Long before Lost Generation icons like Hemingway and Stein held court with Joyce and Fitzgerald, another cadre of artists called Paris home: “Les Mardistes,” named for the Tuesdays (in French: mardi) on which they often met. Imagine stepping into a parlor with Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Verlaine, W.B. Yeats, Oscar Wilde, and none other than the Impressionist himself, Claude Monet–you get the idea. When it rains, it pours, and late 19th-century France saw a veritable flood of the creative spirit. At the NYBG, we’re hoping you’ll join us in recreating it through The Garden Anthology, and all poets are welcome!

More than an homage to Giverny or an exhibition of Monet’s art, Monet’s Garden is a seasonal celebration of that prolific muse. No static thing, it moved fluidly between the arts, touching the Impressionist painter just as it inspired the Symbolist poets. In the Perennial Garden‘s Poetry Walk, you can see the work of Monet’s lyrical forebears and contemporaries proudly displayed among our summer blooms. Better yet, the Salon Series regales visitors with the words of the French writers–Verlaine, Mallarmé, Baudelaire, Rimbaud–as recited by some of the finest New York poets to have studied them.
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We’re looking forward to a chill schedule of French poetry, summer color, and a heap of foodie fun at the NYBG this weekend, with poets in the poppies and pickles in the Family Garden!

In the Perennial Garden, join a few of New York’s most talented wordsmiths as they honor the heights of classic French verse, reciting the lilting and lyrical Symbolism of Rimbaud, Verlaine, and Mallarmé. Surrounded by plush plantings, it’s nearly a painted scene in itself. And for those hoping for more hands-on inspiration, our gardening demonstrations spotlight the ideal techniques and cultivars that go into keeping a perennial display at home.
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“All beauties, like all possible phenomena, have something of the eternal and something of the ephemeral—of the absolute and the particular.” – Charles Baudelaire

The France of Claude Monet was a landscape beholden to the muse, not only in paint, but in verse, food, and music. Paris was the city of imagination! The city of Erik Satie and Rimbaud, and of the Lost Generation that arrived late in Monet’s life–Stein and Hemingway among them. This weekend, the NYBG partners with the Poetry Society of America to bring the Impressionist’s peers back into the spotlight. Here at the Garden, New York’s finest contemporary poets offer readings of the French Symbolists that inspired them most.

On Saturday, the focus falls on the oeuvre of Charles Baudelaire, an early figure in Monet’s time whose urban prose and verse set the foundation for many of the Symbolists who followed after. And on Sunday we switch gears, taking art to the table for our Family Dinner Event! With Mario Batali’s talented chefs on hand, we’ll venture abroad, looking beyond the recipes of France to bring you Continental flavor with local ingredients (many grown here at the NYBG). While you enjoy garden-inspired teas and wines paired with elegant dishes expertly prepared, the kids can busy themselves with Family Garden adventures. It’s about as high on the win-win scale as you’re ever likely to find yourself.
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Mallarmé and Rimbaud live here. Their words, at least. Monet’s Garden, beyond Giverny, is about exploring Impressionism as a movement, dipping into the lyricism of the era’s Symbolist poets. You’ll find selections from some of Monet’s gifted contemporaries placed throughout the Perennial Garden.

Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen

When I was in Paris last June, it was hot–hotter than it is today in New York City–with temperatures flirting with the mid-90s. I was not in Paris for work, but since I’m a bit of a workaholic, I convinced my friends to accompany me to Giverny, where we found a serene, green oasis. Despite my friends having little interest in plants and gardening, they loved our trip to Claude Monet’s jardin, because you don’t go to Giverny to look at plants; you go to Giverny to experience Monet. You go to find a deeper understanding of the great Impressionist, and we’re hoping you come to Monet’s Garden for the same reason.

Inside the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory are the stars of the show, the recreation of Monet’s flower garden and his iconic water garden. But outside, in the paths of the Perennial Garden and the environs of the Conservatory, you can read works–in English and French–from Monet’s contemporaries, the Symbolist poets. Impressionism was a full-blown artistic movement that extended to the very edges of the bohemian circles of Paris and beyond. Linger amid poppies and peonies and phloxes and contemplate what Charles Baudelaire meant when he wrote, “Voici venir les temps où vibrant sur sa tige/Chaque fleurs s’évapore ainsi qu’un encensoir” (“Now comes the time when swaying on its stem/each flower offers incense to the night”).

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In August, we took a paddle-with-a-purpose down the Bronx River, New York City’s only freshwater river.

Bronx River Clean-Up With the Bronx River Alliance

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Before you can learn the trees, you have to learn
The language of the trees. That’s done indoors,
Out of a book, which now you think of it
Is one of the transformations of a tree.

Learning the Trees ~ Howard Nemerov

The Language of the Trees (photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen)

In the Nancy Bryan Luce Herb Garden

In case you hadn’t heard, the Garden offers a range of audio tours providing additional insights into our collections and exhibitions, as well as information about horticulture and the research initiatives going on here and across the world. Recently we told you about our partnership with the National Book Foundation and the Poetry Society of America, a collaboration undertaken to add a literary element to our tours.

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Sweet smell of phlox drifting across the lawn—
an early warning of the end of summer.
August is fading fast, and by September
the little purple flowers will all be gone.

The End of Summer ~ Rachel Hadas

Seasonal Walk (photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen)

Early this year, the New York Botanical Garden partnered with National Book Foundation and Poetry Society of America to create a literary element to our audio tours. With support from an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, we reached out to a number of NYC-based authors and poets and asked them to produce works based on their experiences or certain areas of the Garden.

Below you can see one of our contributors for the summer: author Ana Boži?evi? who chose the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden as her inspiriation for her work, Rose Hopscotch.

You can access the audio tour two ways:

Using your cell phone, call 718.362.9561 and type in the number next to the audio tour symbol on signs throughout the Garden grounds. You can even call from home if you’d like.

What do you think of the new Audio Literary Tour? Are there any NYC-based authors you’d like to see for upcoming seasons? Leave us a comment and let us know!