Inside The New York Botanical Garden
Matt Newman
Posted in NYBG in the News on August 29 2012, by Matt Newman
Go out into your back yard (assuming you have one) and pretend you have to not only identify, but describe, designate, and catalog every plant that’s growing there. Now multiply that challenge by the entire surface of the Earth, and you’re standing in a botanist’s shoes. Of course, it’s not going to be as easy as all that; as a plant scientist, you’re also racing against a clock that stubbornly speeds up with each passing year. Climate change, human development, and myriad other influences are wiping out species before you’re even aware they’re under threat–and there are hundreds of thousands of species to account for. Worse, the system you use to designate these plants as endangered isn’t exactly marching to the beat of your own drum.
This is where The New York Botanical Garden‘s experts step in, with a new system that could turn a challenging outlook for botanical conservationists into a bright future.
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Posted in Around the Garden, Photography on August 29 2012, by Matt Newman
Orange to the point that it almost seems to siphon off the color from the foliage around it. Wishing you a happy Wednesday from the Seasonal Border.
Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
Posted in Programs and Events on August 28 2012, by Matt Newman
Bats in the trees, ghosts in the garden, and jack-o’-lanterns every which way you look–Halloween is soon to creep its way back into the NYBG. And even for someone like me, who’s usually too busy to realize what time of year it is until the spirit is sneaking up behind me (the best way to experience the holiday, I suppose), there’s too much incoming excitement for us to let it wait until later.
This year, the Garden’s madcap Halloween events are back and even bigger than 2011’s. That’s if you can imagine us topping a cadre of record-breaking pumpkins carved into the stuff of nightmares. But we absolutely plan to! Plans are in the works to again feature the gargantuan gourds of the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth, which will once again go under the knife of master carver and ghoul-whittler extraordinaire, Ray Villafane. Together with his team of skilled pumpkin sculptors, he’s on track to top last year’s masterpieces a few times over.
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Posted in Mario Batali's Edible Garden on August 28 2012, by Matt Newman
Gardening and instant gratification rarely go hand in hand, much as we wish they would. But while we could only dream of fresh produce while planting Mario Batali’s Kitchen Gardens this past May, we’ve made the leap from sprout to salad in almost no time at all. Once-tiny tomato plants are now heavy with full, ripe fruit, and the peppers are piling up in all shapes and sizes. Between them, heaps of fresh greens get ready to make their way into a classic Italian recipe. And just in time for September’s Edible Garden Festival!
But it’s better to show than tell, right? Below are a few of the before and after snapshots taken in the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden, where Mario Batali’s top chefs have planted vegetables that best represent not only the flavors of their renowned New York City restaurants, but the nostalgic tastes that inspired them to cook in the first place.
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Posted in Around the Garden, Photography on August 27 2012, by Matt Newman
If you happen to stop by the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden for “Pollinator Pals,” running now through October 5, you might be lucky to catch a few fluttering monarchs as they make their annual migration to Mexico. Despite what experience tells us, this flight is somewhat more challenging than eight hours spent in coach.
Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
Posted in Around the Garden, Photography on August 26 2012, by Matt Newman
Just checking in with some popular bombshells from the Perennial Garden. Got any plans to close out the weekend?
Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
Posted in Around the Garden, Photography on August 25 2012, by Matt Newman
Wishing everyone a happy Saturday from the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden! If being knee-deep in vegetables is your style, there’s no place like it.
Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
Posted in Around the Garden on August 24 2012, by Matt Newman
Would I say there’s a busy atmosphere about the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden this weekend? Definitely. But would I say there’s a…buzzy atmosphere? Seeing as I’m absolutely the kind of guy to kick off a wave of pained groans by dropping such a boulder of a pun, I’m going to go ahead and affirm that one. As of this week, New York’s favorite vegetable garden is looking beyond the tomatoes and cucumbers to the pollinators that make them possible, and that includes our lively honey bees!
Overlooking the NYBG‘s one-acre vegetable plot is a pair of active beehives that you can see and read about in one of our earlier picture galleries, but if you really want to grasp just what it is that has New York City’s rooftop gardeners going mad for apiculture, you and your children should come and visit. Through “Pollinator Pals,” we’re opening up this integral piece of the agricultural puzzle with fun activities for kids, as well as the opportunity to see first-hand how a beehive works and even sample a few different types of honey. The experience isn’t limited to what you get in a bear-shaped squeeze bottle at the supermarket–what’s growing near the hive can noticeably influence the nuanced flavors of the honey the bees produce.
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Posted in Around the Garden, Photography on August 24 2012, by Matt Newman
Why do they call it an anemone, anyway? At a glance, the flower doesn’t seem to have much in common with the seagoing variety. But according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word comes from the Greek for “daughter of the wind.” Most sea anemones seem to fit that description, waving as they do in the ocean currents, so I suppose a flower bobbing in the breeze is close enough.
Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
Posted in What's Beautiful Now on August 23 2012, by Matt Newman
Stick your head out the window. You don’t have to be full-on family dog weird about it–just poke it out there and see what the weather’s like. Is it a warm day, no sidewalks buried in snow drifts or ice hazard traffic advisories? Then odds are good that the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden should be somewhere in the top three lines of your list of destinations. There are over 4,000 rose specimens in this collection alone, and while spring is the season when visitors are most often scrambling to get a peek (understandably, as roses are like smelling salts after the listless gloom of winter), many people don’t realize that there’s a confetti of colorful rose cultivars blooming at the NYBG for a solid six months out of the year.
Skip over to the Rose Garden right now (while the weather is almost confusingly decent, hence the skipping; I’m talking sit-outside-for-lunch pleasant) and you’ll find the stage set with a show of shrub roses in pinks, whites, and reds. Floribunda, grandiflora, hybrid tea–they’re all there, petaled like petticoats and parasols.
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Go out into your back yard (assuming you have one) and pretend you have to not only identify, but describe, designate, and catalog every plant that’s growing there. Now multiply that challenge by the entire surface of the Earth, and you’re standing in a botanist’s shoes. Of course, it’s not going to be as easy as all that; as a plant scientist, you’re also racing against a clock that stubbornly speeds up with each passing year. Climate change, human development, and myriad other influences are wiping out species before you’re even aware they’re under threat–and there are hundreds of thousands of species to account for. Worse, the system you use to designate these plants as endangered isn’t exactly marching to the beat of your own drum.
