Inside The New York Botanical Garden
Matt Newman
Posted in Around the Garden on September 14 2012, by Matt Newman
It’s like we blinked and suddenly: fall color! For now, the effect is subtle. You might find a few more leaves than average blowing along the grass under the tulip trees. Make your way into the 50-acre Forest and you’ll see familiar reds, oranges, and yellows lighting up the trees here and there. We’re not complaining about the chill in the air, either. But whether the calendar confirms it or not, autumn is dancing its way into New York City, and the NYBG is the place to be.
This weekend is the perfect time to escape into nature and soak up what feels like a second spring. Saturday’s Bird Walk starts you off with a jaunt around the Garden, binoculars in hand, spotting creatures of every sort with our reigning birdwatcher extraordinaire, Debbie Becker. After that, I can’t talk up the Rose Garden Tour enough, especially now that the fall bloom is underway. We’ve had visitors from the four corners talking up the collection on Twitter, and their awe is not misplaced; it’s one of our most popular autumn displays.
We’ll also be joining Sonia Uyterhoeven on Saturday and Sunday for a wrap-up of water lily season. She’s an expert on the planting and care of aquatic plants, so home growers won’t want to miss these open demonstrations around the Conservatory water lily pool. And I should mention Saturday’s Season in Poetry session in the Perennial Garden, for those of you touched with an appreciation for the lyrical. But whatever you choose to do, think about making an entire day of it. No point in squandering this weather with the cold close on its tail!
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Posted in Mario Batali's Edible Garden, Programs and Events on September 14 2012, by Matt Newman
With autumn so near at hand, you’d think the excitement would be winding down in the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden. Most vegetable gardens in New York are offering up the last of their produce right about now, while green thumbs stow their trowels for the next spring planting. But at the NYBG, the best of the season is still ahead of us! In fact, the atmosphere is nearly humming with anticipation for the peak event of the summer: Mario Batali’s Edible Garden Festival. And while the legendary chef’s top culinary minds have inspired plenty of palates during Family Dinners throughout the season, it’s Mario himself that will treat your tastebuds for September’s pièce de résistance.
Now that the Family Dinners have come and gone, I got to wondering what might end up on Mario’s menu. And when you think of Italian cooking, you don’t have to be shy about it: your mind leaps straight to the tomatoes. Plump and delicious, blushing red (or yellow, or purple), they take center stage in so many of the dishes we’ve come to love. Still, while picking my way through the Family Garden in recent weeks, I thought to myself, “Why let the tomatoes hog the spotlight?” They’re delectable–don’t get me wrong–but Italy’s culinary history encompasses so much more! Mario knows this better than anyone. And when his acclaimed chefs first planted their vegetable plots, they dotted the Family Garden with leafy greens, pungent onions, and herbs enough to make your spice rack green with envy. And the peppers! So many peppers, in myriad shapes and colors.
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Posted in Around the Garden, Photography on September 14 2012, by Matt Newman
September 22 may be the first official day of fall, but while most of our collections are abiding by the schedule, the Forest marches to the beat of its own drum. You’re supposed to toast the first color of autumn with apple cider, right?
Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
Posted in Exhibitions on September 13 2012, by Matt Newman
We’re suckers for a good surprise (as long as we’re the ones behind it). But it’s a spot more difficult to keep the main event under wraps when it comes to exhibitions this impressive. Manolo Valdés casts a formidable shadow, sparing nothing to create some of the most striking–and colossal–visuals for our upcoming Monumental Sculpture exhibit; for the uninitiated, that’s our next major show here at the NYBG. And this week we jumped headlong into preparation for the September 22 opening.
All told, we couldn’t exactly sneak these sculptures into the Garden. Some of them, such as the Alhambra piece, weigh in at 40,000 pounds with spans reaching nearly 50 lateral feet; they’re not what you’d call statuettes. Arranging these monoliths has proven a spectacle in itself, drawing streams of visitors and employees alike, all snapping away with their cameras as we uncrate and maneuver massive heads and latticework by truck-mounted cranes. It’s a careful and dramatic process that we were able to capture a bit of in the last couple of days.
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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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Posted in Around the Garden, Photography on September 13 2012, by Matt Newman
It’s not ready to make its way into a batch of s’mores just yet, but I’d say our cacao fruit is looking more and more delectable each day. You can catch it now in the rain forest of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory.
Theobroma cacao — Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
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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Posted in Around the Garden, Photography on September 12 2012, by Matt Newman
In the tropical pool of the Conservatory Courtyard: Victoria amazonica. Big. Bad. Lily pad.
Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
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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Posted in Around the Garden, Photography on September 11 2012, by Matt Newman
It’s like we blinked and suddenly: fall color! For now, the effect is subtle. You might find a few more leaves than average blowing along the grass under the tulip trees. Make your way into the 50-acre Forest and you’ll see familiar reds, oranges, and yellows lighting up the trees here and there. We’re not complaining about the chill in the air, either. But whether the calendar confirms it or not, autumn is dancing its way into New York City, and the NYBG is the place to be.
