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Plant Talk

Inside The New York Botanical Garden

Matt Newman

This Weekend: Bronx Diversity in the Family Garden

Posted in Around the Garden on August 17 2012, by Matt Newman

Despite what the average travel agent will write on your final quote, you don’t actually have to max out your credit cards to enjoy a taste of the global landscape. Instead, you could just spend some time driving through the Bronx. Block to block, you’ll pass through communities sampled from a half-dozen continents, enclaves built on traditions of culture and cuisine. Korean, Irish, Chinese, Italian, Caribbean–they’re all represented in the people of our borough. And they’re all here, too, growing in the NYBG‘s Global Gardens!

This weekend, the Garden celebrates the bounty of our efforts with the Summer Harvest Festival, joining our knowledgeable Global Gardeners for a romp around the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden. Bring your kids along for garden games, crafts, or a taste of what’s ripening in our many diverse plots. And for the parents (or especially precocious young chefs) there will be cooking demonstrations taking place at 2 and 4 p.m. on both Saturday and Sunday.

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Morning Eye Candy: Good Intentions

Posted in Around the Garden, Photography on August 17 2012, by Matt Newman

I like to call this “jogger’s light.” It’s that singular moment in the course of the morning when the thought of outdoor exercise fills you with a rush of motivation. Twenty minutes after you strap on your cross trainers, it becomes “stroller’s light.” Then “good sitting weather.” But the road to laziness is, at the very least, paved with good intentions.

Don’t forget that those who sign up for Garden Membership can also opt for early morning grounds access, which lets you make what you will of the Garden’s light as early as 6 a.m. on days that the NYBG is open. Visit our Membership page to have a look at all of the options available to you.


Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen

This Week in the Family Garden: A Global Harvest Festival!

Posted in Around the Garden on August 16 2012, by Matt Newman

Fresh off the puckered and pungent “Pickle Me!” events that took place in the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden over the last few weeks, we join Assistant Manager Annie Novak to catch up with our long-time adventure in multinational growing, the Global Gardens! Because native is all well and good, but when it comes down to exploring edibles, our Family Garden keeps an open mind to unique fruits and vegetables from around the world. And what better place to celebrate multinationalism than in the Bronx, one of–if not the–most diverse communities in the United States?

This week’s highlights come to us from Shirley, caretaker of the Chinese garden, and Mr. Mota, who keeps the Caribbean garden thriving. From bitter melon to plantains, they’ve cultivated a lengthy menu of traditional fruits and vegetables to represent their national cuisines. And it’s a welcome catch-up course, just in time for this weekend’s Summer Harvest Celebration! Make sure the kids are tagging along for this one; they’ll have the chance to meet some of our knowledgeable Global Gardeners, play a few garden games, make crafts, learn an Irish jig, and even sample garden-grown vegetables for themselves.

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Botanical Behemoth

Posted in Around the Garden, Gardens and Collections on August 14 2012, by Matt Newman

In late summer, the NYBG‘s Enid A. Haupt Conservatory becomes the home of a botanical behemoth, one of the largest leaved plants in the world. And each year, visitors find themselves caught off guard by the delightful weirdness of this tropical oddity: Victoria amazonica. Originally from the Amazon River basin, it’s long since become an iconic display in our tropical water lily pond.

Named for Britain’s Queen Victoria in the nineteenth century, the structure of the largest of water lilies is a bit like a kiddie pool (and often as big as one). Its broad, smooth leaves can stretch to nearly ten feet in diameter, forming expansive discs with sharply upturned edges that, again, make it look as though you could drop one in your backyard with a few gallons of water and a pool noodle. At maturity, their short-lived flowers can reach 15 inches across, opening white on the first evening as females, and pink on the second as males. It’s a brief display; the flowers (hopefully) attract pollinating beetles to do nature’s work, then sink below the water’s surface almost as abruptly as they emerged.

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This Weekend: Perennial Poetry

Posted in Around the Garden on August 10 2012, by Matt Newman

We’re looking forward to a chill schedule of French poetry, summer color, and a heap of foodie fun at the NYBG this weekend, with poets in the poppies and pickles in the Family Garden!

In the Perennial Garden, join a few of New York’s most talented wordsmiths as they honor the heights of classic French verse, reciting the lilting and lyrical Symbolism of Rimbaud, Verlaine, and Mallarmé. Surrounded by plush plantings, it’s nearly a painted scene in itself. And for those hoping for more hands-on inspiration, our gardening demonstrations spotlight the ideal techniques and cultivars that go into keeping a perennial display at home.

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