Saturday, March 7, marks the return of our popular Orchid Evenings! Tickets are still available for the first of these exciting evening events—but not for long, so buy yours today! Plan a romantic escape to the Garden for cocktails, snacks, shopping, and live entertainment in the Pine Tree Café and Shop in the Garden, while in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory The Orchid Show: Chandeliers delights with its lofty display. There are plenty more dates ahead, so check out the details and get your tickets.
Tomorrow the Garden is also pleased to host a poetry reading by Deborah Landau, an award-winning poet whose selections adorn the Poetry Walk in the Perennial Garden during this year’s Orchid Show. Landau, who directs the Creative Writing program at NYU, will read selections from her book of poetry, Orchidelirium. Click through for the full schedule of programs and events for this weekend, including tours and family programs!
Floral Design Certificate program alumnae Brittany Asch (’11), is going her own way—including around the world and into Vogue. But this spring, she’s back at the Garden to inspire aspiring designers and to teach “Finding Your Own Aesthetic,” the first in our new Cutting Edge series featuring trending floral designers.
Brittany, who founded her studio, BRRCH, in 2013, has had a lot of success as a relatively young new designer. She said she owes her confidence in pursuing floral design to her experiences at NYBG.
Lynden B. Miller is a public garden designer who rescued and restored the Conservatory Garden in Central Park and went on create many other public gardens in New York including our Perennial Garden and Ladies’ Border at NYBG.
The 2015 Winter Lecture Series concludes this month with Robert Mallet, director of the world’s largest hydrangea collection, presenting Gardens of Meaning. We asked renowned garden designer and historian Lynden B. Miller to tell us just how important the French plantsman’s work is for garden designers. Here’s what she told Plant Talk.
It is very exciting to have Robert Mallet coming to speak to us at NYBG on March 19. He is a great plantsman and designer. One of the first French horticulturists to promote the use of ornamental shrubs and perennials beginning in the 1980’s, he was also one of the founders of Courson, the great and very popular French biennial horticultural event (the French equivalent of the Chelsea Flower Show). His family’s house and garden in Normandy, Les Bois des Moutiers, is spectacular and—with an amazing collection of great plants—not to be missed on any garden trip to France.
“What is that?”
“What lives in there? Are they dangerous? Do they bite?”
And, loudest of all, “EWWWWWW!”
These are some of the many questions (and noises of disgust) hurled in retaliation to the dripping, mucky leaf pack I hold up at the front of the classroom. Water fresh from the Bronx River streams from the decomposing leaves into a bucket below, and an odor that could be described as either “earthy” or “gross” pervades the GreenSchool classroom. My charges for the next 90 minutes—a group of unsuspecting middle schoolers—want nothing to do with whatever is going on in that mess of organic matter. Little do they know that within minutes they’ll be clamoring to sort through the leaves and rocks and mysterious river sludge to find living treasures underneath…
You’ll often see the Orchid Rotunda of the Library Building listed on our maps and handouts at the Garden, but seldom does it see the spotlight on Plant Talk—until now, anyway! Pat Gonzalez happened by and decided to snap a photo of the glass enclosure for which the Rotunda is eponymously named. This column of living orchids displays some of the most dazzling varieties year after year.
Today is the day—and we are thrilled to announce the winners of the 2015 Wild Medicine Photo Contest! From four weeks of stunning submissions, we have deliberated at length to arrive at two Grand Prize Winners, one for Macro and another for Sense of Place. These sharp-eyed shutterbugs have each just won a free seat in the NYBG Adult Education Photography class of their choice! Now they can enjoy seeing the Garden through their lens with other like-minded nature photographers, guided by one of the Garden’s expert instructors.
These shots highlight what makes the landmark Enid A. Haupt Conservatory such a magical place, and lately it is even more transcendent under The Orchid Show: Chandeliers. Plan your visit today and snap some photos of your own! In the meantime, click through to check out this year’s winning photographs.
Most of us grow our plants in soil—we fuss over potting mixes for containers and we amend our planting beds with leaf mould or compost. For those of us who don’t like to get our hands dirty, there is an alternative. Members of the Orchidaceae family love to show off their roots, and many of them were destined to climb. Some 70% of all orchids, in fact, are epiphytic.
Orchids that dangle in the air—sometimes known colloquially as air plants—are classified as epiphytes. Epi means “on top,” and phyte means “plant”—essentially adding up to a plant that grows on top of another plant. The relation an epiphyte has with the host is not parasitic (where it is harming the host), nor is it symbiotic/mutualistic (where both parties benefit, but rather commensalistic (when one benefits and the other is neutral). The term commensalism is derived from the Latin for “sharing a table.”
Like anything in life, adaptation to an aerial environment has its pros and cons. Plants grow in the upper echelons of the forest canopy in order to receive better light, a habit that also protects them from herbivores that roam the forest floor.
While the appeal for new accommodations with a spectacular view is enticing, the cons of co-habitation up in the forest canopy are significant. Orchids need to find a way to attach themselves to their obliging hosts. No longer with their roots firmly planted in the soil, they not only need to find a means of support but also ways to effectively take up moisture and nutrients.
For the return of the Orchid Show, celebrating its 13th year with an expanded display of living chandeliers that fills the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, Orchid Evenings are back! The Garden’s Victorian glasshouse is bursting with color and fragrance, and you have nine opportunities to take in the dazzling array of orchids with cocktails, refreshments, and live entertainment.
On March 7, 14, 19, 21, 28, and April 4, 11, 17, and 18, guests at Orchid Evenings will enjoy the Garden after the sun sets. From 6:30 to 9 p.m., The Pine Tree Café will have beer, wine, cocktails, and snacks available for purchase alongside Latin Jazz served up by the Nick Russo Latin Trio. Each ticket includes one complimentary beer, wine, or cocktail, and each ticket specifies an entry time to experience The Orchid Show: Chandeliers in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory. Entry times for the Conservatory are at 6:30, 7, and 7:30 p.m., but once inside visitors are free to stay as long as they please to enjoy the spectacle of thousands of hanging orchids, the sound of live DJs, and a quick touch-up by one of Guerlain’s famed make-up artists. Take a selfie in front of the orchid wall and tag it #GuerlainOrchid for a chance to win Guerlain getaways!
Saturday, March 7, marks the return of our popular Orchid Evenings! Tickets are still available for the first of these exciting evening events—but not for long, so buy yours today! Plan a romantic escape to the Garden for cocktails, snacks, shopping, and live entertainment in the Pine Tree Café and Shop in the Garden, while in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory The Orchid Show: Chandeliers delights with its lofty display. There are plenty more dates ahead, so check out the details and get your tickets.
