The sandy soil, the boggy ponds: whenever I feel an inexplicable sense of geographic safety (say, in parts of Cape Cod, coastal North Carolina, or Florida), I understand soon enough that I’m looking at a replica of my childhood backyard–or at least the woods and marshes nearby.

And yet I once wanted to be elsewhere. Or at least I wanted my plants and trees to be elsewhere. I wanted them to grow in unexpected shapes, leaves large as shovels. I wanted them to be a little scary, a little closer to life as I knew it, which felt to me both beautiful and a little brutal. (Don’t children always know that consciousness is darker than their parents remember?) On childhood trips to Florida or California, my eye went first to the plants. The plants in warmer climates weren’t bound to restraint or to the pressures of some unnameable force, the codes always changing, impossible to decipher. Their oranges could be brighter; their trunks could be thicker, their vines could grow and twist until they made a mess of themselves, until you had no idea that the plant had once been a beautiful thing.
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Last week we spoke about the art of growing giant pumpkins. Now, we will take a look at some of the creative things that you can do with your pumpkins once they have been pulled from the vine.

The chef will recommend pumpkin pie, pumpkin soup, or a slice of pumpkin bread washed down with a pumpkin latte. The entertainer and the homemaker have another option, though–pumpkins crafted into splendid temporary vases. Every year I do a demonstration on festive seasonal floral arrangements intended to give visitors to The New York Botanical Garden some simple and fun home craft ideas, a few of which I have detailed here.
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Celebrating the subdued hues of fall at the Garden, one color at at time.

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