Noelle V. Dor is Museum Education Intern in the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden.
As the days grow longer and the first signs of spring emerge throughout the landscape, the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden is heating up with Chocolate and Vanilla Adventures. While this flavorful exploration focuses on the botanical origins of these two popular food ingredients, it also offers a taste of cultural history.
From ice cream and milkshakes to candy and cakes, we learn early on to identify chocolate and vanilla as standards of deliciousness. But there’s much more beneath that sweet surface. Before the rise of dark chocolate as a healthier alternative to common milk chocolate, few people knew that pure cacao (chocolate) is actually bitter. As well, the taste of real vanilla is just as obscure, due to its high cost and limited usage in mainstream food products.
Considering how chocolate and vanilla have been modified, added to, and substituted, it’s no wonder many of us have no clue about their plant origins! As both an educator and a learner at the Children’s Adventure Garden, I’m thrilled this program can bring everyone back to the “root” of the matter, so to speak.
Plates, check. Forks, check. Pizza, check. Candles, check. I’d just finished assembling all the necessary items for the weekend’s party. The brisk early winter morning was a flurry of preparation for Taylor’s 4th birthday celebration here at the Garden. Excitement was building as party guests began to arrive.
First, Taylor and his friends were taken on a private journey through the exhibition at the time, the Holiday Train Show. With whistling train conductors leading the way, the kids chased the locomotives zooming along tracks and across bridges. Next, the group zigzagged through the wild rain forest in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, where they found their favorite plant of all, the cacao tree—this was a chocolate-loving bunch. Afterward, the group was led to the Conservatory GreenSchool for the rest of the festivities.
Children and Families Explore the Hidden Wonders of the Winter Garden
Noelle V. Dor is Museum Education Intern in the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden.
Oh, the weather outside may be frightful… But the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden is still delightful!
Though the vibrant colors of autumn have long faded away and freezing temperatures command us to slow down and stay in, there is a wealth of hidden wonders to be discovered in our Winter Garden, from the vivid reds of bare dogwood branches to tenacious crabapples, darting cardinals, and the secret lives of leaf buds. Various little treasures brighten up the muted landscape—and they can brighten your winter blues, too!
The selection of activities available for children and their families includes the creation of a scientific field notebook, which will guide them through a winter scavenger hunt and sensory exploration of the Children’s Adventure Garden; a fascinating round in the world of tree rings and their own life stories; and a winter collage craft using fallen plant parts collected from the garden.
Master Puppeteer Brings Children’s Storybook to Life
Ralph Lee, a master puppeteer, adapted the story and created the puppets for The Little Engine That Could™ Puppet Show at The New York Botanical Garden. Photo of Ralph Lee by Brett Vermilyea
In the fall of 1995, I was asked by The New York Botanical Garden to create a show for children as a companion program to its annual Holiday Train Show. So I asked myself, “What children’s story has to do with both trains and the holiday season?” The Little Engine That Could™! It had been one of my favorite stories as a kid.
I fashioned locomotives for the trains in the story using cardboard as the primary material, wood for strength, and a lot of found objects—things you might see lying around the house—for details. These would give each train its own face as in the illustrations of the original storybook: the Broken Down Train, the Streamliner, the Big Strong Locomotive, the Rusty Dusty Dingy Engine, and of course, the Little Engine That Could. I also made small puppets to represent the toys that are being delivered to the other side of the mountain: a teddy bear, Raggedy Ann, some dancing dolls, and a monkey.
Noelle V. Dor is Museum Education Intern in the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden.
The holiday season is here, and the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden has cooked up a celebration of sugar, spice, and everything nice with its annual Gingerbread Adventures. While mostly everyone is familiar with the story of the Gingerbread Man and has seen (if not decorated and eaten) gingerbread cookies, many may not know the botanical and historical background of this favorite winter treat. I certainly didn’t.
As an intern in the Children’s Adventure Garden, not only do I get to work behind the scenes of this wildly popular program, I also get to join in on the adventure! Believe it or not, my previous experience with gingerbread was limited to enjoying the follies of Gingy, the gingerbread cookie character in the movie Shrek, and to helping create the “Gingerbread City” scene for a Candyland-themed high school play.
How many times have you seen It’s a Wonderful Life? A Christmas Story? Too many times to count? Rather than watch the holidays from a couch, break out your favorite festive sweater and create memories of your own with friends, relatives, colleagues, or others on a group tour of the Holiday Train Show.
Make a visit to this spectacular exhibition of twinkling lights, model trains, and replicas of New York landmarks made from plant parts a way of reconnecting with the special people in your life during this special time of year. Groups of 15 or more who plan a weekday visit receive a discount off the general admission price.
You may want to gather friends for a seasonal get-together or plan a day away from the office with co-workers or congregate with neighbors—come with any group of 15 or more during the week and everyone saves.
View Holiday Train Show, Ex Libris Exhibition, and More
Before sitting down to turkey and stuffing, come enjoy the bounty of the Garden, which is open on Thanksgiving Day this year, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The Garden will have extended hours for the remainder of the weekend for your enjoyment, relaxation, and gift shopping: from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Friday through Sunday, November 27–29.
250 acres of fall beauty—Catch the end of autumn’s colorful display in the gardens and Native Forest.
Holiday shopping and lunch—Find wonderful gifts for everyone on your list at Shop in the Garden and then grab lunch or a snack at one of our two Cafes.
The New York Botanical Garden is thankful for your patronage and support. Come share the day and the long holiday weekend with us, and have a Happy Thanksgiving!
Spend a Fall Day at Kiku, Greenmarket Finale, More; Veterans Get Discount
Gayle Schmidt is Manager of Public Education.
This week we say goodbye to our Greenmarket farmers and bakers for the year, as today and Saturday mark the last two markets for 2009. All summer and fall they have offered wonderful seasonal colors—from the bright green sprouts of asparagus and leaves of lettuces to sweet red cherries, purple radishes, yellow corn, and brilliant orange squashes and pumpkins.
The autumn shades of the market table complement the beautiful showiness of the trees around the Garden and the spectacularly trained chrysanthemums on display in the Conservatory Courtyards in Kiku in the Japanese Autumn Garden.
Join us today as we present additional family activities at the Greenmarket and elsewhere in the Garden to mark the Veterans’ Day holiday. Grounds admission is free, though an All-Garden Pass is needed for the main exhibition and some programs. United States Veterans receive $5 off the All-Garden Pass purchased on-site with proof of military service.
As you stroll through the Garden, you will encounter some Japanese cultural programs to complement the beautiful Kiku in the Japanese Autumn Garden exhibition and Japanese Autumn Adventures. Try your hand at origami folding and saori hand-weaving on a traditional loom. Make a showy Japanese flower hat, and learn a few traditional dance steps that celebrate the flowers in the Children’s Adventure Garden.
Over at the Greenmarket at Library Allée, tap your toes to live music and taste some fresh apple cider that you can help press. We dare you to stick your hand in a giant pumpkin and grab a few seeds to count for the tally!
Our market always provides fresh fruits and vegetables, and we use this produce in whipping up easy recipes to help you decide what to bring home for dinner. Today I’ll be making some of my now famous butternut squash soup for you to taste. You can also learn what it takes to grow this great food at a discussion with one of our farmers, and you can even find out what to do with the peelings and scraps at Bronx Green-Up’s compost information table.
Thundering and thrilling, the taiko (Japanese drum) has been called “the voice and spirit of the Japanese people.” From its roots in agriculture and the ancient music of shrines and temples, traditional taiko folk music is believed to entertain the gods, attract good fortune, drive away evil forces and insects, lend strength and courage to warriors, and celebrate life.
Each weekend during Kiku in the Japanese Autumn Garden experience the sounds of both ancient and modern Japan by the group Taiko Masala on the Conservatory Lawn.
Japanese Autumn Adventures Offers “Passport” of Fun
Noelle V. Dor is Museum Education Intern in the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden.
As the Northern Hemisphere inches away from the sun and life turns inward, The New York Botanical Garden is under way with Kiku in the Japanese Autumn Garden, a celebration of autumn and Japanese culture. While Kiku pays homage to Japan’s annual Festival of Happiness, which honors the fall bloom and seemingly perfect beauty of the chrysanthemum flower, the Everett Children Adventure Garden’s Japanese Autumn Adventures highlights an equally important plant in East Asian cultures: Camellia sinensis, commonly known as tea.
Of course, tea is immensely popular in the United States, too. Many people, however, know very little about tea such as the fact that “herbal teas” are not truly tea at all, or that white, green, black, and oolong teas are all derived from a single plant species.
Delving into the world of tea during my research and preparation for this program has deepened my fascination for the myriad ways in which plants and society intertwine over time. My interest in traditional Japanese culture—inspired and nurtured by various school projects and courses—made me even more excited to have this amazing opportunity to help others explore and enjoy a unique mixture of nature, art, and social customs.
During Japanese Autumn Adventures, in addition to learning all about tea and participating in a simulated tea ceremony, young visitors and their families get to do classic Japanese crafts such as fish printing (gyotaku) and paper-folding (origami) to create maple samaras that really spin!
At the beginning of their adventure, children will make their own field notebook, or “passport,” granting them access to different “cities” (activity stations) and allowing them to keep a record of their experiences as they “travel” through Japan. Before departing, everyone should stop by the wishing shrine and leave an ema (Japanese for “wish”).
My wish is for all hearts to be filled with love and joy. What’s yours?
As the days grow longer and the first signs of spring emerge throughout the landscape, the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden is heating up with Chocolate and Vanilla Adventures. While this flavorful exploration focuses on the botanical origins of these two popular food ingredients, it also offers a taste of cultural history.
