Inside The New York Botanical Garden
Posted in Photography on January 27 2014, by Ann Rafalko
Step inside this gallery and explore away. There are beautiful things hidden everywhere!
Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
In the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory
If you love taking photographs of scenes like this, don’t forget to enter our Tropical Paradise Photography Contest!
Posted in Photography on January 26 2014, by Ann Rafalko
Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
In the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory
If you love taking photographs of scenes like this, don’t forget to enter our Tropical Paradise Photography Contest!
Posted in Photography on January 25 2014, by Ann Rafalko
There are a few stairs cases inside the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory and they all lead somewhere interesting. Come find out where this one goes!
Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
In the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory
If you love taking photographs of scenes like this, don’t forget to enter our Tropical Paradise Photography Contest!
Posted in Around the Garden on January 24 2014, by Matt Newman
It’s frosty outside, I’ll give you that, but the quintessential winter beauty covering much of the Garden right now makes the few extra layers of clothing so worth it. Pristine fields of snow are everywhere, dotted with the patterns of tiny squirrel and bird feet. The spots of color—berries, conifer needles, the remains of the leaves—are that much more high-contrast with so much white surrounding them. But you don’t have to track down color in the winter landscape if you’d rather have a warmer go of things. That’s what Tropical Paradise is for!
Our spotlight on the permanent collections of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory is crowned by one of my absolute favorite events of the year: the Tropical Paradise photography contest. It’s a chance for our visiting shutterbugs, expert and novice alike, to snap a few shots of beautiful plants and locations in our glasshouse. More importantly, there are prizes up for grabs. And all you need is a camera—DSLR, iPhone, whatever you’re comfortable with—and a Flickr account (they’re easy to make). You’ll find the full rules, schedule, and submission guidelines here. But don’t wait too long—while there are still five weeks to go in the contest, participation will start to pick up, and each of those weeks is a new chance toward winning!
Even if you’re not much for photography, there’s plenty to see and do around the Garden this weekend, both indoors and out. Just a reminder that this is the last weekend of All Aboard with Thomas & Friends, so register soon—those tickets won’t last long. In the meantime, check out our full schedule below!
Posted in Photography on January 24 2014, by Ann Rafalko
The cacti of our desert houses, when looked at in the right way, can present a sort of cityscape in miniature.
Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
In the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory
If you love taking photographs of plants like this, don’t forget to enter our Tropical Paradise Photography Contest!
Posted in Around the Garden, Photography on January 23 2014, by Matt Newman
Okay, so practically speaking, winter storm Janus and its aftermath have been sort of troublesome for most northeasterners. If you own a car, you likely spent Wednesday morning hewing it out from beneath a glacier of stubborn ice. For those of you who didn’t have to worry about that particular hassle, transit delays and luge-like sidewalks more than made up the difference. But, that said, there are some upsides to a blizzard! There’s still the fresh-powdered majesty to enjoy—given the right location. For anyone who has not yet made the short trip to the NYBG since the city returned to business as usual, you’re missing out on quite the sight!
Despite the whirling flakes painting the landscape throughout Monday and into the night, our staff photographer, Ivo Vermeulen, was more than happy to bundle up and brave the storm for some snapshots of the changing Garden. The sheer density of the falling snow created something of a foggy effect, as you’ll see in the gallery below, but the result is fantastical! Check out some of what Ivo captured in the moment.
Posted in Photography on January 23 2014, by Ann Rafalko
Walking into the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory can be a shock to the system, in a good way.
Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
Fuchsia microphylla
In the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory
If you love taking photographs of flowers like this, don’t forget to enter our Tropical Paradise Photography Contest!
Posted in Photography on January 22 2014, by Ann Rafalko
It’s a black and white world.
Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
Posted in Gardening Tips on January 21 2014, by Sonia Uyterhoeven
Sonia Uyterhoeven is the NYBG’s Gardener for Public Education.
Continuing from last week’s discussion on growing bananas, I thought I would put together a few recommendations for over-wintering them in our neck of the woods. Just remember that if you are letting your banana go dormant for the winter, you need to cut back on the watering and fertilizing late in the growing season to ensure the plant begins its slow shut down. Towards the end of the season, give it a light pruning to remove some of the foliage.
If the banana is not hardy and has been planted in the ground, you’ll need to dig it up—either before the first frost or after a light frost. Keep the soil around the root ball and drop it into a snug plastic pot, then clean off any dead foliage you find. You can either cut the banana’s pseudostem back to 6 inches or leave the plant alone and let it dry out naturally. If you do the latter, you will be cutting it back in the spring.
Once you’ve got your banana in a pot, store it away in a dark, frost-free space until spring. The goal is to let it go dormant. You’ll also need to keep it on the cool side (below 55 degrees), and leaning toward dry. The banana will rot if it stays too wet. That said, you do not need to water the potted banana; just be sure to check on it occasionally so it doesn’t dry out completely.
Posted in Photography on January 21 2014, by Ann Rafalko
Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
Passiflora ‘Grace Ann’
In the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory