This post is a bit of an anomaly for our “What’s Beautiful Now” series. Usually, we cobble these together to show our fans and visitors what’s worth slipping into the agenda during a trip to the NYBG; each post is a rundown of what you should go and enjoy at its peak flower or aroma, depending on the season. But some of the collections we have growing here at the Garden aren’t always open for public consumption–not yet, anyway. They’re too early in their growth, or still being primped for coming exhibitions. And most of these plants fall within the purview of the Nolen Greenhouses for Living Collections, where preparation begins for coming events many months (if not years) before opening day rolls around.

Seeing as I already teased you this past weekend with some of the jungle jewels sprouting up under the glass of the Nolen Greenhouses, I figure there’s no reason to keep the rest of Ivo’s recent photo shoot cooped up in our files. Standouts among the photos taken are easily the orchids, a few of which we expect to steal the spotlight in 2013′s spring Orchid Show. And while we can’t spill the entire layout of the exhibition just yet, I’m all too happy to pass along a gallery of eye candy in the meantime.
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We gush over green for so much of the year that a quick break from the norm is more than welcome. So this week, I’m shifting focus for something a little more in line with the exuberance of the Halloween season, a hue that our resident photographer, Ivo Vermeulen, is all too willing to champion–at least if his favorite pair of garish pants has anything to say about it. I’d show you a picture but I’m under the impression we had to put a ban in writing to keep him from blinding visitors (though it certainly doesn’t stifle this Dutchman’s nationalism). In any case, it’s tough to live year-round in the northeast and not have at least the shadow of a soft spot for the fiery orange of autumn.

The changes around the NYBG are not always subtle. The tulip trees have slipped into their lemon yellows, and the boughs fringing the Forest follow suit with a citrus spectrum of their own. In the Home Gardening Center, neon orange chrysanthemums carry the torch for the flowers. It won’t be long now before we’re walking the Garden trails beneath an entirely different canopy, one splashed with all the painted warmth that winter tends to be so stingy with. But for now, we’ll take in all this early orange wonder while the weather’s still playing nice enough to leave our galoshes and down coats stuffed in the closet.
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It’s something of a quiet Monday here at the NYBG (we’re not open most Mondays; it’s best to give the horticulturists a clear space to do their weekly tidying-up), and the thermometer is dipping rapidly. I’m not going to say that fall has begun, necessarily, as it’s probably just a fluke weather pattern. But it puts me in the mood for looking forward! Thankfully, the prolific Ivo Vermeulen has left me with enough photographs to geek out on some pre-season imagery.

What carries me so often to the Benenson Ornamental Conifers is what you’d call the most subtle of beauties. But I guess that stands for the Garden’s evergreens in general. They’re not showy in the way that a rose presents, though many of them sport as much–if not more–fragrance. Instead, the conifer lands more in the territory of regal reflection. For most people in the northern hemisphere, nothing quite heralds the season like an evergreen dusted with snow. (Not that we had much opportunity to enjoy that kind of scenery this past winter.)
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Stick your head out the window. You don’t have to be full-on family dog weird about it–just poke it out there and see what the weather’s like. Is it a warm day, no sidewalks buried in snow drifts or ice hazard traffic advisories? Then odds are good that the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden should be somewhere in the top three lines of your list of destinations. There are over 4,000 rose specimens in this collection alone, and while spring is the season when visitors are most often scrambling to get a peek (understandably, as roses are like smelling salts after the listless gloom of winter), many people don’t realize that there’s a confetti of colorful rose cultivars blooming at the NYBG for a solid six months out of the year.

Skip over to the Rose Garden right now (while the weather is almost confusingly decent, hence the skipping; I’m talking sit-outside-for-lunch pleasant) and you’ll find the stage set with a show of shrub roses in pinks, whites, and reds. Floribunda, grandiflora, hybrid tea–they’re all there, petaled like petticoats and parasols.
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New York might not strike many as a hibiscus state. Not at first. But set foot in the Home Gardening Center in August, and you could find yourself fooled (however briefly) into thinking you’ve landed in Hawaii, or Florida–spots where locals have an easy time landscaping their homes with these flowers. They show up in sunny yellows, punch bowl pinks, and whites punctuated with contrasting reds. In our trial beds, however, we’re spreading the word that hibiscus aren’t limited to places with palm trees; some species are just as suitable for your native plant garden here in the Empire State!

Like the water lilies in the Conservatory pools, species of hibiscus are divided into two groups: hardy and tropical. The latter, with its broad scope of color, does well outdoors in the beach states mentioned above; they’re not big fans of frigid temperatures. But here at the NYBG, we cultivate the former variety: hardy hibiscus, equipped to handle the weather patterns New Yorkers are used to, while boasting all the cocktail umbrella charm of their tropical counterparts. A few species, such as Hibiscus moscheutos, can even be found growing natively in New York’s wetlands.
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Montana may lay claim to the phrase “big sky country,” but New York is no slouch when it comes to panoramic vistas. Near a hilltop, or just beyond the boughs of the Forest‘s trees, you can catch the blue expanse above the NYBG without the cityscape that usually frames it. No radio towers, no skyscrapers marking up the periphery–just clouds of every shape and consistency.

It’s good for daydreaming.

On afternoons where the barometer reads high and the sun is clear, you see opal blue in rich or dusky shades. Other days, the sky is a scatter of swoops and ruffles that you’d have to climb pretty high to enjoy elsewhere in the city. But as I remember it, “show, don’t tell” is a rule you pick up in middle school language arts class. I suppose I should follow it, huh?
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Nearing spring, we find plenty to be excited about as we walk through The New York Botanical Garden’s outdoor collections. Not that there isn’t a faint sense of curiosity, too; as Sonia Uyterhoeven has explained before, the weather patterns this winter have tricked certain plants into breaking dormancy early, resulting in a few blooms that will end up missing their spring date. But regardless, we appreciate the beauty whenever it happens to come around. And many of these flowering plants are proving right on time.
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Joyce H. Newman is the editor of Consumer Reports’ GreenerChoices.org, and has been a Docent with The New York Botanical Garden for the past six years.

In the midst of winter’s blustery winds and wicked temperatures, it’s a great relief to see the warm yellow flowers of witch-hazel (Hamamelis x intermedia) brightening up the Garden path behind the Home Gardening Center.

This fragrant hybrid shrub is a relative of the North American native H. virginiana, or common witch-hazel, a plant that is certainly a little magical to some. Lore suggests the common name refers to the forked twigs that were sometimes used in earlier times for “water-witching,” or dowsing to locate underground water. These native plants bloom in the fall rather than the winter, but are just as impressive.
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Mediterranean spurge (Euphorbia characias 'Glacier Blue')

Gloves, hat, scarf–I brought none of these things when I went wandering the Garden during lunch yesterday. The climate was just so perfectly suited to a stroll. And the greatest benefit of working at the NYBG is that–no matter the climate–there’s something out on the grounds worth visiting. It’s true there’s no luck of a permanent spring with buds and blooms sprouting up from corner to corner, but winter has its own subtle and touching charm.

This season’s odd patterns of sun and darkness make for confusing daytime walkabouts; I hadn’t expected to step out of the office at 3 p.m. only to find dusk creeping along at the edges of the afternoon. Adjusting to this kind of Norse winter is a slow process. (Being a southerner, anything north of Georgia is practically Norway to me.) But I decided that I was already out and about, and despite the settling dark I was going to soak up as much enjoyment as I could from the remains of the day.
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Joyce H. Newman is the editor of Consumer Reports’ GreenerChoices.org, and has been a Docent with The New York Botanical Garden for the past six years.

In front of our Visitor Center Café is an amazing specimen of Norway spruce (Picea abies), a species often known for its annual appearance as the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree.

Our Norway spruce is part of the Arthur and Janet Ross Conifer Arboretum at the NYBG and was planted around 1940. Its medium to dark green needles are four-sided, resting on branches that gracefully droop down, designed to be flexible in a heavy snowfall.

Norway spruces can grow to as high as 90 or 100 feet, with a lifespan similar to that of a human being. They are native to the mountains and foothills of Northern Europe rather than the U.S., although they have become popular screening plants here. They grow just about one foot each year, which is considered fairly quick.
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