They are ubiquitous during the holiday season—and for good reason. Poinsettias (Euphorbia pulcherrima) are affordable, colorful plants with an enormous amount of festive appeal. But, contrary to popular opinion, the flowers are actually minuscule. The beauty of the poinsettia comes from its large, colorful red bracts.
Poinsettias come not only in the traditional yuletide red, but in a selection of cream-colored and rosy pink varieties as well. Whatever your tastes, they adorn many public spaces and homes during the holiday season.
I wince when I see people walking down the street with an open poinsettia in hand, fully exposed to the elements. Do your part to be an informed shopper and insist that the florist or retail store you purchase your poinsettia from wraps the plant before you leave with it. It doesn’t have to be an elaborate affair—it can be as little as temporarily covering the plant with a shopping bag. You must remember that you’re dealing with a tropical plant, and it can’t handle our area’s cool temperatures.
As the season comes to a close, vegetable gardens are put to bed and leaves raked up, Bronx Green-Up’s (BGU) Grow More Vegetables Certificate students have been finishing their volunteer hours and final projects throughout the Bronx.
Our Grow More Vegetables Certificate Series (GMV), taught by BGU’s Sara Katz, is an edible gardening course designed to equip community gardeners, teachers, and residents with the best organic techniques for growing vegetables safely and effectively. The program consists of six classes plus volunteer work at Bronx community sites where students can practice the techniques they have learned. As part of the course students design their own urban vegetable gardening project, which has two main goals: to grow more food and to pass on what students have learned to others in their community.
Tonight is the first of ten special Bar Car Nights at the Garden. The Holiday Train Show provides the backdrop for these special evenings, with the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory aglow with festive lights and a number of stations around the Garden, from live music to delicious food. Sip on a complimentary cocktail as you admire the glittering miniature city and enjoy the magical atmosphere. Tonight’s inaugural Bar Car Night is also the first event of our new LGBT@NYBG campaign. Tickets are still available for tonight’s event geared towards the LGBT community, as well as for tomorrow’s Bar Car Night. However, tickets for the most popular dates and events do sell out quickly!
As the Holiday Train Show® continues to delight visitors of all ages in its 23rd year, the latest Garden News provides an overview of what you can expect to find this year. View the video below, and click through for the full schedule of programs for this weekend.
Here’s a sneak preview of what awaits tonight’s guests for our first Bar Car Night of the season. Tonight is also the kick-off of our new LGBT@NYBG event series, and we cannot wait to welcome everyone to come enjoy the Holiday Train Show® by night. Tickets are still available for all ten Bar Car Nights, including tonight and tomorrow, so come celebrate with us!
I was watering containers around the Café one weekend in September when a woman stopped me to ask some questions about herbs. She had seen the large containers of parsley on display and was wondering what we did to keep the plant so healthy.
She explained that she had purchased parsley this summer and had placed it on her windowsill in her kitchen. It was not as verdant and vibrant as ours, and she was wondering what she had done wrong. I explained that our container displays comprised several plants to create a lavish appearance, but it was not simply quantity but also the size of the container that produced the bountiful display.
For your herbs to thrive, they need ample space to grow. Herbs are generally sold in spring in small, three- to four-inch pots. The small sizes of the pots are convenient for growers and it keeps the price down. Once you bring it home, the herb will need a bigger home so the root system can expand to support the plant.
If the herb is to be placed on your windowsill within arm’s reach of your cutting board, you probably won’t be able to repot it in a larger container, but even bumping it up to a six-inch pot will make a world of difference.
Todd Forrest is the NYBG’s Arthur Ross Vice President for Horticulture and Living Collections. He leads all horticulture programs and activities across the Garden’s 250-acre National Historic Landmark landscape, including 50 gardens and plant collections outside and under glass, the old-growth Thain Family Forest, and living exhibitions in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory.
Approximately thirty thousand trees add shade and scale to the Garden, including thousands of mature oaks, maples, sweet-gums, beeches, birches, tulip-trees, black-gums, and other deciduous beauties in the Native Plant Garden, Azalea Garden, and dotted across the hills and dales of our historic landscape. All of these wonderful shade trees make fall at the Garden a heart-breakingly beautiful mosaic of yellow, orange, burgundy, scarlet, and brown, particularly when late October and early November days are bright and nights are crisp but not freezing.
All of these wonderful shade trees also make the annual ritual of fall leaf pick-up a Herculean task for Garden horticulturists, who take up rakes, blowers, mowers, vacuums, and any other tool they can think of and spend the better part of three months each year in an elaborately choreographed leaf gathering and transporting dance across the Garden’s 250 acres. If all goes as planned, leaf pick-up begins in early October and is mostly finished before winter’s first substantial snowfall.
