Inside The New York Botanical Garden
Around the Garden
Posted in Around the Garden, Programs and Events on April 20 2012, by Matt Newman
If you’re coming to the NYBG on Sunday for The Nature Conservancy‘s Picnic for the Planet, try not to overdo it during lunch! You’ll want to save room for an evening outing sure to have gourmands salivating, because long-time Friend of the Garden Mario Batali is jumping in with an event of his own.
Building on his success in last year’s Family Garden events, the legendary Babbo chef will once again join with the NYBG in raising awareness about the power of the foods we buy and eat. Along with Mario’s partners, Lidia and Joe Bastianich, the trio’s B&B Hospitality Group honors this year’s Earth Day with a special promotion at each of its restaurants in New York, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas, sending every patron of their fine B&B restaurants home with a special Earth Day gift. Not only will you leave well-fed, but you’ll do so with a packet of B&BHG’s organic Cherry Belle⢠radish seeds. It also doubles as a two-for one ticket offer to visit the NYBG this summer, all in the name of bringing environmental responsibility home.
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Posted in Around the Garden on April 20 2012, by Matt Newman
It’s been a whirlwind of excitement for the past two months, but the Orchid Show is soon to bid adieu to another successful year. More than successful, really–the tenth anniversary exhibition is being called one of the most triumphant showings our orchids have had to date, thanks in no small measure to the transcendent designs of botanist Patrick Blanc.
For any of our fans who spent the past few weeks bickering with themselves over the choice to take a day in the Bronx, now is absolutely your last chance to experience the vivid verticality of “The Green Man’s” living walls in person. And I can tell you without the shadow of a doubt that there’s plenty for you to see alongside the exhibition–as if the otherworldly flowers of several thousand orchids weren’t enough to get you on your feet and out the front door.
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Posted in Around the Garden on April 20 2012, by Matt Newman
Moss covered paths between scarlet peonies,
Pale jade mountains fill your rustic windows.
I envy you, drunk with flowers;
Butterflies swirling in your dreams.
— Qian Qi, Tang Dynasty
In the words of poet Billy Collins, the lyricists of Imperial China had “nothing up their ample sleeves” as they scribbled down the world around them. There’s a candid linearity to the early Chinese wordsmiths. Never dawdling in the roundabout of ten dollar adjectives or subtlety, they explain what they see with directness and clarity, and in doing so pull the reader into a rich history of images.
Today, standing on the hill overlooking the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden among prim rows of rounded tree peony shrubs, I found the same honest verse in each flower. It’s right there in the names. From time to time I would crouch to part the branches in an effort to see the cultivar titles on the small signs below each plant. Behind the leaves I discovered shaped words, often as straightforward as dynastic verse, at other times more like flash fiction–short stories in a staccato of concrete nouns. Our tree peonies are a lyrical bunch, blooming as they are in this early spring.
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Posted in Around the Garden, Photography on April 20 2012, by Matt Newman
We now enter the final weekend of 2012’s Orchid Show. What will you be doing with your off days?

Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
Posted in Around the Garden on April 19 2012, by Matt Newman
What the heck is Phragmites? I found myself posing the same question. What could be so diabolical, so absolutely devilish as to demand several days’ sweat and muscle ache shoveling out a muddy pit? Why the misleading singular noun? Sadly (and despite the phonetic similarities), Phragmites has nothing to do with Fraggle Rock. Neither is it related to flaming space junk, or the stone spikes that spur the floors and ceilings of winding underground caverns. Nope–it’s a plant. And, to many, it’s a ruthless swampland invader.
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Posted in Around the Garden, Photography on April 19 2012, by Matt Newman
A late MEC today, but not forgotten. I blame the interminable train delays. Seeing the tulip trees in their spring garb makes for a good balm on commuter frustration, though.

Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
Posted in Around the Garden, Programs and Events on April 18 2012, by Matt Newman
We think everyone should treat each and every square on the calendar like it’s Earth Day; we’re loud proponents of keeping the environment healthy and ship-shape. But on the celebratory front, we like to pile our events into one spectacular week of sunny spring days. So if you’re searching for a way to show the planet that you appreciate all it’s done for you, and you want to give back, we have just the thing. Read on for all that’s going down with The New York Botanical Garden and its partners, here and around New York City!
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Posted in Around the Garden, Photography on April 18 2012, by Matt Newman
The daytime temperatures are finally lining up with the sunlight filtering through the new leaves on the trees. It was a figurative weight off my shoulders to leave my jacket on the coat hook this morning.

Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
Posted in Around the Garden on April 17 2012, by Ann Rafalko
This just in: The first rose of the year has bloomed in the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden. Let’s hear a round of applause for Rosa blanda!
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Posted in Around the Garden, Photography on April 17 2012, by Matt Newman
We now continue our impromptu series on recently-flowering tulip cultivars styled after chatty tropical birds.

Tulipa ‘Silver Parrot’ — Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen