Inside The New York Botanical Garden
Posted in Photography on August 3 2011, by Ann Rafalko
The kids in the Garden’s Summer Children’s Gardening Program in the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden learn a plethora of lessons about gardening, food, health, and teamwork. Go kids!
Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
Posted in Learning Experiences on July 21 2011, by Ann Rafalko
The Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden is a New York City treasure. It’s an amazing one-and-a-half acre site where children and families can learn about plants and the natural world through hands-on gardening. Each afternoon children–with help from their parents, volunteers, and staff–are encouraged to dig, weed, compost, plant, tend, and harvest in garden plots. These ongoing gardening activities are complemented by a changing roster of programs that encourage children to explore seasonal garden-related themes.
This month’s theme is Sweet and Stinky! Aromatic alliums such as onions and garlic, and herbs such as basil and oregano love the summer heat. Follow the “sweet and stinky” smells to the Family Garden to discover these culinary champions. Savor the scents and tickle your taste buds at our cooking demonstrations or try these delicious recipes at home!
Posted in Exhibitions, Learning Experiences, The Edible Garden on August 26 2010, by Plant Talk
9-Year-Old Everett Sanderson Offers 9 Tips to Get Growing
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Elizabeth Fisher is Associate Manager for Education Marketing and Public Relations. |
Everett Sanderson is a talented soon-to-be fifth grader who has spent most of his nine summers gardening in the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden, helping his mom, Han-Yu Hung, who is Garden Coordinator of the Children’s Gardening Program. In the Family Garden, kids work hands-on growing fruits and vegetables, learning that food, fun, health, and teamwork are connected. This year their garden plots have been in the spotlight as part of The Edible Garden.
Unlike most 9-year-olds, Everett is an accomplished gardener and a lover of veggies. Harvesting is what hooked him at first: “I realized that in order to harvest, you have to grow it, and in order to grow it, you have to plant it,” said Everett. Gardening also helped him to love eating vegetables: “If you can plant it, you have a better chance of liking it.”
Now a veteran of the Children’s Gardening Program, Everett, who lives in the Bronx, started gardening at age 3 as a “Garden Sprout” and is now a “Garden Crafter,” leading gardening lessons and hands-on activities.
He shares these helpful tips for kids to get their own gardens growing.
Posted in Exhibitions, Programs and Events, The Edible Garden on July 2 2010, by Plant Talk
Children Learn How Pollinators Turn Flowers to Fruits
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Noelle V. Dor is Museum Education Intern in the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden. |
As the school year winds to a close and summer settles in, The New York Botanical Garden invites us to delight our senses and our bellies with The Edible Garden: Growing and Preparing Good Food. Visitors are exposed to a wide variety of edible roots, shoots, and fruits and also experience the many ways our favorite foods go from plant to plate.
In its Flowers-to-Fruits program, the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden highlights one essential part of this transformative process: pollination. Here families explore the diversity of flower colors, shapes, and scents as well as the mutually beneficial relationships between flowers and the animals they attract.
The word pollination probably conjures up in most people the classic image of a bee buzzing from flower to flower. While this visual is definitely appropriate, many other animals—butterflies, moths, hummingbirds, bats, ants—act as important pollinators as well. They gain nourishment from the sweet nectar of flowers and, in turn, the flowers are able to change into fruits. Seeing pollination in action throughout the Garden makes me wonder how many of the fruits we eat result from this intricate plant–animal exchange.