Inside The New York Botanical Garden
Halloween
Posted in Programs and Events on September 18 2013, by Matt Newman
When monster masks, vampire make-up, and shuffling the kids around the neighborhood with candy-laden pillow cases won’t cut it anymore, it’s time to step up your Halloween game! And this weekend, starting September 21, The New York Botanical Garden does exactly that. We’re launching into one of our favorite holidays a little early this year with a Haunted Pumpkin Garden full of creepy, crawly events and activities, and there’ll be no shortage of spiders, bats, snakes and jack-o’-lanterns here to make your twilight adventures frightfully memorable.
No, seriously—we’ll be showcasing actual bugs and bats. Why would we miss an opportunity like that?!
Check out the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden this Saturday for the return of intricately carved pumpkin sculptures, parades, and more. Your little ones will have free reign to play in our “gourd-geous” Pumpkin House (no pun apologies here) and put on a show in our Pumpkin Puppet Theater. Or, if they’re especially daring, they can join some of our Discovery Center staff on the hunt for wriggling earthworms under rotting logs. And on Saturday and Sunday at 12 and 2 p.m., we’ll be joining our friends from The Nature of Things at the Clay Family Picnic Pavilions for live animal presentations featuring the “stuff of nightmares,” creatures that really aren’t so terrifying if you give them a chance—in fact, these lizards, tarantulas, and sneaky snakes can be downright cute.
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Posted in Around the Garden on October 26 2012, by Matt Newman
Thanksgiving has it so easy. It’s on the same day every year, and close enough to the weekend that you can plan to party around the table until the wee hours (barring a completely bonkers Black Friday schedule). But Halloween? Not so much. We’re usually left to the mercy of the calendar, and this October’s schedule lands the night of spooks and specters square in the middle of the work week. Hump day isn’t exactly party central for most New Yorkers, and it’s a school night for your mini monsters. But that shouldn’t dampen your spirits! This weekend, October 26 through 28, the NYBG holds its own ghoulish galas to mark the occasion a little early.
Our Spooky Nighttime Adventures ramp up as of this Friday night, marking the start of trick-or-treating, arts and crafts, and exploring the creepiest aspects of the Garden after dark–all in a safe environment for your kids to romp around. The Haunted Pumpkin Garden will be in its element, and that’s not to mention the horde of skulking harvester zombies carved into life by Ray Villafane this past weekend. Don’t forget to register for tickets–we’re extremely close to selling out for every single evening, and our limited nightly offering of walk-up tickets is far from guaranteed with such high demand!
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Posted in Around the Garden on October 25 2012, by Matt Newman
Elbow deep in a mound of pumpkin guts, wrenching out the last of that stringy pulp you’ll spend the next day fishing out of your hair? Probably not the best time to ponder the history of the jack o’ lantern. But once your squashy horror is grinning from your porch, peering out the kitchen window, or waiting for some hooligan or other to smash it on the driveway, take a moment and think: who actually came up with this bizarre Halloween tradition? While the NYBG is rolling out its own orange horrors courtesy of Ray Villafane, carving out this story means hopping a boat across the Atlantic to greener pastures, a place older and somewhat more partial to ghost stories (and dark, delicious stouts) than the United States.
If you guessed Ireland, you’ve got the pumpkin pegged. Or should I say turnip? As historical records tell it (there are still plenty of arguments on who inspired what), the holiday tradition of carving up starchy vegetables dates back generations in Ireland. But there was no train of cargo ships itching to haul the North American pumpkin to the shores of the Emerald Isle, as I’m sure you can gather. Instead, the Irish hollowed out their local root vegetables, adorned them with frightful faces, and lit them with embers or candles, a fall tradition brought out during Samhain–or “Sawin,” a fanciful celebration to mark the end of the fall harvest and the beginning of winter in the British Isles.
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Posted in Programs and Events on October 23 2012, by Matt Newman
Ahhh, the comforting vignettes of fall’s arrival: the Grand Allée‘s tulip trees tinged with gold, families touring the Garden in matching jackets, a ravenous horde of pumpkin patch ghouls dragging themselves up from their earthen tombs.
Er, yeah, we place the blame firmly on Ray Villafane and his cadre of spooky sculptors for that last one.
In the midst of our Halloween month (because why would you ever celebrate the most frightful holiday of the year for only a single night?), we continue on with another fall tradition that hits each week through November 21: the Wednesday Greenmarket! Bearing in mind the ongoing creepfest in the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden and elsewhere at the NYBG, you’ll of course find piles of pumpkins and seasonal gourds to decorate your porch. But there are also plenty of fall favorites to keep on your list that you’re not obliged to carve into jack o’ lanterns, because one cannot live on pumpkin pie alone–at least not for more than a week or two.
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Posted in Programs and Events on October 19 2012, by Matt Newman
It’s an early weekend update today! This Saturday and Sunday, the NYBG plays host to an event that never fails to have us bouncing off the walls with anticipation: the Giant Pumpkin Carving Weekend. But before we set up New York’s most original Halloween horrors here at the Garden, Ray Villafane and his crew of sculptors are taking their talents–and one or two giant pumpkins–to midtown. Naturally, we’re not about to let them gallivant through Manhattan without us, so a few of us from the Plant Talk offices are picking up and shipping off to join in on the fun.
If you happen to be in midtown through this afternoon, you’re welcome to stop by! We’ll be setting up shop at Grand Central Terminal this morning outside the west entrance, just off Vanderbilt Avenue. You can watch as Ray’s team carves up a display pumpkin of gargantuan proportions, while Ray himself works on the centerpiece of our Halloween spread–the pumpkin patch zombie. Each sculpture will then shuffle its way to the Garden proper to become part of the main event this weekend.
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Posted in Around the Garden, Photography on October 19 2012, by Matt Newman
Nope, it’s not a scene from the as-yet-unreleased Little Shop of Horrors 2. Ray Villafane and his team have been working since Thursday to prep these monstrous pumpkins for this weekend’s Great Pumpkin event, and today they’ll be at Grand Central Terminal for the kick-off. If you happen to be around midtown this morning or afternoon, feel free to stop by and see Ray whipping up the stuff of nightmares from nothing more than….well, a few thousand pounds of pumpkin. And remember: the big event goes off this weekend here at the NYBG!
Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
Posted in Color Report, Video on October 17 2012, by Matt Newman
Even at nearly a ton, it doesn’t take a town to raise a giant pumpkin. But it might take a town to lift one! Fresh off his record-smashing win in Massachusetts, grower Ron Wallace was back in his home state of Rhode Island recently to have a go at one-upping the benchmark set by his own 2009-pound pumpkin in September. Hundreds turned out for a bucolic romp through Frerichs Farm in the town of Warren, hopping hay rides, bopping to live music, and showing off their mighty produce while pumpkin growers from around the northeast gathered to throw their weight around.
While the mood may have been light, the subject matter was anything but.
Ron’s second contender for the crown had estimates predicting a weigh-in somewhere around 2100 pounds, which explains the forklift needed to hustle this hefty squash around. But while hopes were holding high, the plump pumpkin fell just short of the record with a final weight of 1872 pounds; it may sound like a big difference, but at their peak these pumpkins put on 35 pounds a day. Still not at all shabby, considering it’s the second-heaviest pumpkin ever grown. Ron not only maintains his rank as the Pumpkin King (don’t tell Jack Skellington) with the 2009-pound beast under his belt, but he’ll also be making his way to The New York Botanical Garden this weekend to join us for our Haunted Pumpkin Garden carving event. That’s with his Ocean State heavyweight in tow, naturally.
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Posted in Programs and Events on October 16 2012, by Matt Newman
How could I possibly cobble together this week’s Greenmarket preview without a nod to October’s star of show? Oh, right–I couldn’t. Today marks the arrival of some of the country’s biggest and best to The New York Botanical Garden, and in honor of their prize-winning rotundity, we absolutely must give culinary credit where credit is due. So here’s to Halloween’s most hallowed heavyweight: the pumpkin!
Our Greenmarket has seen a steady trickle of pumpkins, gourds, and squashes in general over the past while, and we expect to see this bounty pick up in the coming weeks as we dig deeper into fall. But this Wednesday is also notable in that it’s something of an unofficial precursor to our weekend festivities. While you’re shopping your way through piles of fresh autumn eats, we’ll be prepping their monumental, record-breaking cousins from around the country that are even now making their way to the NYBG. Starting this weekend, each giant will go under the knives of master carver Ray Villafane and his band of artful miscreants as they create the most terrifying and titillating Halloween display we’ve rolled out yet.
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Posted in Programs and Events on October 16 2012, by Matt Newman
No luck digging up your skeletons before sundown, or devils at dusk? You know it’s called “All Hallow’s Eve” for a reason! At The New York Botanical Garden, we’re all about the value of a good after-dark scream, and we’re not going to let New Yorkers go wanting when it comes to finding one. Join us weekends throughout the tail end of October for “Spooky Nighttime Adventures,” a safe opportunity for you and your kids to scare out the ghosts and goblins of the city when they’re meant to be seen. How often do you get to see the Garden in the light of the moon, anyway?
While our evening events and activities are put together for children ages five to 12, kids at heart are more than welcome to join us. We’ll be decorating treat bags near the Reflecting Pool and sniffing out sweet treats along the Whole Foods Market Trick-or-Treat Trail. We’ve got a few bones to pick at the Discovery Center as we Frankenstein our way through some owl pellets, or you can suss out what sort of creepy crawlies slither in the dank, dark world under a forest log. Try your hand at calling for owls at the Boulders, discover the many secretive creatures of the night, or, if your nerve is steeled, take a peek at Ray Villafane’s ghastly pumpkin sculptures; a jack o’ lantern may be a funny fruit in the light of day, but turn on the shadows for a fright larger than life!
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Posted in Programs and Events on October 11 2012, by Matt Newman
At the height of my own pumpkin artistry, I splattered the dining room table with gourd guts, plastered seeds in my hair, and stepped back to admire what could have been a crooked smiley face…if you tilted your head a few degrees. And squinted. It also sort of looked like a bear, I guess. And while being 11 years old was an acceptable excuse at the time, I’m not ashamed to admit I haven’t gotten any better. Of course, coaxing out hidden Halloween talents would have been heaps easier with a champion pumpkin sculptor in my corner. Someone like Mr. Villafane.
For those with young gourd gougers in their midst, October’s Priceless® Budding Masters event offers just the kind of tutelage needed to make a masterpiece of an average pumpkin. Ray Villafane is considered by many (especially me and anyone who’s heard me say this) to be the Michelangelo of the pumpkin carving scene, or the Bernini of “Boo!” if you want to be a goof about it. During last year’s Haunted Pumpkin Garden, our staffers were practically picking jaws up off the floor as visitors stopped to watch Ray in action, conjuring skeletons, zombies, and monstrous spiders from nothing more than a few record-breaking vegetables. This year, he’s back to one-up himself several times over, but not before sharing his unparalleled techniques with a class of young carvers in the making.
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When monster masks, vampire make-up, and shuffling the kids around the neighborhood with candy-laden pillow cases won’t cut it anymore, it’s time to step up your Halloween game! And this weekend, starting September 21, The New York Botanical Garden does exactly that. We’re launching into one of our favorite holidays a little early this year with a Haunted Pumpkin Garden full of creepy, crawly events and activities, and there’ll be no shortage of spiders, bats, snakes and jack-o’-lanterns here to make your twilight adventures frightfully memorable.
