The flowers are beginning to bloom, the bees are finding their way back into the garden, and the grass is greening up again. Spring is on its way back! And kids everywhere are ready to spend more time outside. So come to the Garden for the return of The Culinary Kids Food Festival on April 14! Turn planting season into family fun during this week-long celebration of our favorite treats and where they come from. Fill up your Festival Passport at the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden with recipes, hands-on activities, and plenty of music and tastings. There will be a daily cooking demonstration at 1 p.m. each day throughout the festival, featuring kid-friendly recipes and tasty samples.
That awesome crisp fall air is due back this weekend, just on schedule for another Fall Forest Weekend!
Why fete a forest? Because the 50-acre Thain Family Forest isn’t just another woodland. It’s one of the largest remaining tracts of old growth forest in New York City. New York’s five boroughs were once covered by woodlands, but the relentless march of time and commerce denuded our fair islands, until only isolated pockets of forest remained. But the Thain Family Forest is hardly isolated, despite being in the middle of the Bronx. It is connected to woodlands further upstate by the Bronx River and the greenest borough’s extensive network of parks. This makes the Forest a truly unique place, home to native plants, trees, and critters, as well as a cadre of scientists studying it all.
And the Forest’s majestic, sometimes centuries old, trees are currently at peak fall foliage! Perfect timing, right? So come walk our trails, paddle the Bronx River, sample local beers, watch demonstrations of birds of prey, tree climbing, woodworking, and home gardening, enjoy fun-filled family activities in the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden (adjacent to the Forest), geek out on the many scientific pursuits being pursued under the Forest’s mighty trees, and so much more!
It’s summer! Or is it? Given the unpredictable weather of the past few weeks, I guess it comes as little surprise that several days of hazy, hot, and humid afternoons would end with spring reasserting herself just as we hit the three day, “unofficial start of summer” weekend. But don’t let that put a damper on your long weekend plans! We’ve got plenty of warmth, color, and activities to help you relax going into the new season.
In the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, Wild Medicine: Healing Plants Around the World continues to delight with a one-two punch of geeky knowledge and Renaissance beauty. Enjoy tasting stations featuring delicious and healthy treats made from chocolate, tropical fruits, and soothing tea around the Conservatory Courtyard Pools where the hardy waterlilies are again in bloom. You can also spend time with Philip Haas’ amazing Four Seasons, monumental sculptural renderings of the surreal paintings of Giuseppe Arcimboldo, “rendered in trompe l’oeil vegetables, flowers and other horticulture.”
Outside of the Conservatory, there’s plenty that’s beautiful and in bloom around our 250 acres. Favorite subjects of the Garden’s photography enthusiasts, the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden and the herbaceous peonies are back in bloom, and a plethora of other gardens are also looking fine.
Tours will focus on the diversity of plants to be found in the garden and the birds that are already calling it home. Everyone is encouraged to borrow a palette and watercolors and let the Native Plant Garden inspire you or your children to create a masterpiece en plein air. Enjoy folk tunes and bluegrass from the very popular Milton. Shop for native plants and learn from the experts in a series of demos and author book signings.
There’s so much to do in the Native Plant Garden you might be inclined to just stay there and enjoy this beautiful new landscape, but you would be missing out on a wealth of other stunning vistas! Though there are only a few blooms, the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden is once again open for the season, and just above it you will find blooming tree peonies and fragrant stands of lilac. In the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden, Mario Batali’s Kitchen Gardens have just been planted, and every child is encouraged to plant and play in the rest of the garden beds. In Cherry Valley a few tenacious blooms hold on, while tulips are everywhere in the Perennial Garden, Home Gardening Center, and along Seasonal Walk. In the Herb Garden you will be greeted by a “theater” of adorable and fascinating auricula primroses. The Azalea Garden is just beginning to glow in rosy hues of magenta, shocking pink, and seashell blush. Along Daffodil Hill the daffs are fading a bit, only to be outshone by gorgeous (and fragrant) crabapples. Basically, everywhere you turn there’s another stunning vista!
It’s closing weekend of The Orchid Show and blooms and blossoms abound; inside, outside, simply everywhere! Can you think of a better way to celebrate Earth Day? We can: let’s make it a three-day weekend and open our 250 acres to you on Monday!
While at NYBG every day is Earth Day, Monday, April 22 is the official day to celebrate, and we’re doing it in literal fashion with a focus on the soil that nourishes us all. In the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden kids of all ages can learn about the earthworms that are so vital to healthy, living soil. Speak with a worm expert, meet the earthworms, and take some of the nutrient-rich earth that they have produced to nourish your plants at home. Explore the newly planted Mario Batali Kitchen Gardens and enjoy special activities. If you can’t make it to NYBG, dine at any of Mario Batali’s restaurants or shop at Eataly and receive a special seed packet with which to grow your own Genovese basil at home.
In the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden and in the Home Gardening Center composting advice and demonstrations abound. Stick around in the Adventure Garden to make a terrarium—based on rich soil and a self-contained microenvironment—to take home.
Despite today’s unfortunate weather, spring truly is right around the corner. Tomorrow in fact! And there is evidence all around. Just this morning I saw a robin–slightly disgruntled and a little damp, but a robin nonetheless–strolling around on Tulip Tree Allée.
In the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden, the cozy Discovery Center is home to the serious family fun of Little Landscapes. Little Landscapes allows children of all ages to explore the tiny world of terrariums with hands-on activities that includes making your own little terrarium to take home! If you would like to indulge in a more substantial bout of terrarium-making, MasterCard cardholders are invited to participate in an exclusive Priceless event where your child can create an adventure- or fantasy-themed terrarium to take home.
For a lot of people in the New York-area this weekend is a three-day weekend! To celebrate, the Garden will be open Monday, October 10, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. And you know what makes it even better? The weather forecast is looking gorgeous! Such a welcome change after so many grey, rainy, dreary weekends.
NYBG staffers and a group of visitors get into the spirit of this month’s Dig! Plant! Grow! theme in the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden, Pickle Me! Want your own pickles? Come visit the Family Garden daily after 1:30 p.m. and get in on the briney action.
Pickle Party (photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen)
Last month’s theme was Sweet and Stinky. Didn’t make it to the Garden to sample the recipes full of alliums? Never fear! Here are the delicious recipes. We’ll post the pickle-tastic recipes here soon!
The flowers are beginning to bloom, the bees are finding their way back into the garden, and the grass is greening up again. Spring is on its way back! And kids everywhere are ready to spend more time outside. So come to the Garden for the return of The Culinary Kids Food Festival on April 14! Turn planting season into family fun during this week-long celebration of our favorite treats and where they come from. Fill up your Festival Passport at the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden with recipes, hands-on activities, and plenty of music and tastings. There will be a daily cooking demonstration at 1 p.m. each day throughout the festival, featuring kid-friendly recipes and tasty samples.
