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Inside The New York Botanical Garden

Archive: September 2012

This Week in the Family Garden: Catching Up

Posted in Around the Garden, Video on September 13 2012, by Matt Newman

We’re back in the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden this week to check in with Assistant Manager Annie Novak and the busy cast of pollinators keeping our flowers in business!

As one of the experienced caretakers behind the success of our beehives, she’s our go-to source for all things buzzing (and fluttering, for that matter; we’d never think to leave out the monarch butterflies). It doesn’t hurt that she rocks a beekeeping suit like no other. And while we like to leave the actual hands-on apiculture duties to our Family Garden staff, you’re welcome to join them for “Pollinator Pals,” running now through October 5 from 1:30 to 5:30 p.m. daily.

Another bright spot on our radar: Mario Batali’s Edible Gardening Festival! If you think of “food” as one of your action words, and a day spent cavorting around Mario’s Kitchen Gardens is your idea of a Sunday well-spent (it’s definitely ours), be here September 23 for cooking demonstrations, a packed schedule of garden fun, and–best of all–a four-course meal prepared and served by the great chef himself. There are different tickets for different events during the festival, all of them going quickly, so be sure to see what’s available beforehand.

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The Garden Anthology

Posted in Monet's Garden on September 12 2012, by Matt Newman

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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Weekly Greenmarket Preview: Cornucopia

Posted in Programs and Events on September 11 2012, by Matt Newman

Wednesdays are foodie days at The New York Botanical Garden, and the twelfth is no different! If your palate’s been hunting for something a touch more scintillating than what you can sniff out at your average midtown hot dog stand, it’s not a crime to look outside your borough–the Bronx, perhaps? As always, our Greenmarket is a cornucopia of home-grown goodies!

Peppers in many a color were last week’s highlights–orange, yellow, and red, all crisp and piquant–while apples flaunted sweetness among the pre-fall fruits. Even the fresh bitterness of dandelion greens was on call. Not to be outdone by the “two to four servings a day” crowd, The Little Bake Shop and Millport Dairy made a delectable point with fresh-baked breads, raisin oatmeal cookies, and berry pies to put any dessert tray to shame. Wash it down with a fruity juice from Red Jacket Orchards and you’re sending off summer with all the right flavors.

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What’s Beautiful Now: The Conifers

Posted in What's Beautiful Now on September 10 2012, by Matt Newman

It’s something of a quiet Monday here at the NYBG (we’re not open most Mondays; it’s best to give the horticulturists a clear space to do their weekly tidying-up), and the thermometer is dipping rapidly. I’m not going to say that fall has begun, necessarily, as it’s probably just a fluke weather pattern. But it puts me in the mood for looking forward! Thankfully, the prolific Ivo Vermeulen has left me with enough photographs to geek out on some pre-season imagery.

What carries me so often to the Benenson Ornamental Conifers is what you’d call the most subtle of beauties. But I guess that stands for the Garden’s evergreens in general. They’re not showy in the way that a rose presents, though many of them sport as much–if not more–fragrance. Instead, the conifer lands more in the territory of regal reflection. For most people in the northern hemisphere, nothing quite heralds the season like an evergreen dusted with snow. (Not that we had much opportunity to enjoy that kind of scenery this past winter.)

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