The NY Times, TV, and Even the New York Lottery Charmed
Nick Leshi is Associate Director of Public Relations and Electronic Media.
The Holiday Train Show at The New York Botanical Garden has been a magical must-see for more than 1 million visitors over the past 17 years. Edward Rothstein of The New York Times called it “exhilarating,” marveling at “the wonders of this annual show” that presents “New York through a looking glass.”
David Hartman, popular television personality, produced and narrated a charming documentary about the Holiday Train Show, revealing how the structures are made from natural materials and displayed to the delight of visitors of all ages. The documentary aired last year 528 times across the country on 285 PBS stations.
In case you missed it, below is a clip of the show. You can catch the entire program tonight, December 11, at 10:30 p.m. on Channel Thirteen/WNET-TV. It will air again several times during December on PBS, including on WLIW-TV; check the online schedule. If you’re looking for a stocking stuffer or holiday gift for a loved one (or for yourself), the documentary is available on DVD at Shop in the Garden
After viewing the clip, you’ll see why the Holiday Train Show has been a sought-after location for singular New York events. That tradition again rang true last week when the New York Lottery awarded more than $17 million to two winners before replicas of the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, Radio City Music Hall, and others and to the delight of a festive crowd of visitors young and old that erupted into spontaneous congratulatory applause.
There have been other occasions over the years when Holiday Train Show visitors received an additional unexpected treat, including a marriage proposal between New York City police officers that was nationally broadcast on the Today show and a mayoral press conference that touted the wonders of the holiday season in New York. Amid the glow of twinkling lights in the Botanical Garden’s Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, the Holiday Train Show proved the perfect magical setting for these memorable events.
Make your own memories by coming to see the Holiday Train Show in person, through January 11, 2009. Tickets are available for purchase on the Garden’s Web site. See for yourselves what Mr. Rothstein in his review described as “this phantasmagorical landscape, which at twilight comes alive with illumination.”
Amanda Gordon, a writer and consultant to the Garden, first wrote about NYBG when she was a reporter at the New York Sun.
A glittering flurry hit the Holiday Train Show last Friday night when it became the setting for The New York Botanical Garden’s 10th annual Winter Wonderland Ball. Sponsored by Chanel Fine Jewelry, this black-tie event raised $250,000 for the Children’s Education programs at the Botanical Garden and brought 350 guests to the sparkling Enid A. Haupt Conservatory and adjacent tent for cocktails, dinner, and dancing. During the past decade, the ball has become a tradition for supporters of the Garden in their 20s, 30s, and 40s.
“I look forward to this all year. It’s the most festive Christmas event. It’s so nice to get out of the city and be surrounded by a beautiful environment and all fun, good friends of our age group,” one of the ball’s chairmen, Alex Kramer, commented. “It’s also nice because you get out of the city and you have just green everywhere,” another chairman, Christian Leone, said.
Designers Erin Fetherston and Holly Dunlap attended, along with model and writer Jessica Joffe and Marie Claire’s fashion director Nina Garcia of Project Runway fame. The guest list for the event was so fashionable that Vogue set up a photo booth to take pictures of guests for the magazine’s February issue. Bill Cunningham of The New York Times also snapped away.
But the eye-catching gowns competed for attention with the equally eye-catching trains, bridges, and buildings featured in the Holiday Train Show. “I wish I were a little person who could ride on the trains,” model Coco Rocha noted before getting in front of a camera to interview guests about their outfits for the Web site Style.com.
For Chanel, the event was an opportunity to support an important New York institution as well as to enhance the botanical legacy of its signature flower. “We’re excited tonight because we’re working with the Garden to create a variety of camellia that is going to be named after Coco Chanel,” Chanel’s Division President, Fashion, Fine Watches & Jewelry, Barbara Cirkva Shoemaker, revealed.
With or without fancily clad guests, the fairyland atmosphere is present for all visitors to the Holiday Train Show, which runs through January 11 and is especially magical for children. “I brought my young son today,” a Ball committee member, Adelina Wong Ettelson, said. “It’s pretty amazing for a four-year-old to see; actually, it’s pretty amazing for a somewhat older than 40-year-old.” Ms. Wong Ettelson hinted that she might come back for another visit. “I told my son that if he was a really good boy, I’ll bring him back to see Thomas the Tank Engine in January,” she added. The popular character will be visiting the Botanical Garden from January 3 through January 11.
Charles M. Yurgalevitch, Ph.D., is the Director of the School of Professional Horticulture.
Each year the School of Professional Horticulture—a professional gardener-training program at The New York Botanical Garden—allows its first-year students to practice what they have learned in the classroom and in the field through the design and implementation of a student garden. It is an opportunity for students to use their newly acquired skills in a creative manner. Students split into three design teams, each of which drafts a plan for the student garden, which is situated in the Home Gardening Center, a place frequented by the public. A panel of the Botanical Garden’s horticulturists chooses one winning design and suggests alterations; the design is then installed and maintained by all the first-year students the following summer.
The proposals for each team from the Class of 2010 are described below. Make sure to visit the student garden next summer to see the implementation of the selected design.
Natives & Neighbors
We wanted to focus on native plants with an emphasis on plants of North America, but also including plants of Central America and northern South America. There are no Asian or European species. We are especially fond of the work of Piet Oudolf, who has designed the recently planted Seasonal Walk here at the Garden. We sought to design a garden that would partially serve as an educational tool within the larger context of the Home Gardening Center to show native plant specimens, some of which may be surprising (native canna, native rose, native marigolds). However, we’ve included Central American and South American natives to provide color early in the season and to put the garden in the larger context of a real show/display garden. The main colors will be violet, lilac, purple, and rose-pink, with accents of chartreuse and yellow. We expect this garden to offer color from the end of May to early November; it will also provide excellent and exciting fall color (Solidago canadensis, Muelenbergia, Echinacea, Eupatorium purpureum, Callicarpa americana, Salvia leucantha, Hydrangea quercifolia). —Peter Couchman, Amanda Knaul and Alyssa Siegel
The Sunburst Garden
We aimed to create a garden that gives a sunburst effect, like a morning sunrise, with colors going from yellow to orange to pink to purple. There will be flowers throughout the summer season, with a greater textural component in late summer/early fall due the grass inflorescences. Textural effects will come from the sweeping movements of feather grass (Nasella), Panicum, and Veronicastrum. An amphitheater-like impact will be achieved with lower plants in the front and larger and fuller plants spreading out toward the sides and back. —Ashley Burke, Gabriela Marin, and Barbara Pearson
The River Bed
In creating this design, we wanted to represent of a river or streambed, with rocks, moss, and plants growing along the banks; we were influenced by the Dutch garden of Keukenhof. Think of an English cottage sitting on the banks of a stream. The rocks (three clusters of small-sized boulders) will provide contrast with plants. Grasses like Miscanthus and Pennisetum will be on the left side; the right side will be anchored with oak-leaf hydrangea. Along the back side will be Panicum and pampas grass. In the middle there will be a broad sweep of blue-flowering Ageratum. The front edge will have Ajuga, moss, and Mexican feather grass. The sequence of bloom will begin with Irises and dwarf daylilies in early June, followed by Hemerocallis. The peak will be in July and August with perennials like Rubdeckia and Monarda and Echinacea. The plants have been selected to add texture, height, and color for late-season interest. —Christopher Bale, Naftali Hanau, and Brian Kennedy
Sonia Uyterhoeven is Gardener for Public Education at The New York Botanical Garden.
Snow is one of nature’s greatest insulators. As long as it is not crushing a plant or placing too much weight on vulnerable branches, why not let it naturally pile up. It shouldn’t be a problem; in fact, it may actually help the plant weather the season.
In the Garden, we do have areas where we need to remove snow such as from our yew hedges, which could be damaged and disfigured by heavy snow. We gently remove heavy snow from hedges and specimen trees by using a broom or broom handle and slowly pushing upward. If the snow has iced over, we wait until the sun warms it up.
Do not try to break off ice crystals or be too hasty in your treatment. The trees and hedges are stressed enough in the winter months and patience is one of your greatest virtues. Avoid using a shovel; it tends to be too heavy, unwieldy, and sharp and will damage branches. If you are in a hurry or have a large area to cover, try a snow blower on low volume.
Mark your driveway with reflectors so that you delineate areas to be plowed before the snow piles up. Do not shovel or plow snow onto valuable trees and shrubs. While this sounds like common sense while sitting at your computer, this decision is not always straightforward when you are holding a shovel full of heavy snow. Not only will the force damage branches, but you will be piling up harmful salt residues.
Be careful of damaging plants with salt runoff from paths and sidewalks. Salt burns plants and kills root systems. Rather than using sodium chloride, try products that contain calcium chloride or magnesium and potassium chloride. Two products that do less damage to plants and that you can easily find at a hardware store or The Home Depot are Lescomelt2™ and Combotherm™.
If salt damage does occur, use gypsum (hydrated calcium sulfate) to counteract the salt at a ratio of 20 pounds per 100 square feet. As with any product, read the label and follow the directions for best results.
Kevin Peterson, Assistant Manager of the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden, is responsible for the design and fabrication of exhibits in the Children’s Garden.
We had a great time creating the new decor for Gingerbread Adventures in the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden. We had wanted to do something a little different for its seventh season. I sat down with Jim Storm, senior museum technician, to brainstorm about the project, and we began to develop some initial ideas. Next, I did some preliminary sketches of a gingerbread town on a roll of vellum. Those series of drawings were the launching pad for the new look. As we started building, our concepts continued to evolve, we continued to collaborate, and Gingerbread Town took on a life of its own.
One aspect of our design was to have the gingerbread people look like they were occasionally popping out of the wall and existing in “our” space as well as having their own adventure. As it became a 3D reality, some things had to be reworked from the drawings because of the limitations of the physical space. The timeline was also very challenging: We started in early August and just kept plowing away at it until we installed it the week before Thanksgiving.
We completed the city scene first and then moved onto the country and farm scenes. Next came the gingerbread couple ice-skating under a cookie moon. But maybe I should stop there so I don’t give it all away. Jim and I were able to add pigment to caulk so we could “frost” the gingerbread people and make other objects look like big cookies. It was quite successful in that the gingerbread people and their world really do look good enough to eat. We wanted to have kids feel as if they walked into a fun-filled fantasy world and to light up their eyes and to spur their imaginations. We wanted a world that made them feel good. One little boy who visited made sure he said goodbye to all his gingerbread friends before he left the Adventure Garden. That was pretty nice.
Visitors to the annual holiday puppet theater production of The Little Engine That Could™, which opens this weekend in the Arthur and Janet Ross Lecture Hall, will enter through the Ross Gallery, where they will be welcomed by The Heirloom Tomato, an exhibition of bold, bright photographic still lifes. Here, Victor Schrager, the award-winning artist behind the images, talks about how he made these magnificent portraits of historic tomato varieties from the gardens of Amy Goldman. The two have collaborated on several books, including the most recent The Heirloom Tomato: From Garden to Table as well as The Compleat Squash: A Passionate Grower’s Guide to Pumpkins, Squashes, and Gourds (2004) and Melons for the Passionate Grower (2002), all available at Shop in the Garden.
Victor Schrager is the photographer featured in the exhibition The Heirloom Tomato.
The shooting to produce Melons for the Passionate Grower took one year. The Compleat Squash was done over two years. The Heirloom Tomato was planned to be much more extensive than either of those: The photographs would have to be done when the fruit were ready, so the photographs were made at all times of day in all kinds of weather. The project eventually lasted five seasons.
It was important to give the work its own unified sense of time and place—a quality I find in the best botanical illustrations and photographs, in vivid distinction to garden catalogs. To achieve this, I used a single artificial light in a studio I made in a barn near Amy Goldman’s garden. So the photographs took place in their own time.
During the first three seasons, I used an 8×10 wooden Deardorff view camera (the kind where you put a dark cloth over the back of the camera to see better to compose); the last two seasons I used a Sinar 4×5 digital view camera—the closest digital approximation to the qualities of the large-format transparencies I had made during the first three seasons and the most similar in use to my film camera. I would like to think you cannot tell which are which.
Various objects—teacups, marble blocks, colanders, spice cans, etc.—were used to put the tomatoes on a pedestal, giving each picture a unique architecture derived from the tomato’s place in domestic life in the kitchen and garden over its long history.
George Shakespear is Director of Science Public Relations.
One of the pleasures of working at The New York Botanical Garden is meeting scientists from around the world and learning about their fascinating botanical exploration, biodiversity research, and conservation projects. The Garden is a nexus of international plant science, where scientists come to consult the incomparable collections in our herbarium and library, to confer with the Garden’s staff scientists, or, as happened the week before last, to accept a well-deserved award and to share information on current projects.
I attended the presentation by distinguished economic botanist and former Botanical Garden scientist Sir Ghillean (Iain) T. Prance on two current (and very different) projects. In the largest tract of rain forest in northern Argentina, he has been studying the ethnobotany of the Guaranà people, documenting their use of plants. The Guaranà are threatened by the expanding timber extraction industry. One result of his team’s documentation has been the purchase of more than 12,000 acres of land by the World Trust Fund to return ownership to the GuaranÃ. Sir Prance also talked about his systematic studies of Barringtonia, a genus of flowering plants.
Prance was in New York to receive the Gold Medal of The New York Botanical Garden. The medal, the highest honor conferred by the Botanical Garden and awarded very infrequently, acknowledges contributions made by individuals in the fields of horticulture, plant science, and education. Iain Prance served for more than a quarter century at the Garden, arriving as a post-doctoral researcher and departing as Senior Vice President for Science. In 1988, he returned to his native Great Britain to become Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (1988–1999). He was knighted in 1995.
Prance is perhaps the most prominent scientist in botanical exploration of Amazonian Brazil and is vitally interested in the documentation of the use of plants by indigenous peoples in Amazonia. That led him to found in 1981 the Garden’s Institute of Economic Botany, whose programs continue to thrive and grow.
Daniel Avery is Sustainability and Climate Change Program Manager at The New York Botanical Garden.
You may have noticed rather colorful cans posted around the perimeter of the Garden and wondered what they’re doing there. Well, here’s the explanation.
When Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the New York City Council approved the city’s Solid Waste Management Plan (appropriately referred to as “the SWMP,” pronounced swamp) in 2006, they included a pilot program to extend recycling to public places such as commercial strips, parks, and transit hubs. The pilot was successful enough to expand the program, and the Garden, working with the local Sanitation District, was selected to participate.
The NYC Department of Sanitation provides the bins, and the recyclable material collected therein is combined with the Garden’s recyclables and carted off each week by Sanitation.
Sonia Uyterhoeven is Gardener for Public Education at The New York Botanical Garden.
The most common Christmas tree you will find on the market is the Balsam fir (Abies balsamea). It makes a great cut tree that has a nice fragrance and possesses the all-important quality of good needle retention. It grows in cold climates—generally Canada and Maine—and is also one of the cheapest Christmas trees you will find.
The Frasier fir (Abies fraseri) is another popular choice. It is slightly more expensive and has a nice blue-green cast to it. It heralds from more southern regions in the Alleghany mountain area. It also has good needle retention and makes an excellent cut tree.
On the West Coast, a traditional choice for Christmas trees is the Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii). Not a true fir, it is generally grown in Montana for the cut-tree trade and sold in the Pacific Northwest.
Firs tend to do well in the home, as do pines. The problem with pines is that they don’t possess the same strong branch structure that you will find in a fir. Spruces tend to loose there needles, although some people are adamant about buying a blue spruce (Picea pungens ‘Glauca’) as their Christmas tree, and it does create a lovely sight.
Measure the area where you will put your tree before you buy it and make sure it is one foot shorter than the ceiling height to compensate for the height of the tree stand. When purchasing a tree, make sure the needles are still supple; shake the tree gently—only a few needles should fall off. Store the tree in a cool garage if you are not yet ready to bring it into your home.
Cut a half-inch off the base of the tree and place it in water. Check the water daily; make sure there is always a good supply so that the tree doesn’t dry out. You will notice that the tree absorbs a great deal of water (up to a gallon) when it is freshly cut. Place the tree in a cool room, away from heat sources, and enjoy!
