Let’s just say it’s not your everyday cubicle. The grids of Victorian glass and arching metal framework make for a view you’ll never find behind drawstring blinds. Come to think of it, desktop computers have a rough time with the falling mist in the rain forest houses, too. But as Manager of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, Christian Primeau’s workspace is as much an office as yours or mine. Just bigger, brighter, and more…flush with growing life. For our part, we make do in the Library Building with a potted basil plant, and one or two ferns to hold down the window sill. But that’s not to say a novelty cactus is your last hope for office decor!

Instead, take a hint from the Tumblr crowd’s fascination with these living bubbles and get involved with terrariums; it’s like having a mini conservatory sitting on your desk, and you don’t even have to get a permit to run hose attachments into the building.
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Even at nearly a ton, it doesn’t take a town to raise a giant pumpkin. But it might take a town to lift one! Fresh off his record-smashing win in Massachusetts, grower Ron Wallace was back in his home state of Rhode Island recently to have a go at one-upping the benchmark set by his own 2009-pound pumpkin in September. Hundreds turned out for a bucolic romp through Frerichs Farm in the town of Warren, hopping hay rides, bopping to live music, and showing off their mighty produce while pumpkin growers from around the northeast gathered to throw their weight around.

While the mood may have been light, the subject matter was anything but.

Ron’s second contender for the crown had estimates predicting a weigh-in somewhere around 2100 pounds, which explains the forklift needed to hustle this hefty squash around. But while hopes were holding high, the plump pumpkin fell just short of the record with a final weight of 1872 pounds; it may sound like a big difference, but at their peak these pumpkins put on 35 pounds a day. Still not at all shabby, considering it’s the second-heaviest pumpkin ever grown. Ron not only maintains his rank as the Pumpkin King (don’t tell Jack Skellington) with the 2009-pound beast under his belt, but he’ll also be making his way to The New York Botanical Garden this weekend to join us for our Haunted Pumpkin Garden carving event. That’s with his Ocean State heavyweight in tow, naturally.
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What’s as big as a school bus, full of hammers, and can chew up a log the size of a Mini Cooper in just a few seconds? That would be The New York Botanical Garden‘s new Diamond Z tub grinder, the latest addition to our collection of groundskeeping machinery and easily the most impressive.

Tub grinders in this class are essentially glorified mulchers, using rapidly swinging “hammers” to break down organic material into an easy-to-manage pulp. Think of the trailer-sized woodchipper the average home landscaping company uses, then scale that up to industrial proportions, and you have the Diamond Z. It’ll handily take down a bundle of twigs and weeds, but its real talent is in gobbling up enormous segments of tree trunk–up to 30 tons of them per hour–and spitting out useable mulch or compost. After the past year’s fluke storms left us facing damaged trees across the Garden, this was exactly what we needed to tidy up our wood piles.
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Nothing drives home the sheer enormity of our latest exhibition, Manolo Valdés: Monumental Sculpture, like seeing it built from the ground up. Over the course of two weeks, dozens of people and at least a few multi-ton machines were on the scene to put the final strokes on a work many, many months in the making. Naturally, we couldn’t pass up capturing some video.

From the first sketch put to paper in Valdés’ Manhattan studio, to the foundry in Madrid, and back across the 4,000 miles separating Spain and New York City, this production has proven nothing short of a massive undertaking. Carrying the collection of sculptures from the docks required a fleet of seven flatbed trucks. Once at the Garden, towering cranes were called in, gingerly rolling onto our lawns to settle each piece into its chosen site. And at 50 feet across and weighing nearly 20 tons, shipping any one of these sculptures as a single piece was out of the question; assembly called for even more precision cranework, with muscle on the ground to ensure everything was arranged to specification.
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We’re back in the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden this week to check in with Assistant Manager Annie Novak and the busy cast of pollinators keeping our flowers in business!

As one of the experienced caretakers behind the success of our beehives, she’s our go-to source for all things buzzing (and fluttering, for that matter; we’d never think to leave out the monarch butterflies). It doesn’t hurt that she rocks a beekeeping suit like no other. And while we like to leave the actual hands-on apiculture duties to our Family Garden staff, you’re welcome to join them for “Pollinator Pals,” running now through October 5 from 1:30 to 5:30 p.m. daily.

Another bright spot on our radar: Mario Batali’s Edible Gardening Festival! If you think of “food” as one of your action words, and a day spent cavorting around Mario’s Kitchen Gardens is your idea of a Sunday well-spent (it’s definitely ours), be here September 23 for cooking demonstrations, a packed schedule of garden fun, and–best of all–a four-course meal prepared and served by the great chef himself. There are different tickets for different events during the festival, all of them going quickly, so be sure to see what’s available beforehand.
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There’s a notion floating around that growing water lilies is a hobby best left to conservatory curators and nursery managers. Maybe it’s driven by the fact that Nymphaea are so alien to what the average home gardener is comfortable working with; aquatic plants are a far cry from the ever present office philodendron. Or maybe it’s because Claude Monet built an entire artistic movement on the exploration of their fragile elegance. “I’d have to refinance my house to dig that!” you think, looking at Giverny’s carefully-arranged water lily pond.

Relax. You won’t even need a trowel, much less a construction team with a backhoe.

As we slip into the late summer height of our water lily display, Christian Primeau–Manager of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory–is ready to share a few key pointers with Nymphaea hopefuls. All you’ll need is a basic soil blend, some pea gravel, a large container, and a spot in or around your house with full sun exposure.
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Skip your morning affair with the everything bagel and get to the root of summer’s freshest garlic and onions! As Assistant Manager of the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden, Annie Novak’s got a direct line to the most basic of foodie cravings–a knack for not only raising all things allium, but putting them through their paces in the kitchen. So if you happen to catch a whiff of this pungent pair as you wander the NYBG between now and the end of the month, simply “follow your nose” to our Sweet and Stinky events.

That’s just what we were doing when we found Annie hard at work in the Family Garden yesterday, tending to the herbs and alliums that star in this flavorful summertime activity. But she can explain the fun of Sweet and Stinky far better than I can, as you’ll see below. Just think of it as a double whammy: you’ll have something to engage your kids while they’re out of school, and they’ll be trying new things in our one-acre vegetable garden to boot.
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Claude Monet’s careful brush strokes have intrigued art critics, collectors, and museum-goers for well over a century, yet the masterworks seen on canvas exceed simple impressions of nature’s vistas. From his admiration for Japanese landscape painters to his tours through the tulip fields of Holland, Monet’s experiences directly influenced his creations–both in paint and within the trellised borders of Giverny. And few so thoroughly understand the nuances of the man behind the palette like Professor Paul Hayes Tucker.

The world’s foremost Monet scholar, Professor Tucker joins The New York Botanical Garden as the esteemed curator of Monet’s Garden, celebrating the life of the master painter and gardener while bringing to light a career spent in pursuit of art’s highest achievements. Here he presents a brief journey, walking us through a story hidden within the subtleties of Monet’s artwork–that of an Impressionist with an ever evolving sense of what art could (or should) be.
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As NYBG horticulturists preen the nasturtiums and primp the poppies, we draw closer to the opening of the year’s most spectacular exhibition. Monet’s Garden goes live this weekend! And just in time for our grand opening, we’re putting the finishing accents on the scenery that makes Monet’s Giverny a destination for gardeners and art aficionados the world over.

Karen Daubmann, Director of Exhibitions and Seasonal Displays, gives us a rare peek at the behind-the-scenes efforts taking place under the glass of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory. But by the time you visit the NYBG on Saturday, what you see below will have come a long way. Claude Monet’s garden has always bridged the gap between untamed art and flawless design; we think you’ll see that our homage is taking things in the right direction.

Monet’s Garden begins Saturday, May 19. Reserve your tickets now!

Creating a masterpiece takes more than simple inspiration. It requires preparation–arranging each color and readying the canvas. And as with a painting, Monet’s Garden at the NYBG is a work of art with as much going on behind the scenes as happens in the open.

Marc Hachadourian, Manager of the Nolen Greenhouses for Living Collections, takes us through the expansive collection of delphiniums, poppies, nasturtiums and other flowers that will soon embody our homage to Claude Monet’s garden at Giverny. Months of careful tending in specialized growing environments have allowed us to tease the flowers into bloom all at once, re-creating the artist’s living muse at its kaleidoscopic peak. But you won’t have to wait that long to see them.

If you haven’t reserved your tickets yet, get to our ticket page! The doors to the French master’s private paradise open to New York on May 19.