Inside The New York Botanical Garden
Edible Academy
Posted in Around the Garden, Mario Batali's Edible Garden on June 2 2014, by Lansing Moore
Encouraging families to eat better and live healthier lives is a matter of reconnecting people, especially city-dwellers, with where their favorite fresh fruits and veggies come from and how much better they taste when grown with local care. NYBG has long offered such programs to let kids see their greens at all stages of growth before they end up on their plates, and to meet the growing demand for garden-based educational programs we launched the Edible Academy initiative.
While our array of educational and family programs, including Mario Batali’s Kitchen Gardens, continue to make a difference in the community, the ultimate aim of the Edible Academy is to double the number of those we serve through the opening of a three-acre, state-of-the-art complex on the Garden grounds. Including an amphitheater, children’s garden, and educational greenhouse, the Edible Academy is our vision of the bright future for family nutrition and educational outdoor fun. And, once again, our friends at Whole Foods Market are helping to make that vision real.
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Posted in Programs and Events on April 22 2014, by Matt Newman
While it’s clear that every day is Earth Day at The New York Botanical Garden (look around!), we think of April 22 as another opportunity to break out our megaphone and remind the world that conservation and environmentalism are some of the most important concerns facing humanity today. But those are big, scary words to some people, and everyone could use some hints as to how they can best serve and better this planet we’ve been riding around on. That’s why, each year, we take part in hands-on activities that make it easy to learn greener, more sustainable means of supporting both yourself and our big blue-green orb.
If you’re out and about in the city today and feeling peckish, stop by one of Mario Batali’s gourmet restaurants for lunch or dinner and don’t forget to snag one of our seed packets on your way out. As always, our close pal Mario is dedicated to fresh, seasonal ingredients, and he’s paired up with us this year to provide these packets as part of our combined Edible Academy efforts. Each packet contains a healthy handful of Insalata Mista lettuce seeds ready to be sown at home, soon to save you a trip to the supermarket and provide healthy, delicious options for cooking at home. And if you can’t make it out to eat, we’ve also got a booth in Union Square for today only, giving out seed packets to anyone who’d like one!
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Posted in Programs and Events on July 15 2013, by Matt Newman
In food blogging, there’s always a trove of challenges to navigate: finding a voice in the hungry pack of culinary columnists, translating your dining experiences to allow readers to eat with their eyes, and—at least in New York—keeping pace with the frantic trends of the food scene. But of everything facing the writer from day to day, age should never be an obstacle to success—even kid bloggers deserve an audience!
During June 10th’s Edible Academy Family Picnic, held among the vegetable plots in the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden, Mario Batali and Daphne Oz teamed up to charm palates with gourmet meals and a light-hearted cooking demonstration. We also invited several food bloggers like Carrie Vibert, Caroline Campion, and Amie Valpone to join us for the event, kicking off MasterCard’s Priceless NY Kid Food Blogger Experience. They not only had the opportunity to taste a few of Mario’s custom-designed dishes, but pique the muse of young writers anxious to put pen to paper. From there, we challenged the kids at the Family Picnic to submit their own blog posts—about the events, the experience, and the food prepared by Mario and his team of talented chefs.
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Posted in Around the Garden, Programs and Events on June 7 2013, by Matt Newman
Certainly the biggest news going into this weekend comes about on Monday, when we once again buddy up with Mario Batali for the Edible Academy Family Garden Picnic. For the past few summers, our work with this renowned chef and Friend of the Garden has produced some of the most fun and delicious adventures found in the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden, and this year’s event is no different! In fact, we’re even raising the bar. Join us on Monday, June 10 for an exclusive picnic dinner as conceived by Mario himself, followed by a book signing with the chef and his always lively cooking demonstration. And there are plenty of family activities to keep even the most tireless toddler occupied in the meantime.
All proceeds from this event will go to the Edible Academy, an NYBG initiative to create a year-round center for gardening education that focuses not only on the practice of being a green thumb, but the important connections between plants, gardening, nutrition, and health. And it’s not just for kids—the Edible Academy will educate families, adults, and teachers as well. Tickets to the picnic are dwindling, so register while you can!
Over the past few days I’ve also been in touch with our Senior Advisor for the Rose Garden, Peter Kukielski, trading numbers at a rapid-fire pace. “90%, 95%, 99%!” The Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden went from a subtle collection of buds to a vibrant spread of blooms in the course of a week thanks to the warmer weather, and that sudden explosion of color needed tracking on our Rose Watch page. I could barely keep up! But just yesterday, as I was about to leave for the day, Peter floated me one last message: “Make it 100%! I’m recording peak bloom for 2013 as of today!”
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Posted in Programs and Events on June 3 2013, by Matt Newman
Don’t mourn spring for too long! Even if those idyllic daytime temperatures came and went like an afterthought, what follows is that much better: summer, and all the delectable eats that tank-tops-and-flip-flops weather brings along with it. Spring’s fruit and vegetable plantings are teetering on the edge of the first harvest (I know, where did the time go?) in the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden, and naturally that can only point to cookouts in our future. But we’re not about to settle for half measures when it comes to the tastes of the warmer months. With Mario Batali back in our corner for another round of edible outdoor adventures, how could we?
This year’s Edible Academy Family Picnic brings the maestro of all things culinary back to The New York Botanical Garden for an exclusive evening dining experience, complete with a seasonal cooking demonstration from the chef himself. That’s in addition to hands-on vegetable harvests in the Family Garden, tutorials for hopeful greenthumbs, tree climbing, and more than enough crafts and family activities to keep even the most tireless toddler happily occupied. It all begins at 4 p.m. on June 10, kicking off with a delicious picnic supper designed by Mario himself and enjoyed on the flowering Garden grounds. Afterwards, dig into the fun taking place in the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden before joining Mario at 5:30 p.m. for a book signing, followed by his gourmet cooking demonstration alongside Daphne Oz, Mario’s co-host on ABC’s The Chew.
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Posted in Gardens and Collections on April 9 2013, by Ann Rafalko
Guess what? It’s spring! Finally, officially, it’s time to dig into the ground and enjoy the feeling of dirt under your fingernails. At the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden this simple joy is available to everyone, including our littlest visitors.
I was over there just this afternoon and little kids were grabbing shovels and being handed seeds and seedlings to push into the now warm earth. Of course, this magic doesn’t happen overnight, so everyone who drops in is invited back in a few weeks’ time to harvest and enjoy the fruits of their labor. Manager of the Family Garden, Toby Adams, gives you all the details on this wonderful drop-in program for families.
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