Because I adore lithops, and because it’s not often you get to see these little guys in flower, we break with the fall scenery for one more visual trip over to our Nolen Greenhouses for Living Collections.

Argyroderma patens — Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen

Remember our neotropical blueberries? This batch of flowers is coming up in the Nolen Greenhouses for Living Collections, likely to be seen in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory in the nearish future. Keep an eye out.

Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen

Captured under glass in an intimate snapshot of a generations-old artform, this year’s Kiku collection is now up and running in the Bourke-Sullivan Display House, a wing of the Nolen Greenhouses for Living Collections at the NYBG. And as exhibitions go, this one–as always–is a vital testament to the heights of beauty and expertise that horticulture can reach.

Like so many of our exhibitions, Nolen’s master horticulturists have spent months behind the scenes, sculpting and training otherwise commonplace flowers into shapes unlike anything seen in a workaday home garden. Thousands of chrysanthemum blooms across a rainbow of colors now take on the forms of Ogiku, Ozukuri, and Shino-Tsukuri. Now, those names may strike mysterious chords at first, but they’re easy enough to understand–if not recreate–once you spend a little time with our handy, dandy primer.
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Just a little peek at the chrysanthemums creating rainbows in the Nolen Greenhouses for Living Collections, where the Bourke-Sullivan Display House is now holding this year’s Kiku creations. If you’ve never seen botanical sculpture at its most essential height, visit the Ozukuri, Kengai, Ogiku, and many other stylistic mum masterpieces from now through Sunday, November 18.

Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen

Hi from the Nolen Greenhouses for Living Collections! Just wanted to check in on the tropicalia going on behind the glass. We’ll be having more from Nolen as we get into this year’s Kiku displays, which will be viewable there between November 3 and 18, so keep an eye out as we hustle toward the fall exhibitions.

Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen

A few of the well-kept secrets growing in the Nolen Greenhouses for Living Collections, just next door to the Benenson Ornamental Conifers. If you’re lucky enough to be granted access during a Member’s tour, you’ll find about as much behind-the-scenes color and magic as you can handle, and then some.

Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen

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.

Off on a side table, just inside one of the treated glass superstructures of the Nolen Greenhouses for Living Collections, there stands a spray of stems headed with humble, star-shaped flowers. The aesthetic is nothing wildly exotic–a deep crimson defines the petals. The plant is otherwise unremarkable next to a common garden petunia. And yet the “DO NOT TOUCH” sign hand-written and jabbed in alongside the plant is evidence of its peculiar value. Is it fragile, or perhaps toxic?

Neither in particular. This plant, Petunia exserta, is one of incredible rarity.
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I can’t remember the last time I had a sudden craving for ribbon candy, but there it is. More plants await the big move to exhibitions around the Garden in the Nolen Greenhouses for Living Collections.

Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen

The Nolen Greenhouses are a little like Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory when it comes to the fanciful, sans that whole “tunnel of mortifying imagery soundtracked with the mad singing of Gene Wilder” aspect. You can see for yourself whenever we hold the occasional Members Only tour.

Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen