Inside The New York Botanical Garden
Matt Newman
Posted in Programs and Events on October 10 2012, by Matt Newman
It may be overcast and drizzling this morning, but that hasn’t put a damper on the Greenmarket staff’s ambitions! The produce tents are up and running along Garden Way until 3 p.m. this afternoon, and because I wasn’t able to get a preview up yesterday, I’ll just go ahead and give you a taste of what’s available in as short and sweet a format as I can throw together.
Fruitwise, we’re looking at piles of pears (both Seckel and Bartlett varieties) surrounded by Jonamac and Golden Delicious apples. For those sniffing out the last of the summer fruit pies or the first of fall’s confections, you’ll also find stacks of pecan, cherry, pumpkin, and peach pies making the scene. Further, those with a tooth for greens and salad toppers will want to peruse the mountains of beets, black radishes, arugula, purple haze carrots and Brussels sprouts.
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Posted in Programs and Events on October 10 2012, by Matt Newman
Fair warning, northerners: you’ll have to forgive me for bringing up the touchy subject of warm weather. I know it seems like I’m teasing your patience with the far-off return of shorts and sandals, food trucks, and musty coats gone to closet, especially with the chilly stuff still ahead of us; the leaves have hardly given an autumn shrug, much less an autumn change. But when it comes to New York’s official flower–the daffodil–even standing at snow’s door step is a good time to talk about next spring’s blossoms!
Actually, it’s the best of times.
On Thursday, October 11, the NYBG not only celebrates a Garden tradition that dates back nearly a century, but recognizes how that tradition finds new meaning in recent years. Daffodil Hill has remained the spring pride of this organization since the early 20th century, when thousands of white and buttermilk yellow blooms would wake to send off winter with carpets of sunny color. And they still do! Daffodils, being perennials, are a hardy lot that bounces back year after year, often with more flowers to boast than the spring before. In the years following 9/11, the species came to represent the resilience and beauty of the people of New York–so much so that Mayor Michael Bloomberg officially recognized the daffodil as the flower of New York City in 2007. As a symbol of remembrance, the daffodil has been planted in the millions throughout the five boroughs, brightening parks in Manhattan just as they bunch around street trees in Brooklyn.
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Posted in Around the Garden, Photography on October 10 2012, by Matt Newman
Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
Posted in Programs and Events on October 5 2012, by Matt Newman
Am I wrong, or does it feel like only last week that we were up to our ears in summer vegetables and sunglasses? Now, little by little, fall is working its way into our daily routine. Just yesterday I was passing a train station on Long Island, crunching my way over a carpet of yellow leaves, and there are more than a few trees at the NYBG following suit. It may only be the first weekend in October, but autumn’s not wasting any time.
And neither are we! This Saturday marks the opening of the Haunted Pumpkin Garden in the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden, which you’ll know by the family of grinning, sneering, giggling jack o’ lanterns peering out over the Adventure Garden archway. Just inside you’ll find the hub of all our October activities running right through Halloween proper. Of course, we’ll be stacking the Garden’s schedule with all sorts of spooky spectaculars throughout our 250 acres as we creep our way toward All Hallows’ Eve, so keep an eye out as we move further into the season.
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Posted in Around the Garden, Photography on October 5 2012, by Matt Newman
Happy Friday, everyone! In the spirit (no pun intended) of Halloween, have some jack o’ lantern orange to mark the first weekend of 2012’s Haunted Pumpkin Garden.
Dahlia ‘David Howard’ — Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
Posted in From the Library on October 4 2012, by Matt Newman
Mia D’Avanza is a Reference Librarian for The LuEsther T. Mertz Library.
Because the Mertz Library is open to the public, we serve a wide variety of patrons, from second graders learning the many parts of a flower, to NYBG scientists conducting rigorous botanical research. Field Guide to the Street Trees of New York City lands squarely in the middle of that spectrum. Serving as a focused complement to Leslie Day’s previous work, Field Guide to the Natural World of New York City, this beautifully illustrated and photo-heavy book is full of helpful information for anyone who has ever wondered what kinds of trees shade the city.
As a thorough guide, the book even provides the addresses of places in each of the five boroughs where you can view a live example of each profiled tree. I grabbed it off of the shelf with the idea of identifying a large tree I’d seen at the top of Marcus Garvey Park, near the historic Fire Tower; I was quickly able to identify the tree I’d seen as the London Plane (Platanus x acerifolia), NYC’s most common tree and a regular at the NYBG. You’ll know it by its large, spiked “seed balls” and almost mottled bark.
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Posted in Around the Garden, Photography on October 4 2012, by Matt Newman
The city’s been a mash of gray skies and slick streets the past few days. Not that it’s dulled the sunnier blooms in our repertoire; even the honey bees are going about their business unfazed. So umbrella or no, you’ll find all things bright and blooming under the roof of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory as Monet’s Garden rounds out its final month at the NYBG.
Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
Posted in Programs and Events on October 3 2012, by Matt Newman
Walking around the NYBG on this misty Wednesday afternoon, you can already make out hints of Halloween creeping into the Garden. The jack o’ lanterns peeking out from atop the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden archway are a dead giveaway. And this weekend, Annie Novak and the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden do them one better by welcoming an age-old tradition back to our vegetable plots. Leave the chicken wire at home, skip the raised beds, and grab a burlap sack: the scarecrows are slinking in!
As of Saturday and Sunday, the Family Garden’s vegetables see the silhouettes of autumn’s most iconic bird-shooing bodyguards, and we need your kids to help put them together. We’ll supply the poles, twine, floppy hats and straw, just so long as they bring their creativity. And that imagination easily carries over to our other activities for the weekend, like making corn husk dolls and exploring the nine restaurant kitchen gardens of Mario Batali’s Edible Garden.
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Posted in Around the Garden, Video on October 3 2012, by Matt Newman
What’s as big as a school bus, full of hammers, and can chew up a log the size of a Mini Cooper in just a few seconds? That would be The New York Botanical Garden‘s new Diamond Z tub grinder, the latest addition to our collection of groundskeeping machinery and easily the most impressive.
Tub grinders in this class are essentially glorified mulchers, using rapidly swinging “hammers” to break down organic material into an easy-to-manage pulp. Think of the trailer-sized woodchipper the average home landscaping company uses, then scale that up to industrial proportions, and you have the Diamond Z. It’ll handily take down a bundle of twigs and weeds, but its real talent is in gobbling up enormous segments of tree trunk–up to 30 tons of them per hour–and spitting out useable mulch or compost. After the past year’s fluke storms left us facing damaged trees across the Garden, this was exactly what we needed to tidy up our wood piles.
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Posted in Around the Garden, Photography on October 3 2012, by Matt Newman
“In Spain, we say that when a person has a vivid imagination or is particularly jolly, he has a head full of butterflies.”
— Manolo Valdés
Photo by Mark Pfeffer
It may be overcast and drizzling this morning, but that hasn’t put a damper on the Greenmarket staff’s ambitions! The produce tents are up and running along Garden Way until 3 p.m. this afternoon, and because I wasn’t able to get a preview up yesterday, I’ll just go ahead and give you a taste of what’s available in as short and sweet a format as I can throw together.
