Ron Wallace and his heavyweight pumpkin (The Boston Globe, 2012)

It’s October 1, and that means exactly one thing: you can throw the unwritten embargo on Halloween decorations out the window! No more tamping down the urge to buy orange string lights. No more nibbling your nails as you scurry past the candy aisle. Free reign to stake your front yard with frightful scarecrows and tombstones, whether your neighbors scowl or not. And at the NYBG, we get to ramp up our coverage of the season’s holiday excitement! You may not think there’s much to celebrate in a simple gourd, but trust me, there’s nothing simple about a one-ton pumpkin.

Don’t bother with a double-take–that wasn’t a misread. Early predictions from farmers close to the Garden hinted that drought and heat would lead to a disappointing harvest, but pumpkin crops have pulled out a clutch win, with some gigantic gourds already smashing weight records in our neck of the woods. Included is the latest champion, a 2009-pound behemoth out of Rhode Island that took the title for grower Ron Wallace on Friday, September 28, at the Topsfield Fair in Massachusetts; that’s nearly 200 pounds heavier than last year’s winner. But the challenge isn’t settled just yet! Rumor has it there are still a few contenders lurking in the wings, not only in the northeast, but on the west coast and the continent, as well. We could see the record snapped more than once before 2012 crowns its prince of pumpkins.
read more »

Bats in the trees, ghosts in the garden, and jack-o’-lanterns every which way you look–Halloween is soon to creep its way back into the NYBG. And even for someone like me, who’s usually too busy to realize what time of year it is until the spirit is sneaking up behind me (the best way to experience the holiday, I suppose), there’s too much incoming excitement for us to let it wait until later.

This year, the Garden’s madcap Halloween events are back and even bigger than 2011′s. That’s if you can imagine us topping a cadre of record-breaking pumpkins carved into the stuff of nightmares. But we absolutely plan to! Plans are in the works to again feature the gargantuan gourds of the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth, which will once again go under the knife of master carver and ghoul-whittler extraordinaire, Ray Villafane. Together with his team of skilled pumpkin sculptors, he’s on track to top last year’s masterpieces a few times over.
read more »