Happy Fourth, everyone! Not only is the Garden open for regular hours today, but it’s a Wednesday, meaning free grounds admission for any and all visitors. The Greenmarket will also be going until 3 p.m., with a smorgasbord of locally-sourced fruit, vegetables, cheeses, baked goods and other tasty stuff to offer. I should probably chime in with mention of that most American of Independence Day staples, apple pie–there’ll be a bit of that, too.

From all of us here at the NYBG, here’s to a safe, happy, and delicious Independence Day. May your grill-outs be grand and your burgers brilliant. Or your tofu dogs terrific, if that’s more your style!

Rosa ‘Fourth of July’ — Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen

Children Learn How Pollinators Turn Flowers to Fruits

Noelle V. Dor is Museum Education Intern in the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden.

As the school year winds to a close and summer settles in, The New York Botanical Garden invites us to delight our senses and our bellies with The Edible Garden: Growing and Preparing Good Food. Visitors are exposed to a wide variety of edible roots, shoots, and fruits and also experience the many ways our favorite foods go from plant to plate.

In its Flowers-to-Fruits program, the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden highlights one essential part of this transformative process: pollination. Here families explore the diversity of flower colors, shapes, and scents as well as the mutually beneficial relationships between flowers and the animals they attract.

The word pollination probably conjures up in most people the classic image of a bee buzzing from flower to flower. While this visual is definitely appropriate, many other animals—butterflies, moths, hummingbirds, bats, ants—act as important pollinators as well. They gain nourishment from the sweet nectar of flowers and, in turn, the flowers are able to change into fruits. Seeing pollination in action throughout the Garden makes me wonder how many of the fruits we eat result from this intricate plant–animal exchange. read more »