the lotus flowers that are blooming in the aquatic gardens of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory Courtyard pools. Thinking about the role that kiku plays in Japanese culture got me thinking about the meaning of the lotus in other cultures.
After doing a bit of research I discovered that throughout history people all over the world have valued the lotus for a variety of reasons. For instance, the lotus flower signifies purity and peace to the people of India, who consider the lotus to be sacred. In China the lotus flower represents a kind person who keeps pure and clean. To Buddhists the lotus flower symbolizes enlightenment, and in Egypt the seeds of the lotus flower are used to make bread.
I am fascinated by the techniques used to care for and maintain lotus plants. If you want to learn to grow and nurture these and other aquatic plants, you should attend this weekend’s Home Gardening Demonstration, “The Incomparable Lotus and Waterlily,” presented by Sonia Uyterhoeven, Gardener for Public Education. Who knows? You, too, may discover the meaning of the lotus!
There are lots of other activities taking place at the Garden this weekend as well: a plethora of popular Henry Moore activities such as walking tours, film screenings, and children’s tours (P.S. It was Henry Moore’s 110th birthday this past Wednesday.) If you are looking for an event that will entertain the entire family, visit the Global Gardens in the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden, where you can participate in cultural crafts and activities and sample special regional foods—homegrown produce and native recipes.
Posted in Gardens and Collections, Video on July 31 2008, by Plant Talk
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Genna Federico, a senior at St. John’s University, is an intern working in the Communications Department this summer. |
Before the Waterlilies and Lotus Aquatic Exhibition in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory Courtyard pools opened, I wanted to find out how these flowers floating in water are kept bright and perky. To get to the bottom of this, so to speak, I watched one day as Foreman of Gardeners Gary Bendykowski gave the tropical pool (one of two pools in the courtyard) a cleaning. It was quite a sight to see. Donning brown waders Gary entered the pool with great enthusiasm, saying “It’s the best; you get to be in the water and away from the crowd.”
The weekly cleaning is generally done for aesthetic purposes, to remove leaves that are discolored or have been torn. It also serves to get rid of the abundance of elodea, aquatic weeds that are not needed in these hot summer months, although in colder months they help provide oxygen.
See the video below and read about the rest of Genna’s day at the pool after the jump.
Conservatory pool cleaning at The New York Botanical Garden on Vimeo.