The Holiday Train Show‘s Roosevelt Island Lighthouse
A traditional tree-lighting ceremony is so central to the winter experience in New York City that it’s hard to imagine ringing in the holidays without one. And while our own lighting has already taken place this year, our good friends with the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation (RIOC) are just as keen to celebrate the season of twinkling lights, eye-catching ornaments, and memorable company. This Friday, they’re hosting one of the best kept secrets in the boroughs with their own tree-lighting ceremony—one that boasts a thriving small town spirit you’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere else in the city.
If you’ve never paid a visit to this sliver of island east of Manhattan, maybe you’ll recognize its contribution to our Holiday Train Show. The Roosevelt Island Lighthouse was originally built as the Blackwell Island Light in 1872, and since then it’s not only been added to the National Register of Historic Places, but immortalized in natural materials as a seasonal miniature in our Enid A. Haupt Conservatory.
Everything’s that much better under a twinkling glow, and the Holiday Train Show is no exception. On Friday and Saturday nights this week, December 6 and 7, we’re turning down the lights and turning up the festivities with the first of this season’s Bar Car Nights. And if you’ve never been to one, just think of it as a chance to experience our dozens of miniature landmarks and model trains in an entirely new atmosphere—one highlighted by the cocktails and mellow tunes that make for a perfect evening in New York.
We’ll have a professional photographer on hand to capture some memories (because who wants to carry a point-and-shoot when clutch real estate comes so dear?), and new this year, you’re welcome to head outside to the Conservatory Courtyard for a live ice carving demonstration from Okamoto Studios. Their expert artists join us to turn enormous blocks of ice into all manner of holiday art, from trains to Garden landmarks and more.
Across the way in the Holiday Dining Pavilion, Stephen STARR Events will be cooking up a storm from a New York-themed menu celebrating everything delicious about historic NYC street food. Though if you’re looking to make the night last even longer, hold onto your Bar Car Night ticket stub: we’ve got partnerships with a number of gourmet restaurants offering discounts and bonuses for those who join us, all of which you can find listed here.
While we won’t be open on Thanksgiving Day, a fact the Garden’s turkeys are all too fond of, there’s still the entire holiday weekend to go! We’ll be taking advantage of it with the ongoing Holiday Train Show, several tours of specific collections and seasonally fascinating autumn plants, and some fun for the kids in the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden.
It’s also a perfect opportunity to get a head start on working off those Thanksgiving and Hanukkah carbs before any incoming December feasts you have planned. Of course, there’s no better place to do this than our Forest trails. While most of the leaves have already fallen, there’s a certain elegance to the netting of branches that overlays the trails in our 50-acre old growth woodland, and I doubt you’ll find many places in this bustling city quite so insulated from the urban world outside.
Check out our relaxed schedule below for detailed information on the tours we’ll be having throughout the weekend, and if you’re leaving town for the holidays, here’s to safe and stress-free travels!
Once more unto the crisper drawer, dear friends, once more. As with all good things, the Greenmarket has a beginning and an end (at least as far as 2013 goes), meaning Wednesday, November 27 is your final chance this year to stock up on fresh fall flavors picked from the best farms in our neck of the woods. And with winter peeking in on us here in New York, now’s as good a time as any. Whether you’re planning to replenish your surplus of fruits and vegetables used for Thursday’s Thanksgiving feast or you’re still looking for a few choice items to top off your cornucopia, we’ll have you covered.
The autumn harvest highlights the heartiest stick-to-your-ribs edibles of the year, including all sorts of root vegetables—potatoes, breakfast radishes, turnips—and familiar favorites like broccoli, cauliflower, and winter squash. Fruits are still a big draw, as well, with apple varieties like Shizuka, Golden Russet heirloom, Margil, Braeburn, and Keepsake leading the pack. You might even get lucky and find some end-of-season Seckel pears. There are greens in abundance, and no shortage of seasonal pies, savory breads, cookies, and other baked goods to fill out your holiday table. And did I mention ciders and juices of all kinds? Yeah, we’re not about to miss out on hot toddies.
It’s been over two decades since we first introduced New York City to the Holiday Train Show, and in that time we’ve pieced together one of the most impressive collections of miniature architecture ever seen—a cityscape of over 150 cherished landmarks hosting a constant parade of large-scale model railway trains. But the buildings don’t come ready-made out of a box; the bridges aren’t raised overnight, and the tracks can’t find their way without helping hands. It’s an enormous undertaking to unveil this seasonal treat each year, and thanks to our friends with THIRTEEN NY, the premiere of Treasures of New York: Holiday Train Show is throwing a well-deserved spotlight on all that hard work.
From American steam engines, subway cars, and modern freight trains to the natural architecture itself—each building painstakingly assembled using natural components like leaves, twigs, and bark—Treasures leads the viewer on a tour through the entire holiday production. You’ll join artist Paul Busse in Alexandria, Kentucky, where his Applied Imagination workshop has been crafting uncanny models of New York’s famous buildings since the Holiday Train Show first opened in 1992. Back then, our collection of models barely made up a tiny neighborhood—a far cry from the dozens of models that now call the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory home, surrounded by over a quarter-mile of G-scale train tracks.
Our Fall Forest Weekends may have passed for another year, but we can still show some appreciation for the Forest denizens that make homes and hunting grounds among our many trees. This past Saturday and Sunday, Visitor Services Attendant Pat Gonzalez was again on hand during our Live Birds of Prey demonstration to soak up some knowledge and snap a few pictures. The results went straight into this slideshow of owls, hawks, falcons, and other raptors found in our neck of the woods.
The birds were brought in for a visit by the Theodore Roosevelt Sanctuary & Audubon Center, where many of them live as rehabilitated rescues that are no longer capable of surviving in the wild. But that hasn’t cramped their regal style any, as you’ll see below.
The hum and clack of miniature trains fills the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory right now. Familiar bridges made of branches and vines arch overhead, and miniature manors ring the walkways with lights glowing in their tiny amber windows. Okay, so that’s a little bit purple, but how else can you possibly describe our favorite winter exhibition? The Holiday Train Show is just about ready to throw open its doors this Saturday, November 16, and we couldn’t be more ready.
Ivo recently had a chance to peek inside and get a glimpse of the arrangements ahead of the weekend, so I thought I’d pile together some of the photographs he collected in the Conservatory and share them with everyone! With more trains than ever before, a fresh “Streets of New York” dining experience taking place in our Conservatory Tent, and all the ambiance of a perfect holiday season, you don’t want to miss this. (And did I mention Bar Car Nights are back?)
November is always a double-edged sword for us, as it means two things: the Greenmarket is stocked with heaps of fresh, hearty fall fare—some of my favorite foods of the year—and the Greenmarket is nearly over. Including today’s event, there are just three more opportunities to stock up on produce and baked goodies until our vendors close up shop for the year on Wednesday, November 27.
Today’s highlights include onions and peppers and apples galore (Cortland, Jonagold, Macoun, McIntosh, and Red Delicious varieties among them). You’ll also find broccoli, root vegetables in abundance, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, winter squashes of all sorts, tomatoes, and, of course, heaps of pies from Meredith’s Bread. Among them, a newcomer: coconut custard pie! And the usual suspects, too—apple crumb, cherry, pecan, and precious, precious pumpkin.
It was snowing yesterday morning. If that doesn’t tell you you need to stock up on stew ingredients and eat your fill of baked deliciousness, I don’t know what will. The NYBG Greenmarket runs from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. each Wednesday through November 27. The market accepts food stamps, EBT, WIC/FMNP, and Senior coupons, in addition to cash and credit or debit cards. Learn how to use EBT, WIC and FMNP at the Greenmarket.
Head below for a cold-weather recipe from our pal Mario Batali highlighting the versatility of the parsnips you’ll find at the Greenmarket today.
If you can imagine the distant jangle of a steam engine rounding the bend right now, you know just what time of year it is. And no, I don’t mean to suggest that the MTA is bringing back a line dedicated exclusively to old-timey trains. But for the next two months, we are. With fall well underway and the snows of winter likely headed in our direction soon, it’s once again time for that beloved yearly tradition of lights, locomotives, and masterful miniature architecture. Starting November 16, the Holiday Train Show® returns to the Garden!
Not that it’s a cakewalk assembling one of the largest train displays in the country. Far from it, in fact. Even now, our horticulturists and visiting model makers are scurrying about the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, preening plant beds, erecting familiar bridges, and making sure that every last one of our trains has enough track to make its all-important rounds. With this year’s exhibition featuring more trains than ever before, it’s worth double- and triple-checking the more than quarter mile of railway we’ll be using to accommodate all that traffic.
Among the new trains joining us this year, we’ve even got a G-scale Metro-North model soon to be zipping its way around a collection of Hudson River Valley mansions in the Conservatory’s Palm Dome pool.
With the leaves on the trees peaking in a flurry of color, and the mums in the Home Gardening Center boasting their heartiest hues against dipping temperatures, autumn earns its reputation as a time for brief and fervent garden fireworks. But where most of the flowers and foliage drawing our attention are known as hardy hold-outs against the coming frost, it seldom pays to overlook the delicate beauty now closing out its season in the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden.
The rose varieties in our collection, many of them bred for coddle-free survival in spite of the rose’s needy reputation, have put on a gripping show this year. So, to celebrate that longevity, I’ve put together a little gallery of the latest stars among the shrubs, some of the blooms bringing up the rear before the cold season sets in to close up shop until spring. It being hump day, I figured it couldn’t hurt to liven up your autumn afternoon with some reds and yellows in a different medium.
