Inside The New York Botanical Garden
Archive: April 2012
Posted in Around the Garden on April 20 2012, by Matt Newman
Moss covered paths between scarlet peonies,
Pale jade mountains fill your rustic windows.
I envy you, drunk with flowers;
Butterflies swirling in your dreams.
— Qian Qi, Tang Dynasty
In the words of poet Billy Collins, the lyricists of Imperial China had “nothing up their ample sleeves” as they scribbled down the world around them. There’s a candid linearity to the early Chinese wordsmiths. Never dawdling in the roundabout of ten dollar adjectives or subtlety, they explain what they see with directness and clarity, and in doing so pull the reader into a rich history of images.
Today, standing on the hill overlooking the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden among prim rows of rounded tree peony shrubs, I found the same honest verse in each flower. It’s right there in the names. From time to time I would crouch to part the branches in an effort to see the cultivar titles on the small signs below each plant. Behind the leaves I discovered shaped words, often as straightforward as dynastic verse, at other times more like flash fiction–short stories in a staccato of concrete nouns. Our tree peonies are a lyrical bunch, blooming as they are in this early spring.
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Posted in Around the Garden, Photography on April 20 2012, by Matt Newman
We now enter the final weekend of 2012’s Orchid Show. What will you be doing with your off days?
Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
Posted in Around the Garden on April 19 2012, by Matt Newman
What the heck is Phragmites? I found myself posing the same question. What could be so diabolical, so absolutely devilish as to demand several days’ sweat and muscle ache shoveling out a muddy pit? Why the misleading singular noun? Sadly (and despite the phonetic similarities), Phragmites has nothing to do with Fraggle Rock. Neither is it related to flaming space junk, or the stone spikes that spur the floors and ceilings of winding underground caverns. Nope–it’s a plant. And, to many, it’s a ruthless swampland invader.
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Posted in Learning Experiences on April 19 2012, by Ann Rafalko
Ed. note: This is a guest post from Andrew Hill, Senior Scientist at Vizzuality, a small company specializing in data, GIS, and the Web. As an organization that is deeply concerned with biodiversity and conservation, the Garden is invested in using technology as a scientific tool, and I feel EcoHackNYC is an event worth sharing with the rest of the New York-area scientific community. If you’re a scientist or researcher, please consider joining this event. — Ann
This weekend, for the second time in under a year, we are throwing an event to bring together scientists, developers, designers, and others to work collaboratively on environmental projects that matter. We call this event EcoHackNYC. It is a free (un)conference where a small group of people present projects, problems, or data they think need to be developed, and then larger groups of enthusiasts and experts work tirelessly to develop solutions (also check out last year’s event here). For us, this is a special event.
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Posted in Around the Garden, Photography on April 19 2012, by Matt Newman
A late MEC today, but not forgotten. I blame the interminable train delays. Seeing the tulip trees in their spring garb makes for a good balm on commuter frustration, though.
Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
Posted in Around the Garden, Programs and Events on April 18 2012, by Matt Newman
We think everyone should treat each and every square on the calendar like it’s Earth Day; we’re loud proponents of keeping the environment healthy and ship-shape. But on the celebratory front, we like to pile our events into one spectacular week of sunny spring days. So if you’re searching for a way to show the planet that you appreciate all it’s done for you, and you want to give back, we have just the thing. Read on for all that’s going down with The New York Botanical Garden and its partners, here and around New York City!
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Posted in Around the Garden, Photography on April 18 2012, by Matt Newman
The daytime temperatures are finally lining up with the sunlight filtering through the new leaves on the trees. It was a figurative weight off my shoulders to leave my jacket on the coat hook this morning.
Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
Posted in Around the Garden on April 17 2012, by Ann Rafalko
This just in: The first rose of the year has bloomed in the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden. Let’s hear a round of applause for Rosa blanda!
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Posted in Gardening Tips on April 17 2012, by Sonia Uyterhoeven
I walked by a restaurant in my neighborhood and realized it was closing down. Large industrial-sized pots, pans, and trays were piled up on display in the window to be sold off for a bargain the next morning. My eye caught a colander in the midst. I stared longingly at the colander and sighed, knowing that I wouldn’t be around when the doors opened for the sale.
I love collecting good, sturdy cookware for my own kitchen, but my motives that night were different. The large colander would have made a perfect planting container–perhaps as a hanging basket or a round, squat container that would have added an elegant touch to an intimate terrace garden. Unlike the small ones that I buy at retail stores for draining my pasta, this industrial colander was about 16 to 18 inches in diameter. It was crying out for a collection of herbs, sedums, hens and chicks, strawberries or colorful cascading annuals. It even could have become a home to mesclun mix.
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Posted in Around the Garden, Photography on April 17 2012, by Matt Newman
We now continue our impromptu series on recently-flowering tulip cultivars styled after chatty tropical birds.
Tulipa ‘Silver Parrot’ — Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
Moss covered paths between scarlet peonies,
