The Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden is a New York City treasure. No hyperbole–just ask anyone who has spent 10 minutes in this verdant acre. The Howell Family Garden has been the backyard garden for generations of New Yorkers. In the mornings it plays host to hundreds of schoolkids on a daily basis, and in the afternoons it is open to everyone. Just drop in, slow down, and enjoy. Pick a pea. Pull a weed. Plant a seed. It’s a bucolic oasis!
So I wanted to let you know about two opportunities available in July that will allow you to more fully enjoy the Family Garden in the height of summer.
Apologies for the late post! I got caught up ogling the offerings for today’s Greenmarket (it’s free to enjoy on Wednesdays, open ’til 3 p.m.). You can check out the produce, cheeses, pickles and pies for yourself just inside the Mosholu Gate in front of the Library Building, and it’s right near the Home Gardening Center, where many of our own vegetable projects mingle with the flowers.
Sonia Uyterhoeven is the NYBG’s Gardener for Public Education.
Gene Sekulow with Bernie Conway, Assistant Gardener
Tuesdays on Plant Talk are generally a time for me to voice my opinions on what we have growing in our plant paradise at The New York Botanical Garden. From time to time, however, I like to interview my colleagues and badger them on their areas of expertise. Today, I am going to share with you a discussion I had with Gene Sekulow–one of the wonderful volunteers helping us to keep the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden growing beautifully.
I first asked Gene to name his favorite rose, and on this topic he waxed lyrical. His favorite bloom in the garden is a 2006 Meilland grandiflora introduction named ‘Mother of Pearl’. He likened the pale pink blossom on the rose to the color of Meggie Cleary’s evening dress in The Thorn Birds. For those of you with a penchant for sentimentality, this is the scene when Meggie glides down the stairs and the besotted priest, Father Ralph de Bricassart, realizes that she is no longer a child but a woman. The dress was a rose dress–as Father Ralph describes, “ashes of roses.”
Last Wednesday saw the return of the weekly Greenmarket to the Garden. The produce that the farmers brought was surprisingly advanced: Red Jacket Farms had cherries, Gajeski Produce had the season’s first potatoes, and Migliorelli had beautiful bundles of herbs just begging to be used in marinades for the grill.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised by this, given what a strange weather year it has been. What can you expect this week? More of the same! Fruit, greens, potatoes, green garlic, spring onions, shallots, peas, pickles, cheese, eggs, and the return of the Little Bake Shop‘s delicious pies! Also, bring your family for free health screenings from the Montefiore Office of Community Health and Wellness and St. Barnabas Hospital.
The weekly NYBG Greenmarket near Tulip Tree Allée happens every Wednesday through November 21, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Admission and parking are free to shop at the Greenmarket and EBT, WIC, and FMNP are accepted. Stay tuned to Plant Talk for information on weekly special events, produce updates, and recipes for using your freshly bought produce.
I thought, “Guthrie? Like Woody Guthrie?” His first wife went by the name of Mary. But it wasn’t her. I dug a little further into the root of this hoop skirt of a rose and came up with another Mary, a world away, to whom the pink thing owed its name.
It was in 1929 that Alister Clark, renowned Australian rosarian, named this rose after his own Mary Guthrie, though what relationship Clark had with the Guthrie family is proving difficult to uncover. There’s a telling anecdote from a book titled The Rose Gardens of Australia that illustrates just how important the honor was to the namesake, which I’ve included below.
Polyantha rose – Rosa ‘Mary Guthrie’ — Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
“… We had some notable visitors to the garden. From Eve I had got a vivid pink, single bush rose which she had called ‘Ella Guthrie’. One morning a delightful, white-haired, sprightly old lady of well over eighty visited us and, without any preamble, demanded to see the Alister Clark roses. I walked down with her and, as we came through the gate, she gave a cry of delight and started to run across the grass. ‘That’s me!’ she cried. ‘That’s me!’ Then, as she read the label saying ‘Ella Guthrie’ she turned to me in disgust. ‘That’s not ‘Ella,’ she said emphatically. ‘She was my aunt, and a poor, washed-out thing, like her rose. This is me! Mary Guthrie! Alister said it looked like a wild rose, so he called it after me, because I was always the wild one of the family.’ Of course, I changed the label without delay.”
Yes, it’s a weed, it’s a biennial, and it’s called mullein (Verbascum bombyciferum). So many visitors asked me about this plant during a recent Conservatory tour of Monet’s Garden that, as soon as I got home, I went straight to the computer to look up more information.
When it comes to weeds, as Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.” And it seems Monet’s keen eye was quick to see those virtues in mullein, especially when its wooly, whitish leaves were placed near the foliage of poppies.
For our exhibition, Monet’s spring flower garden features lots of poppies in many colors alongside–you guessed it–mullein. Rising over four feet high, the showy yellow flowers really stand out, prompting visitors to ask, “What’s that?”
I like to think Monet would approve of the Water Lily Pond here, with its artful, circular collections of pads, and the monolithic image of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory over all.
Sometimes I’ll come across something that looks like a sorbet, a baked tart, or a platter of colorful petit fours, knowing full well that nature usually does a better job of making things look “good enough to eat” than the local confectioner. Not that the poison control hotline would humor me if I acted on all of these novel compulsions, but, hey, it’s just a thought.
We’re bringing the City of Lights to the City that Never Sleeps, and it begins this Saturday night with the first of our Monet Evenings.
Once a month from now through September, the NYBG will host elegant cocktail nights flaunting all the romance of the city on the Seine–the pluck and jangle of Gypsy Jazz, the nostalgic swoon of “La Vie en Rose,” the swing of the Zazou movement, or the sanguine strains of Debussy. Because, the way we see it, there’s no need to stop at the rural charm of Monet’s Giverny when so many of his contemporaries found their muse on the Champs-Élysées. Impressionism goes beyond the context of the canvas, after all.
The Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden is a New York City treasure. No hyperbole–just ask anyone who has spent 10 minutes in this verdant acre. The Howell Family Garden has been the backyard garden for generations of New Yorkers. In the mornings it plays host to hundreds of schoolkids on a daily basis, and in the afternoons it is open to everyone. Just drop in, slow down, and enjoy. Pick a pea. Pull a weed. Plant a seed. It’s a bucolic oasis!
